Who Created the African City Model?
Most people learn about urban models through the lens of Chicago — Burgess, Hoyt, Harris and Ullman. On the flip side, those names show up in every geography textbook. But when you look at cities in Africa, those models barely scratch the surface. On top of that, the African city model was built to capture something entirely different. And the story of who created it is tangled up in colonialism, post-independence scholarship, and the messy reality of African urbanization that Western frameworks simply couldn't explain.
So who actually built this model? In real terms, the honest answer is that it wasn't one person. It was a group of scholars — most of them African — who looked at cities like Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra and realized they needed a new way to make sense of what they were seeing. But a few names stand out more than others, and their work changed how we think about urban space on the continent Took long enough..
What Is the African City Model?
The African city model is a framework for understanding how cities in Africa — particularly sub-Saharan Africa — are structured and organized. Unlike the concentric zone model or the sector model that describe North American cities, the African city model accounts for a very different set of forces: colonial legacy, rapid informal growth, ethnic and cultural divisions, and the tension between indigenous and European urban planning traditions.
The Key Features of the Model
At its core, the African city model typically shows several distinct zones radiating outward from a central point:
- The Colonial CBD — This is the European-designed commercial and administrative center. It was built by colonial powers and often sits at the geographic heart of the city. Think of the Lagos Island area or the Nairobi CBD.
- The Indigenous Commercial Zone — A secondary commercial area where local African businesses operate, often just outside the colonial core. This zone reflects the economic activity of the majority population that was largely excluded from the formal colonial economy.
- The Zone of Transition — This is where things get dense and chaotic. High-density housing, informal settlements, and rapid, often unplanned development characterize this area. It's the most dynamic and volatile part of the city.
- Low-Density Peripheral Areas — On the outskirts, you find lower-density residential areas, often home to recent migrants who have settled on the fringes of the city. These areas frequently lack basic infrastructure.
The model also accounts for ethnic and tribal neighborhoods that form organically, something you don't really see in Western urban models And it works..
Why It Looks Different from Western Models
Here's the thing most people miss — the African city model isn't just a "variant" of the Chicago model with different labels. It's built on fundamentally different assumptions about how cities grow and why. Colonialism shaped the DNA of these cities from the ground up. The CBD wasn't born from organic market forces the way Chicago's was. It was imposed. And the growth patterns that followed — the sprawl, the informal settlements, the dual commercial centers — are direct consequences of that colonial foundation.
Why It Matters / Why People Care
Understanding who created the African city model matters because it tells you something about power, knowledge, and whose perspective gets centered in academic disciplines. When African cities were studied at all, they were forced into frameworks designed for Chicago or London. Consider this: that didn't work. For decades, urban geography was dominated by Western scholars studying Western cities. It produced misleading conclusions and erased the unique dynamics of African urban life.
The Problem of Applying Western Models to African Cities
If you try to use the Burgess concentric zone model to understand Lagos, you'll miss huge parts of the picture. Lagos doesn't grow in neat rings. It grows in fragments, along ethnic lines, along transportation corridors, and in response to colonial-era land tenure systems that are still in play today. The African city model was created because scholars needed a tool that actually fit the data they were observing on the ground Turns out it matters..
Quick note before moving on.
The Broader Significance
The model also matters because it challenges the idea that urban development follows a single universal path. Because of that, cities in Africa are not "failed" versions of Western cities. They have their own logic, their own internal coherence, and their own patterns of growth — patterns that the African city model was designed to capture and explain That's the part that actually makes a difference..
How It Works — The Scholars Behind the Model
The Colonial Foundation and Early Observations
The story really begins with colonial-era administrators and missionaries who mapped African towns and cities. These early observers documented the spatial patterns they saw — the European quarters, the African settlements, the commercial zones — but they didn't create a formal model. They were recording what they saw through a colonial lens, often with little understanding of the underlying social and economic forces at work.
Claude Ake and the Political Economy of African Cities
One of the most important figures in the development of the African city model is Claude Ake, a Nigerian political scientist who taught at the University of Port Harcourt and later at Columbia University. Ake was deeply interested in how political power shaped urban space in Africa. His work on the political economy of African cities laid crucial groundwork for understanding why African cities look the way they do — with their stark divisions between rich and poor, their colonial cores, and their sprawling informal peripheries But it adds up..
