DIY Urbanism in Africa

Stephen Marr is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Political Studies at Malmö University, Sweden. Patience Mususa is Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden. She has previously lectured at the University of Cape Town’s department of Social Anthropology (South Africa), and at the Copperbelt University’s School of Architecture (Zambia).

• IntroductionPart I: Conceptual Framing1. DIY Urbanisms Old and New2. DIY Urbanism in Distressed Cities in Africa3. Reconnaissance Discourse of DIY and Urban Living in Nigeria4. DIY Urbanism in an African Context and its Potential as a Collaborative Placemaking Tool for Bridging Africa’s Urban Infrastructure DeficitPart II: Case Studies5. Political Economy of Community-led Security Provisioning in Urban Africa6. The Production of Urban Space through Multi-scaled Political Networks in Lagos, Nigeria7. Historicizing Precarity and DIY Urbanism in Accra, Ghana8. Exploring Street Informality as Design Method: Experiences from Nigerian and Ghanaian Cities9. Self-made Urbanism Handbook: The Case of Freetown, Sierra Leone10. Resistance or Utopia? DIY Eco-communities in Durban, South Africa11. Disability and Urbanism in Malawi12. DIY Urbanism in Boom and Bust: a Perspective from Africa’s CopperbeltConclusion

The book effectively presents DIY urbanism as a concept that is highly relevant to African cities …[This book] comes highly recommended. It offers a fresh perspective, highlighting how marginalized communities actively influence and shape their cities through theirinitiatives and actions.