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When a theme succeeds in summoning scholars to workshops and leads to the production of multiple published volumes, one knows it is achieving a strong position within a field of knowledge. In exactly this way, African Studies is embracing the urban. This collection succeeds a number of others published during this decade; the trend is a strong one (see Jane Guyer's review article in Africa 81 (3)).
This collection is varied and the quality of contributions good. One could describe it as a kind of advertisement for the work in progress of a range of interesting scholars. Locatelli demonstrates the way colonialism tried to order cities in a way that served the state's purposes. Her focus is Asmara, perhaps the most striking Italian colonial urban model, and her work shows us where to look for resistance to the imposition of this model, a familiar theme. By contrast, late colonialism saw the contradictions in rapidly expanding cities extend themselves. After independence, a new order was for long contested. In an important essay focused on Maputo, Paul Jenkins suggests that such an order is now gradually taking shape on the basis of class; his account is paralleled by the assessment offered by...