From Urbanism to Sustainable Urbanism: A New Urban Agenda for Rapidly Urbanizing Africa
Author(s)
Daniel Wandera Clief Naku
Department of Geography, St. John’s University of Tanzania, Dodoma, Tanzania.
ISBN 978-81-970122-6-6 (Print)
ISBN 978-81-970122-0-4 (eBook)
DOI: 10.9734/bpi/mono/978-81-970122-6-6
Since joining the academic fraternity in 2008 as a Tutorial Assistant and later transcended to the rank of University Lecturer, I have been involved in teaching a course Module of Urban Systems to university students. In this module, one of the topics covered focuses on urbanism. As a lecturer, I took time to read and comprehend about urbanism. By so doing, I realized that a great number of Africa’s rapidly urbanizing cities were undergoing urbanism as a result of the rapid urbanization. Unfortunately, the noted urbanism in most of Africa’s rapidly urbanizing cities lack qualities of sustainability.
As revealed from literature, it was evident that the ongoing urbanism in Africa’s rapidly urbanizing cities was characterized by features such as overcrowding, traffic congestion, informal settlements, urban poverty and weak economies among others.
In light of such features, the key question that sprung up from my side was on how Africa’s rapidly urbanizing cities could transform from the state of urbanism to sustainable urbanism so as to improve the quality of urban life. With this question in mind, I decided to begin a book writing project with the intention of exploring pathways through which Africa’s rapidly urbanizing cities could transform from urbanism to sustainable urbanism and thus offer better urban life.
