Urban renewal in Ibadan, Nigeria: World class but essentially Yoruba

Abstract Urban renewal is central to ‘world-class’ city aspirations on the African continent: demolitions and evictions exemplify power of state restructure urban space, prioritizing elite forms accumulation enforcing aesthetic norms cleanliness, order modernity. The ubiquity world-class city-making has been taken by studies scholars as evidence leaders’ converging a unitary aspirational imaginary. This article contends that concept world class should instead be understood key terrain which governments’ distinctive diverse ideational ambitions are expressed. In Oyo State, southwest Nigeria, vernacular political traditions—in this case Yoruba cultural nationalism centred ideas Obafemi Awolowo—were deployed governor legitimize renewal. Drawing notion elitism can ‘generalized’, cultivation globalized was not only project becoming ever more homogenously ‘international’ but historically grounded aspiration become essentially Yoruba. Thus, beyond commonalities across discourses used neoliberal development—world class, international global—these universal sounding imaginaries may at same time express much particularistic projects.