This paper develops the idea of transcalarity to reframe analyses of urban development politics. Our analysis starts from African contexts but is relevant to, and in conversation with, experiences on other continents. Accounts of the politics of urban development have rarely benefitted from the experiences of African urban settings. Characterised by relatively weakly resourced municipalities, informality of the urban setting and of the state, and highly transnationalised forms of governance, African experiences may seem to stand out as profoundly different from those which have informed dominant theorisations of urban development politics. And yet, it is across the African continent that a substantial portion of the world’s new, future urban areas are being made, providing strong grounds for theorising urban development politics starting from the diversity of experiences across the continent. Evidence from current research and long-term observations in three African urban contexts (Lilongwe, Accra and Dar es Salaam) indicate that inherited conceptualisations vastly overestimate the resources and agency of municipal government in many urban contexts and omit the enhanced institutional interests of national actors in urban development. Also, the range of international actors considered has been analytically restricted or mischaracterised, as global sovereign and developmental actors play a powerful role while significant private sector interests may not be very international. More generally, ‘circulating’ processes and actors might not be ‘external’ as, especially in relation to developmental and sovereign circuits, these are often embedded in and contribute to shaping emergent transcalar territorial networks co-ordinating investment in different contexts.

中文翻译：

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重构城市发展政治：主权、发展和私人电路中的跨领域


本文提出了跨界性的概念，以重新构建对城市发展政治的分析。我们的分析从非洲背景开始，但与其他大洲的经验相关并与之对话。对城市发展政治的描述很少从非洲城市环境的经验中受益。非洲的经验以城市资源相对薄弱、城市环境和国家的非正规性以及高度跨国化的治理形式为特征，似乎与那些为城市发展政治的主流理论提供信息的经历截然不同。然而，正是在整个非洲大陆，世界上新的、未来的城市地区正在建设中，这为从整个非洲大陆的多样化经验出发，为城市发展政治理论化提供了坚实的基础。当前研究和对三个非洲城市环境（利隆圭、阿克拉和达累斯萨拉姆）的长期观察证据表明，在许多城市环境中，继承的概念大大高估了市政府的资源和能动性，并忽略了国家行为者在城市发展中增强的机构利益。此外，所考虑的国际行为者的范围在分析上受到限制或被错误描述，因为全球主权和发展行为者发挥着强大的作用，而重要的私营部门利益可能不是很国际化。更一般地说，“循环”过程和参与者可能不是“外部”的，因为，特别是与发展和主权回路有关，它们通常嵌入并有助于塑造新兴的跨边界领土网络，以协调不同背景下的投资。