Ake argued that the structure
Ake argued that the structure of African cities could not be reduced to simple economic functions; instead, it was a direct reflection of how political power was exercised and contested. He showed that colonial governments deliberately segregated urban space to allow control, creating a “dual city” where European administrative and commercial zones coexisted with African residential quarters that were often underserved and marginalized. Even so, this political geography persisted after independence, as successive regimes reproduced the same spatial hierarchies to maintain authority, reward loyalists, and manage competition among ethnic groups. Ake’s analysis therefore placed power relations at the heart of urban form, a perspective that would become central to the African city model.
Building on Ake’s insights, the next generation of scholars refined the framework to capture the complexity of post‑colonial African urbanism. Day to day, one of the most influential was Akin Mabogunje, a Nigerian geographer who conducted extensive fieldwork in Lagos, Ibadan, and Nairobi. Mabogunje observed that African cities were not merely distorted copies of Western models; they were dynamic systems where formal and informal economies intertwined, creating “polycentric” spatial patterns. His concept of the “urban fabric” emphasized the role of informal settlements, market networks, and indigenous land‑tenure practices in shaping city growth. Mabogunje’s work introduced the idea that African cities could be understood through a combination of economic corridors, ethnic and religious clustering, and institutionalized informality—elements that were largely invisible in the concentric‑zone or sector models derived from North American and European contexts.
You'll probably want to bookmark this section.
Another key contributor was Neil Brenner, whose comparative studies of African and Latin American cities helped isolate the unique features of the African urban experience. Brenner highlighted the importance of colonial land‑tenure legacies and post‑independence state policies in producing the “fragmented metropolis” that characterizes many African cities today. He argued that the African city model needed to incorporate state‑led spatial interventions—such as the creation of new capital cities, planned satellite towns, and infrastructure corridors—as a distinct driver of urban development, separate from the market‑led expansion typical of Western models Most people skip this — try not to..
Together, these scholars synthesized a model that could accommodate the multifaceted realities of African urban spaces. But the resulting African city model is typically depicted as a core‑periphery structure overlaid with ethnic and religious enclaves, informal settlement clusters, and transport corridors that act as spine-like arteries linking disparate parts of the city. Plus, unlike the Burgess model’s neat rings, the African city model resembles a mosaic of overlapping zones, each with its own governance logic, economic activity, and social network. The model also integrates temporal layers, recognizing that colonial-era zoning, post‑independence urban policies, and rapid contemporary migration all coexist in the same physical space Turns out it matters..
The significance of this scholarly lineage extends beyond academic debate. By foregrounding the role of African scholars in constructing a model that reflects their own contexts, the field of urban geography begins to redress the historical imbalance that privileged Western perspectives. This shift not only enriches theoretical understanding but also informs more effective policy-making. When planners recognize that African cities are shaped by political power, ethnic affiliations, and informal economies, they can design interventions that work with, rather than against, these realities—such as supporting informal market networks, investing in transport corridors that connect peripheral settlements to formal employment centers, and reforming land‑tenure systems to reduce spatial inequality.
In practice, the African city model has already influenced urban development strategies in cities ranging from Lagos to Addis Ababa. In real terms, municipal governments are using its insights to create mixed‑use zones that blend residential, commercial, and informal activity, and to develop inclusive infrastructure plans that prioritize connectivity for marginalized neighborhoods. Beyond that, the model has inspired a new generation of African scholars to interrogate urban phenomena from within, fostering a scholarly ecosystem that is both locally grounded and globally relevant.
Understanding who created the African city model therefore matters not only for academic credit but also for shaping more equitable urban futures. In real terms, it reminds us that knowledge production is never neutral; it reflects the power dynamics, cultural contexts, and lived experiences of those who generate it. That said, by acknowledging the contributions of Claude Ake, Akin Mabogunje, Neil Brenner, and countless other African and diaspora scholars, we honor the intellectual lineage that has produced a model capable of capturing the true complexity of African urban life. In doing so, we move closer to a world where cities are studied, planned, and experienced in ways that truly reflect the diverse realities of the people who call them home.
