Verandahs of Power: Colonialism and Space in Urban Africa

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Syracuse University Press, Feb 1, 2003 - Business & Economics - 224 pages
Garth Andrew Myers' work makes a significant contribution to a long tradition of research on colonial cities and a multidisciplinary body of literature on urban legacies of colonialism. He examines both colonial rule and postcolonial inheritance in these cities, tracing the legacies of colonialism in different and divergent postcolonial settings—a revolutionary left-wing socialist state (Zanzibar) and a reactionary right-wing dictatorship (Malawi). In addition to the examination of urban plans and the African urban majority's responses to them, the book traces the experience of the urban planning process through three different "verandahs of power," or levels of class depiction: the colonial power, the colonized middle, and the urban majority. Interspersed with personal stories, this book illuminates our understanding of the workings of power in African cities by addressing human experiences of that power.
 

Contents

Enframing and Refraining African Cities
1
The Interstitiality of Colonial Lives
18
Colonial Nairobi
33
Colonial Lusaka
55
Colonial Zanzibar
76
Revolutionary Zanzibar
106
Lilongwe
135
Conclusion
159
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About the author (2003)

Garth Andrew Myers is an associate professor in the Departments of Geography and African/African-American Studies at the University of Kansas. His main research interests are in the political, historical, and cultural dimensions of urban development in Africa.

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