Ordinary Cities Between Modernity and Development.(Book review)

Publication: Research in African Literatures

Publication Date: 22-JUN-08

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Indiana University Press

Ordinary Cities Between Modernity and Development

BY JENNIFER ROBINSON

London: Routledge, 2007

ISBN 0-415-30487-3 cloth; 0-415-30488-7 paper.

Published in Routledge's Questioning Cities series, Jennifer Robinsori s book is addressed in the first instance to urban scholars and policy makers. Robinson challenges the habitual categorical divide in urban studies between so-called global or world cities that determine the flows of information and capital and thus exemplify also the urbane and cosmopolitan, and so-called "third world" or "structurally irrelevant" conurbations characterized by poverty, disorder, or at best imitation of innovations imported from the West. This hierarchical categorization that privileges exemplary cities usually of the global north over dysfunctional cities...

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