African cities: towards a new paradigm – 'chameleonic' urbanism for hybrid cities (original) (raw)
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Africa is rapidly urbanizing to host quarter of the global urban population by 2050. This is the consequence of various interacting forces. Natural increase, Annexation and Migration are the drivers of Africa's urbanization. The last two will take the lion share. Moreover, It's happening amidst of emerging political, socioeconomic and physical factors. Peculiarly, Africa's urbanization is depicting emergence of new spatial forms and patterns. The paramount significance of intermediate and smaller urban centers, periurbanization and informal settlements are among the prevailing ones. However, Africa's planning is mainly occupied with the classical traditional planning approaches mainly the master planning resulting plan-context mismatch inter alia. The mismatches yield unintended negative consequences that affect functional urbanization of Africa. These demand innovative and incremental urban planning approaches and process that meets the peculiar contexts of Africa's urbanization. Africa's urban planning should holistically address these emerging and upcoming urban issues. This paper, using secondary data, intends to look at the urban context of Africa and its implication to urban planning. It identifies the peculiarities of African urbanization the consequential spatial patterns and forms and what urban planning needs to uncover to lineup in congruence and compatibly with Africa's urbanization.
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