دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی خط مشی گذاری شهری جهانی در آفریقا: دیدگاهی از آنگولا با توسعه خلیج لوآندا - وایلی 2018

Abstract

A burgeoning literature looks into the processes and actors involved in the adoption and emulation of best practices and models of urban policy and development across the globe, often with the aim of attracting investment and making cities more competitive. With its focus on leisure, tourism and global capital, the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda, in the capital of Angola, echoes the rhetoric, policies and projects underpinning such practices. Yet, a deeper interrogation reveals that the redevelopment forms part of a predominantly inward-looking project driven by the highest echelons of the national government and its ruling party. While these actors mimic and appropriate the language and tools of entrepreneurial cities, their aim is not necessarily to make the city more internationally competitive but to achieve domestic political legitimacy and stability. The argument presented in this article builds on McCann’s (2013) call for scholars to also consider the ‘introspective’ politics of urban policy boosterism from the perspective of a context in which power is highly centralized. The article thus contributes to a growing literature that advances more adequate and provincialized theorizations of urban policy and city governance in the global South, with a particular focus on the African context.

Conclusion

The case of Luanda illustrates increasing attempts across the African continent towards world-class city making in the image of new global city policies and models represented by cities such as Dubai and Singapore. Scholars of the policy mobilities literature have explained such practices as the result of growing international pressure on local governments to attract foreign investment and burgeoning transnational and inter-urban policy circuits that facilitate the ‘fast’ transmission of policy models from one city to the other (Peck and Theodore, 2015).

This article aims to show that while African cities have become increasingly plugged into transnational circuits of policy knowledge and expertise, as evidenced by the universal language and tools of neoliberal urbanism that is represented by new master plans and mega urban development projects emerging across the continent, the logics and interests driving the adoption and implementation thereof are often distinctly territorial and political.