Emerging epicenters of global urbanization: Asia and Africa

AbdouMaliq Simone (with the African Centre for Cities, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, the Hyderabad Urban Lab and the Rujak Center for Urban Studies)

- completed -

The project tracks the key demographic, economic and socio-cultural variables that are driving massive urban growth in these two regions and, through grounded social action and ethnographic research, examines how heterogeneous processes of intensive and extensive urbanization are instantiated in select urban areas across these regions and, furthermore, with attention to the remaking of urban cores and peripheries.

Particular emphasis is placed on the modalities through which social heterogeneity is reconstituted in new built environments and governance arrangements. The first-phase outcomes of the work, focusing methodologically on how everyday life and macrostructural changes can be considered simultaneously, elaborates how adaptive urban agendas focusing on infrastructural change can build cross-class, cross-sectoral coalitions capable of shaping urbanization processes across these regions in more sustainable and just ways.