Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:38:19.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urbanism and Urbanization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Yohannis Abate
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Africa is now the least urbanized of the continents but is becoming more so at one of the fastest rates in the world. The history of urbanization in Africa predates the birth of Christ; it may have developed as early as 3500 B.C. in the flood plain of the lower Nile for control and administration of the Nile Valley by the Pharaohs, though most of the ancient and pre-colonial African urban centers are now insignificant towns and some have become extinct. Between 1500 B.C. and 500 A.D., the Mediterranean coast of North Africa saw the creation of many cities, which flourished because of trade between the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Winter 1978 , pp. 23 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1978 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Hance, W. A., Population, Migration, and Urbanization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), p. 212 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. United Nations Economie Commission for Africa, “Size and Growth of Urban Population in Africa,” in Breese, G., ed.. The City in Newly Developing Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 128–145 Google Scholar.

3. Population Reference Bureau, 1977 World Population Data Sheet, Washington, D.C., 1977.

4. G. Hamdan, “Capitals of New Africa,” in Breese, The City in Newly Developing Countries, pp. 146-161.

5. Rugg, Dean, Spatial Foundations of Urbanism (Dubuque: William C. Brown, 1972), pp. 79–98 Google Scholar.

6. Hartshorne, R., ‘The Functional Approach to Political Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 40. 1950 Google Scholar.

7. Mabogunje, A. L., “Urbanization and Change,” in Paden, J. and Soja, E., eds., The African Experience, Vol. I: Essays (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), pp. 331–358 Google Scholar.

8. Hance, Population, Migration, and Urbanization, pp. 245-259.

9. Sjoberg, G., ‘The Pre-Industrial City,” The American Journal of Sociology, 60 (1955),438–445 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Hance, 245-259.

11. Jefferson, M., “Law of the Primate City,” Geographical Review, 29 (1939), 226–232 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Linsky, A. S., “Some Generalizations Concerning Primate Cities,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 55 (September 1965), 506–513 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Mabogunje, A. L., “Manufacturing and the Geography of Development in Tropical Africa,” Economic Geography, 49 (1953), 11 Google Scholar.

13. Sommer, J., ‘The Internal Structure of African Cities,” in Knight, C. G. and Newman, J. C., Contemporary Africa: Geography and Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), pp. 301–303 Google Scholar.

14. Ibid.’

15. Hoselitz, Bert F., ‘The Role of Cities in the Economic Growth of Underdeveloped Countries,” Journal of Political Economy, 61 (1953), 195–208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Hoselitz, , “Generative and Parasitic Cities,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 3 (1954), 278–294 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Hirschman, A. O., The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958)Google Scholar. Also see Friedman, J. R. P., “The Strategy of Deliberate Urbanization,” Journal of the Institute of American Planners, 24 (1973), 364–373 Google Scholar, and Berry, B. J. L., “Hierarchical Diffusion: The Basis of Developmental Filtering and Spread in a System of Growth Centers,” in English, P. W. and Mayfield, R. C., eds., Man, Space, and Environment: Concepts in Contemporary Human Geography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972 1,340–359 Google Scholar.

17. Sommer, “Internal Structure of African Cities,” p. 316.

18. Hamdan, “Capitals of the New Africa,” p. 140.

19. Rosser, C., Urbanization in Tropical Africa (New York: Ford Foundation, International Urbanization Survey, 1973), p. 37 Google Scholar.

20. Green, L. and Milone, V., Urbanization in Nigeria: A Planning Commentary (New York: Ford Foundation, International Urbanization Survey, 1971), pp. 10–14 Google Scholar.

21. Mabogunje, A. L., Urbanization in Nigeria (London: University of London Press, 1968), p. 319 Google Scholar.

22. Hance, W. A., The Geography of Modern Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), p. 109 Google Scholar. There is a conflict of data for the city of Algiers. Hance cites 2.4 million for 1974, and United Nations Population Division, “Trends and Prospects in the Population of Urban Agglomerations, 1950-2000, as assessed in 1973-1975,” estimates 1,179,000 in 1975.

23. Population Reference Bureau (PRB), World Population Growth and Response (Washington, D.C., 1976), pp. 31, 46, 59Google Scholar.

24. Hance, The Geography of Modern Africa, p. 115.

25. Ibid.

26. United Nations, Demographic Yearbook (New York, 1976), pp. 253–255.Google Scholar

27. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, “Size and Growth of Urban Population in Africa,” p. 139.

28. Hance, Population, Migration, and Urbanization, pp. 128-208.

29. Little, Kenneth, West African Urbanization (London: Cambridge Press, 1966)Google Scholar. See also his Urbanization As A Social Process (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974).

30. Brand, R. R., ‘The Urban Housing Challenge,” in Knight and Newman, Contemporary Africa, p. 324 Google Scholar.

31. Beier, George J., “Can Third World Cities Cope?” Population Reference Bureau,Population Bulletin , 31 (December 1976), 4 Google Scholar.

32. Berry, B. J. L., The Human Consequences of Urbanization (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 74–114 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.