A number of gaps and impasses are readily apparent in the study of urban environments in Africa. The field as a whole is a relatively new extension from the hitherto overwhelmingly rural focus of environmental studies on the continent, and proportionate to a population that is rapidly shifting to an urban majority, the field remains underdeveloped. Then there are the dual solitudes of social versus natural sciences, which often ignore or distrust each other. There is a preponderance of research focused on the big cities to the neglect of the smaller ones, which skews the analysis often to the dystopian side. And there is the “clash of rationalities” (7) between the modernist vision that shaped most African cities from the colonial era and to which most still aspire, and the lived experience of the majority of African urban dwellers. Their perspectives are shaped not only by the pervasive poverty and filth they encounter in their daily lives, but also by a profound spirituality that Western observers or technocratic planners commonly ignore or deride. Failure to acknowledge and respect as much has tended to deepen the impasse and hence to enable those with the preponderance of power to impose their fantasies of garden cities for elites (with their supporting cast of highways, malls, gated communities, and displaced populations) time and time again.
Garth Myers’s new book is a reflection upon over three decades of research in diverse parts of Africa. It proposes ways to bridge the divides and fill some gaps by means of what he calls an interactionist, Africa-focused “urban political ecology” (UPE). The book is an exercise in the “radical rethinking” of African cities, which even UN-Habitat now calls for. How, it asks, can we harness Africans’ “everyday environmentalism” or “rogue sensibility” (142, 146) and the sporadic, inspirational genius of popular resistance against misconceived urbanism into a sustainable force for social and environmental good? How can “productive moments” be sustained, rather than crashing down in repression or exhaustion or betrayal, as so commonly happens? Myers makes a compelling case in concise, clear writing that should be accessible and motivational to a wide range of audiences. Whether it can be effective in intellectually equipping future researchers, planners, officials, activists, and donors to intervene against the multiple risks that African cities face is questionable. But it surely is important (and enjoyable) to try.
The introductory chapter lays out the basic principles of interactionist urban political ecology (or UPE). These include the need to respect the diversity of African cities, to stress continuities between rural and urban, and to listen to (and actively seek out) submerged voices of the African poor and African ecological thinkers.
Myers then builds the book around five core groups of people or concepts that have shaped African cities, employing case studies to illustrate his argument. In chapter 1, “The Experts,” he eviscerates the analysis of several influential documents that claim to identify and then propose solutions to Africa’s urban environmental problems. The case study here is Nairobi’s official development plan, which is revealed as a greenwashing modernist travesty. How else to describe a vision for this choking metropolis that mentions the word “traffic” once and “matatu” zero times (51)?
In chapter 2, “The Past,” Myers makes the simple argument that we must pay careful attention to history before claiming to understand contemporary problems. Lusaka is the case study in this chapter, and the key questions proposed are: what do inhabitants of the city today think of the colonial arborosphere, and how are trees being destroyed or deployed to further entrench class segregation?
In chapter 3, “The Cityscape,” Myers urges us to take account of the metaphysical meanings that people attach to physical urban spaces. This requires that we unearth hidden significance in euphemism, jokes, morality tales, and snippets of historical memory applied to structures, natural features, and even names—all of which could have an impact on, and even fatally undermine, technical planning. The case study here is Zanzibar, where memories of ethnic violence and the misguided revolution more than fifty years ago still haunt the ways periurban space is being colonized (and degraded).
In chapter 4, “The Artists,” Myers shifts his gaze to sources of leadership in the resistance to neoliberal environmental atrocities. After a brief “ecocritical” analysis of four disparate African novels in which waste and filth are an important aspect of the storytelling, he switches to a focused discussion of Pikine, the blighted periurban sprawl east of Dakar infamous for its frequent devastating floods and a garbage mountain that employs thousands of people. The focus of the chapter is the work of hip-hop and graffiti artists and their goal of speaking truth to power. We, as scholars, should lift our eyes from dusty texts or laptops to listen to what these unconventional, dare we say, organic intellectuals are saying.
Finally, in chapter 5, “The Grassroots” Myers provides an overview of select successes of popular resistance to neoliberal urbanism. He then looks to Cape Town for examples of spontaneous grassroots organization to improve the lives of marginalized people. Even though Cape Town has one of the most extreme disparities of wealth in the world, and criminality, short-sightedness, exhaustion, and co-optation all sap energy from grassroots movements, he nonetheless discerns cause for optimism in the work of the Shack Dwellers and Homeless People’s movements, among others. Some examples of applied academic research emerging from the African Centre for Cities gives us hope that academics are not completely useless.
Myers is able to articulate insights from and make connections across diverse intellectual fields. His summary of cultural geography in the Euro-American tradition (Williams, Harvey, etc.) and its value in conceptualizing an emergent African intellectual tradition (using the language of uBuntu, notably, to reimagine human–nature relationships) is alone worth the price of admission. I greatly appreciate the effort Myers took to include radical African thinkers in the discussion. Some consideration of how African activists are talking to one another transnationally or in relation to global movements like Degrowth or Buen Vivir might have strengthened the argument.
