Planning Cities in Africa—Current Issues and Future Prospects of Urban Governance and Planning: An Introduction

Abstract African urbanisation is at the crossroad. Despite ever-growing urban challenges and rapid transformation of cities in Africa, there a positive trend knowledge production dynamic policy reforms aiming better management related development fields. The discourse on current prospects calling for change perspective understanding Africa from its own sociocultural historical context. Scholars, instance, (Connell, Plan Theory 13:210–223, 2014), (Robinson, J. (2006) Ordinary cities: between modernity development. London; New York: Routledge (Questioning cities); Robinson, Int J Urban Reg Res 35:1–23, 2011)) (Watson, V. (2009) ‘Seeing South: Refocusing Planning Globe’s Central Issues’, 46(11), pp. 2259–2275; Watson, Pract 15:62–76, 2014b) argue that diversity uniqueness each context developing intersection local, regional global challenges, threats knowledge. In light this, chapter gives an insight into conceptual framing this book, including key thematic areas; overview topics covered by chapters. book has three areas: planning theories Models; state education capacity; participatory multi-governance approach towards challenges. Under these themes, introduces several cases various across Africa.