Short Abstract

African cities are growing vertically. What are the drivers of this growth? What changes does it bring, and for whom? We invite papers that propose to analyse vertical growth and its impacts, the finance and construction behind it, and how states and residents shape and contest the vertical city.

Long Abstract

Cranes, scaffolding, concrete mixers, cement bags and reinforced bars, and construction sites have become familiar features of African urban landscapes. While research on African urbanisation has largely focused on urban sprawl, this panel looks at and inside the towers, high-rise housing and multistorey buildings increasingly found in city centres and on their peripheries. Often presented as a tangible sign of “Africa Rising”, the verticalisation of African cities raises questions about these new dynamics of urban growth, about who and what makes it possible, who benefits from it, and how this impacts the environment, city dwellers and state society relations.

We invite papers addressing three connected areas of inquiry. First, how can vertical growth be measured in cities where spatial data are scarce? What effects on urban heat, flooding, infrastructure and inequality can such measures help reveal? Second, what material and less visible processes produce vertical cities? Here we turn to the real estate and property markets, circuits of finance, construction. Third, what are the politics of verticality? How do states and governments use vertical development to project authority and reshape urban governance, and does it generate contestation or new claims to urban citizenship?

We welcome contributions that critically examine these new vertical forms of urban production and the imaginaries that sustain them. Using urban verticality as a prism to observe broader changes in African societies, our panel asks whether building higher and faster produces stronger cities and states, and for whom?

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