Sustainable Urban Futures in Africa

Sustainable Urban Futures in Africa provides a variety of conventional and emerging theoretical frameworks to inform understandings and responses to critical urban development issues such as urbanisation, climate change, housing/slum, informality, urban sprawl, urban ecosystem services and urban poverty, among others, within the context of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Africa.

This book addresses topics including challenges to spatial urban development, how spatial planning is delivered, how different urbanisation variables influence the development of different forms of urban systems and settlements in Africa, how city authorities could use old and new methods of land administration to produce sustainable urban spaces in Africa, and the role of local activism is causing important changes in the built environment. Chapters are written by a diverse range of African scholars and practitioners in urban planning and policy design, environmental science and policy, sociology, agriculture, natural resources management, environmental law, and politics.

Urban Africa has huge resource potential - both human and natural resources - that can stimulate sustainable development when effectively harnessed. Sustainable Urban Futures in Africa provides support for the SDGs in urban Africa and will be of interest to students and researchers, professionals and policymakers, and readers of urban studies, spatial planning, geography, governance, and other social sciences.

Patrick Brandful Cobbinah is a senior lecturer in urban planning at the Melbourne School of Design and the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He holds a PhD in Human Geography with emphasis on regional planning and resource conservation from Charles Sturt University, Australia. Patrick’s background is in human geography with broad experience in urban and regional planning gained through teaching and research conducted at universities in Ghana and Australia.

Michael Addaney is a lecturer in environmental policy and planning at the Department of Planning and Sustainability of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Ghana, and Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Public Management and Governance at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also a Research Fellow of the Earth System Governance Project at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Michael is an environmental social scientist whose expertise and current research interests are in the multifaceted and embedded relationships between humans and the environment, whether facilitated by institutions or by local organizations/communities, and the effects of this on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of rights, justice, and equity. Michael holds a PhD in environment and natural resources law from the Wuhan University, China, and a BSc in Development Planning from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana.