Unit information: Urban Geography - a focus on Africa in 2020/21

Unit name	Urban Geography - a focus on Africa
Unit code	GEOG30022
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Parnell
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Geographical Sciences
Faculty	Faculty of Science

Description including Unit Aims

Course description:

Continuing population growth and urbanisation will add 2.5 billion more people to the world’s cities by 2050, with nearly 90 per cent of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. Today, around 40 per cent of Africans are urban dwellers, about 500 million people. In the next few decades this number will swell to over 1.4 billion. Urban Geographers have until recently virtually overlooked the dramatic expansion of African cities. A recent surge of writing from geography and urban studies provides the platform from which the course explores the challenges faced in African cities, assessing the durability and relevance of traditional scholarship to contemporary urban change.

The core material is covered in lectures and seminars and further developed via independent reading and essay preparation.

Course aims:

• To provide students with an overview of scope, significance and variation across Africa’s urban transition.
• To develop critical skills, grounded in the traditions of urban geography, to describe, analyse and explain the drivers of urban growth in contemporary Africa.

Intended Learning Outcomes

On completion of this Unit students should be able to:

1. Identify and explain the past and present factors that have shaped the varied urban trajectories across Africa.
2. Use key concepts in urban geography to illuminate African urbanisation patterns, dynamics and politics.
3. Reflect from African cases on the relevance and universal traction of traditional urban geographical ideas.
4. Critically evaluate contemporary policy approaches to key urban questions in Africa.
5. Design, undertake and write up research addressing urban development in an African city from a critical perspective.

The following transferable skills are developed in this Unit:

• Written and verbal communication
• Library searches for published and unpublished material
• Team working
• Problem solving
• Analytical skills
• Planning

Teaching Information

The unit will be taught through a blended combination of online and, if possible, in-person teaching, including

• online resources
• synchronous group workshops, seminars, tutorials and/or office hours
• asynchronous individual activities and guided reading for students to work through at their own pace

Assessment Information

Seminar reaction paper (1000 words) – 20%Essay (3000 words) – 60%Creative city review (1000 words) – 20 %

Reading and References

ESSENTIAL READING:

General text: Parnell S and E Pieterse (eds) (2014) Africa’s urban revolution, Zed, London

Goodfellow, Tom (2013) ‘Planning and development regulation amid rapid urban growth: explaining divergent trajectories in Africa’, Geoforum, 48, 83-93

Parnell S and E Pieterse (eds) (2014) Africa’s urban revolution, Zed, London

Each lecture and seminar will include required reading and will draw on the recommended and further reading provided below.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Gulyani, Sumila, Debabrata Talukdar and Ellen M Bassett (2018) ‘A sharing economy? Unpacking demand and living conditions in the urban housing market in Kenya’, World Development, 109, 57-72

Amoako C and E F Boamah (2017) ‘Build as your earn and learn: informal urbanism and incremental housing financing in Kumasi, Ghana’ Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 32, 429-448

Potts, Deborah (2018) ‘Urban data and definitions in sub-Saharan Africa: mismatches between the pace of urbanisation and employment and livelihood change’, Urban Studies, 55, 5, 965-986

Lall, Somik Vinay, J Vernon Henderson and Anthony J Venables (2017) Africa’s cities: opening doors to the world, World Bank, Washington DC, available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25896 (read Overview ‘Africa’s cities: opening doors to the world’, pp9-34)

Agbiboa, Daniel (2016) ‘No condition is permanent’: informal transport workers and labour precarity in Africa’s largest city’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 40, 5, 936-957

FURTHER READING:

Fox, Sean, Robin Bloch and Jose Monroy (2018) ‘Understanding the dynamics of Nigeria’s urban transition: a refutation of the ‘stalled urbanisation’ hypothesis’ Urban Studies, 55, 5, 947-964

Turok, Ivan (2018) ‘Informing Africa’s urban transformation: a response to Fox et al and Potts’, Urban Studies, 55, 5, 987-993

Geschiere P and A Socpa (2016) ‘Changing mobilities, shifting futures’, in B Goldstone and J Obarrio (eds) African futures: essays on crisis, emergence and possibility, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, pp167-180

Potts, Deborah (2016) ‘Debates about African urbanisation, migration and economic growth: what can we learn from Zimbabwe and Zambia’, Geographical Journal, 182, 3, 251-264