Short Abstract

This panel convenes urban environmental historians to explore the connected relationships between urbanisation, extraction, and environmental change. Drawing on several historical case studies, urban environments offer rich sites to analyse the ecological changes wrought by extractive development.

Long Abstract

Africa is home to a young population living in some of the fastest urbanising cities in the world. Yet in an age of sustained climate change, how do these swelling cities adapt to the environmental challenges of urbanisation? This panel brings together urban environmental historians to explore how African cities have expanded and what effects urbanisation has had on the environment. More specifically, we will analyse divergent methods of extractive development that have driven urban development in many parts of Africa. Combining industrialisation and extraction, urbanisation unfolds as a distinct process of environmental change. The panel aims to explore political economy through the rise of industry, multispecies considerations of more-than-human history, and the role of urban planning in structuring the environment. Case studies will draw from various regions across Africa. Drawing on the conference theme, we analyse the urban environment through a multiplicity of perspectives and methods: historical, ethnographic, and comparative. This panel seeks to learn from past experiences of urban growth and environmental change to confront the planetary challenges – anthropogenic climate change and global urbanisation – of the twenty-first century.

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