Paper short abstract:

Using examples from cities in the African continent, this paper highlights the dangers of the ‘urban’ rhetorical approach of the New Urban Agenda in African cities. It reveals how the text is internally conflicted and is far from the serenity of any definite meaning.

Paper long abstract:

The New Urban Agenda (NUA) is the document agreed upon at the Habitat III cities conference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. The document seeks to guide the efforts to foster urban transformation by a wide range of actors for the next 20 years through a pro-urban policy consensus. In the process, it has asserted an urban-centric agenda and presented development as a function of city-centrism. However, Barnett and Parnell (2016, p.94) have argued that the assertion of the ‘urban discourse’ is “heavily dependent on stylized interpretations of North American and Western European experiences.” This paper adopts deconstruction as a method of analysis for the NUA. Deconstruction is a way of reading any text and thereby exposing the instability of meaning which the text tries to cover up. In this regard, using examples from cities in the continent, the paper explores the “interiority” and “exteriority” of African cities in relation to the NUA. Therefore, this paper highlights the dangers of the ‘urban’ rhetoric, the essentialism and the "organismic" approach of the Agenda in African cities. It reveals how the text is internally conflicted and is far from the serenity of any definite meaning. While the gravitas of the NUA is rhetorically undeniable, the paper argues that the NUA still remains highly rhetorical for much of the urban whims, mosaics, patchwork, heterogeneity, fluidity, and transitory configurations of the African cities.