
Who deserves the city?
Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.
1 Article by:
Claire Mercer is a professor of Human Geography at the London School of Economics and is the author of The Suburban Frontier: Middle-Class Construction in Dar es Salaam (University of California Press, 2024).
Colonial urbanism cast African neighborhoods as chaotic, unplanned, and undesirable. In postcolonial Dar es Salaam, that legacy still shapes who builds, who belongs, and what the middle class fears the city becoming.