Concrete City

Armelle Choplin is Professor of Geography and Urban Planning at the University of Geneva. Her research explores how cities are produced in the Global South, especially in Africa. Combining ethnographic and comparative methods, she analyses the city as a place of encounter, confrontation and innovation between multiple ways of experiencing and inhabiting the world.

List of Figures xi

Series Editors’ Preface xiii

Acknowledgements xv

Introduction: Concrete and the City 1

A Gray Matter 1

Age of Concrete 4

Africa Rising and Cement’s New Frontier 6

The Lagos- Abidjan Corridor: A Megacity Region under Construction 8

Cement As A Theoretical Binder 12

(Afri)Capitalism and Neoliberalism 13

Material Matters 15

Building, Dwelling, and Inhabiting a Postcolonial World 18

Tracking Urban Materiality: A Methodological Approach 21

Following Bags of Cement and the City under Construction 21

Thinking Cities Through West Africa 24

Notes 30

1 Concrete Politics 31

Africanizing Cement 33

From Colonial Import to Gray Gold “Made in Africa” 33

Patriotic Consumption and National Identity 37

Dangote, a Cement Magnate 39

Cement Business 42

Conquering Africa 42

“The Price of Cement Is like the Stock Market” 45

On the Road: Trucks and Logistics 47

The Rhetoric of Development 51

Emerging Through Concrete 53

Promoting Cement and Boosting the Economy 53

From Developmental States to Entrepreneurial Presidents 55

Builder Businessmen and Other Africapitalists 58

Conclusion 61

Notes 63

2 Making the City Concrete 65

The Multi faceted Concrete City 67

Premium City–Megaprojects and the Business of the City 67

Affordable City–Social Housing Programs 72

Low Cost City–Autoconstruction in the Outskirts 76

A Booming Building Sector 83

Real Estate Agent: From Broker to Preacher 83

Property Developers and the Diaspora 86

Architects and Building Permits 88

Wholesalers and Retailers: Lebanese, Indian, and Chinese Connections 90

Materials: From Foundations to Finishing 93

A Matter of Sand 95

Reinforcing Steel and Corrugated Iron 98

Tiling from Floor- to- Ceiling 100

Digital Banking or How to Buy your Cement Online 102

Conclusion 104

Notes 106

3 The Social Life of Concrete 109

Caution – Work in Progress! 111

Concrete – Child’s Play? 111

Concrete Block: The Ingot of the Poor 115

The Plot and the Block 117

I Build (with Concrete) Therefore I Am 117

The Incremental City: “Building Bit by Bit” 120

Right to Concrete for a Right to the City 125

Afropolitan Modernity, Imaginaries, and Experience 128

Desire and Success 128

Women at Work! Virility, Gender, and Emancipation 130

Concrete Palace, or Walter Benjamin in Lagos 134

Six- Bedroom- Villas 136

Concrete Fetishes and Voodoo 139

Conclusion 142

Notes 143

4 Uninhabitable Concrete 145

(De)Construction and Destruction 148

Collapse, Rubble, and Ruins 148

Sustainability and Greenwashing 151

Sand: Rarer than you Think 154

Green Expectations: Alternatives to Concrete? 156

Heritage and Vernacular Architecture 157

Back to Earth, Back to the Local 159

“Tropicalizing” Construction 163

Toward Innovation in the Concrete Industry 167

Putting African Architecture on the Map 169

Conclusion 172

Notes 173

Conclusion: Concrete Utopia 177

The West African Corridor: An Urban Laboratory 178

Utopia/Dystopia and Afro/Africanfuturism 182

Toward A Post- concrete World 185

References 189

Index 209