To start urban studies in African contexts, some alternative grounds for thinking are needed. This talk activates the potential for generating new concepts from the complexity and diversity of urban life, developed in Comparative Urbanism. The shape of engagements with urbanisation processes across the African continent has largely been set by formulations which, while productive, bear the marks of exceptionalism – informality, developmentalism, the “global South”. Each of these grounds for framing concepts holds potential, but also pitfalls, notably disconnection from framing wider critical theoretical insights, from shaping conversations about urbanism and urbanisation, and from gaining traction in critical analyses of power. This talk will reflect on the possibility for alternative grounds for opening conversations about urbanisation from African contexts. How might the distinctive (and pressing) experiences of African urbanisation be considered not as exceptions, but as starting points for theorising global urbanisation, prioritising the voices and insights of African scholars? The presentation will take as an example a current collective research project which has drawn us to propose to refocus analyses of urban development politics around the concept of transcalarity. Our analysis starts from an African context but is relevant to, and in conversation with, experiences on other continents.
