The Planning Perspectives Contribution to African Planning History: achievements and opportunities

The African continent is growing fast in population and rates of urbanization rates, but remains under-represented in published academic planning history research. This article reviews published research over some forty years (over sixty in Planning Perspectives and over a hundred elsewhere). The themes include the diversity of national planning traditions in the continent's over fifty nations, and particular issues: colonial public health, segregation, housing and welfare measures, the influence of the garden cities movement, infrastructure planning, autocratic tendencies in town planning, weak subnational governance and informal governance arrangements. Recent scholarship now recognizes previously neglected precolonial African urban traditions, how Africans themselves have built towns, the continuing role of African traditional governance, and changing roles of women in urban place-making. African planning historiography is now moving beyond the European colonial ‘episode’ towards a greater understanding of African agency and perspective, and widening into other disciplines than history, planning and geography.