Urban Dynamics

Cluster leader: Ilda Lourenço-Lindell

The urban dynamics cluster focuses on the state of African urban centers on processes of social, political and economic changes unfolding therein and on their impacts on the population in urban spaces without discounting their strong connections with rural spaces. To a large extent, the African urban economy has remained a locus of consumption as well as employment, particularly in the so-called informal sector. The aim of the program and the projects within this cluster is to explore empirically the ways in which this informalization of urban economies affect different segments of the population and the various responses and strategies to which it give rise. A second aim is to investigate how changing economic dynamics impact on social and political dynamics in specific contexts more generally.
 

This research cluster involves the following programmes and projects:

• Collective Organisation among Informal Workers in African Cities
  Researcher: Ilda Lourenço-Lindell
• Youth and marginality in urban Sierra Leone
  Researcher: Mats Utas