The Social, Spatial, and Economic Roots of Urban Inequality in Africa: Contextualizing Jane Jacobs and Henry George

• Date: 01 May 2015
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12101
• Author: Franklin Obeng-Odoom

The Social, Spatial, and Economic Roots of

Urban Inequality in Africa: Contextualizing

Jane Jacobs and Henry George

By FRANKLIN OBENG-ODOOM*

ABSTRACT. Unravelling the social and economic roots of urban

inequality in Africa has remained a thorny issue in African political

economy. Stripped to its bare essentials, the critical questions are who

causes urban inequality, what causes it, and how it is caused? While all

different, the questions are interrelated. Answering the “who causes

inequality” question requires a related analysis of what and why, and

that is connected to the how question. Indeed, the how question has

two parts—how inequality is caused and how itcan be addressed. Both

are connected to the why question and to its resolution. Unfortunately,

while studies about urban inequality abound, they tend to hive off one

aspect or another of the tripartite questions on inequality and, even

worse, they study the three questions separately. This article tries to

overcome the existing atomistic and piecemeal approach to the study

of urban inequality in Africa by contextualizing the work of Jane Jacobs

and Henry George, who took a holistic view of urban inequality. It

argues that Jacobsianism and Georgism have much to offer in terms of

understanding urban inequality in Africa, but neither analysis goes far

enough to be able to serve as a solid foundation for policy. Ultimately,

it is in their approach to urban analysis—the emphasis on context, on

actual urban problems, inductivism, and some of their mechanisms for

change such as George’s land tax and cautious abstraction, in that

order, along with their combined vision—which I call “diversity in

equality”—that can add to the insights of postcolonialism in

understanding and transforming urban inequality in Africa.

*Senior Lecturer in Property Economics at the School of Built Environment, Univer-

sity of Technology Sydney in Australia; Visiting Research Fellow, United Nations

Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). E-mail: Franklin.Obeng-

Odoom@uts.edu.au. Thanks to Prof. Heather MacDonald for earlier discussion on the

work of Jane Jacobs.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 3 (May, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12101

V

C2015 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Introduction

Inequality everywhere is on the rise, but in African cities, the rise is

meteoric. So, The State of African Cities 2010 was devoted to gover-

nance, inequality, and urban land markets (UN-HABITAT, 2010). This

inequality is spatial, social, and economic. It is within, between, and

across urban areas and cities. It also exists between city and country. In

spite of this growing inequality in cities in Africa, it is the growth record

of Africa and its potential for more consumption that receive the most

attention (Obeng-Odoom, 2014).

The Economist Intelligence Unit (2013) has praised “Africa”s growing

influence,” highlighting the centrality of cities to the story. According to

the Unit, recent research shows that residents in African cities spend

94.4 percent more per capitathan those in the countryside in 2013. This

is one indication that for the Unit and many other economists, the anal-

ysis of urban economic development can end at per capita considera-

tions that do not take into account distribution of income and other

resources within cities. Yet, the message from the recent immolation of

Mohamed Bouazizi on the streets of Tunisia, and the resulting

“revolution” in North Africa, the Arab World, and even the Western

world seen in the “Occupy Wall Street Movement,” is clear enough,

even among mainstream analysts such as Hernando de Soto, who inter-

viewed friends and family of Bouazizi (de Soto 2011): inequality in Afri-

ca’s urban centers can send the world system into a tailspin. It is not

enough, however, to recognize that inequality is a problem and com-

ment on its prognosis or ramifications:other aspects of urban inequality

must be addressed.

When the fanfare about inequality is removed, the critical questions

to answer are who cause inequality, why, and how they cause it. While

all different, the questions are interrelated. Answering the “who cause

inequality” question requires a related analysis of why they do so and

that is connected to the question of how they achieve that result.

Indeed, the how question has two parts—how it is caused and how it

can be addressed. All of these questions are interrelated. The flaw in

the current literature on inequality in Africa is to separate one aspect or

another and study each one separately. Even the mammoth State of

African Cities on inequality suffered this downside, as a review of the

Roots of Urban Inequality in Africa 551

report for the journal Cities pointed out (Obeng-Odoom 2013a). If we

are to make progress on understanding cities in order to transform

them, it is crucial to connect all the dots and answer the inequality

questions simultaneously and holistically.

Two thinkers who dealtwith and delved into these interrelated issues

and whose perspectives have remained enduring, perhaps endearing,

to social reformers, were Jane Jacobs and Henry George. Both sought

to deal with urban space and inequality and, in doing so, both were

against mainstreamideas of their time. While they were both Americans

and wrote about America, their ideas were intended to percolate urban

studies the world over, while maintaining a critical link to the context

that birthed the ideas. Jacobs’s (1962: 16) exhortation on the issue

requires full quotatio n:

I hope no reader will try to transfer my observations into guides as to

what goes on in towns, or little cities, or in suburbs which still are subur-

ban. Towns, suburb and even little cities are totally different organisms

from great cities ... To try to understand town in terms of big cities will

only compound confusion.

I hope readers will constantly and skeptically test what I say against their

own knowledge of cities and of urban behavior.

So, while she warned against uncritical application of her ideas,

Jacobs encouraged critical consideration. Henry George is more gener-

alist in Progress and Poverty but takes a similarly cautious stance in the

Science of Political Economy (1898). Yet, the application of Jacobsian

and Georgist ideas has been mainly limited to industrial societies. Jones

(1988: 488) observed that: “In the 1880s the American Henry George

made a revolutionary attack on the problem of poverty in industrial

society” (emphasisadded). Many other articles have been published on

Georgism, but mostly if not entirely, on industrial society. Georgist

ideas have been applied elsewhere (see Cui 2011 for an application to

the semi-industrialized societies of Asia, notably China), including Afri-

can societies, notably Northern Nigeria (Shenton 1986; Cowen and

Shenton 1991a, 1991b) and Ghana (Obeng-Odoom 2014a, 2014b), but

this work is embryonic and rarely urban-focused. Similar concerns

apply to Jane Jacobs, whose work has been celebrated globally but

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology552