This panel seeks to foster a new understanding of urban spatialities
in African contexts. It contrasts common accounts of fragmentation, polarisation,
and 'new segregation', with more dynamic, fluid understandings of contemporary
urban space.
Dominant accounts of postcolonial or post-apartheid cities emphasize their
deep-rooted or newly created morphologies of social and spatial fragmentation.
According to these depictions of contemporary urban realities, the city, as
such, does not exist (anymore) and is divided into bubbles of gentrification and
forgotten slums, into islands of safety and hotspots of fear and terror. Wealth
and spatial disparities correlate with governance disparities, triggering new
forms of exclusion. This panel encourages urban scholars from a variety of
disciplines (e.g. geography, sociology, political science, urban planning and
criminology), to challenge the concept of the fragmented city with more dynamic,
fluid theories of urban space, governance and everyday life, using temporality,
movement and informal productions of space.
