La question urbaine en Afrique australe

Perspectives de recherche

Philippe GERVAIS-LAMBONY, Sylvy JAGLIN, Alan MABIN (eds), 1999, Paris, Karthala; Johannesburg, IFAS
ISBN : 2-86537-890-X
Coll. “Man and Society”; Collection directed by Jean Copans

By confronting different disciplinary approaches (from sociology, economics, geography, history, political science and urban planning), and by widening survey fields to include anglophone Southern Africa, the ambition of this publication, the result of a joint collaboration between French and African researchers working on cities, is to define prospects for future partnerships.

The texts collated here show indeed that, based on various priority themes, urban research in Southern Africa is today converging around common issues: urban democratisation and its impacts on the management and reorganisation of the Authorities, housing policies grappling with forms of urban segregation in constant restructuring, the local repercussions of a feared as well as valued “globalisation”, the conflicting processes for the construction of identities in cosmopolitan cities.