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African cities are under construction. Beyond the urban redevelopment schemes and large-scale infrastructure projects reconfiguring central city skylines, urban residents are putting their resources into finding land and building homes on city edges. The Suburban Frontier examines how self-built housing on the urban periphery has become central to middle-class formation and urban transformation in contemporary Tanzania. Drawing on original research in the city of Dar es Salaam, Claire Mercer details how the “suburban frontier” has become the place where Africa’s middle classes are shaped. As the first book-length analysis of Africa’s suburban middle class, The Suburban Frontier offers significant contributions to the study of urban social change in Africa and urbanization in the Global South.
Open Access
The Suburban Frontier Middle-Class Construction in Dar es Salaam
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Reviews
"Claire Mercer tells a story about the transformation of Dar es Salaam’s periphery that is being replicated everywhere in Africa. The story is about the conversion of farmland into suburban housing necklaces—not produced through large-scale corporate investments but rather through the exertions of Tanzania’s middle classes. It is a story about urban ambitions as much as it is about bricks and mortar. The gates and walls of the houses in these communities do not merely speak to a desire for safety; they are also a cipher for intense dreams and aspirations. This book will resonate well beyond its immediate audience."—Ato Quayson, author of Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism"Professor Mercer presents a case of the formation and transformation of middle-class urbanites as they acquire and develop land at the city frontier without mortgage finance, creating spectacular neighborhoods. She traces access to land in Dar es Salaam from the colonial era to the independence era, when an entrepreneur class of new urbanites, whose insatiable appetite for land, has driven the city outwards at supersonic speed. The politics of the day, like the Ujamaa socialist era, provides new opportunities of acquiring land and property. The moving of the frontier is an unending episode, which makes the book extremely interesting to read."—J.M. Lusugga Kironde, Professor of Urban Economics and Management, Ardhi University, Dar es Salaam
“The Suburban Frontier is a major intervention concerning debates on the African city. In exploring the role of the suburbs in middle-class formation, Mercer argues that class is not an a priori category, but instead a process, one that is enacted through the everyday repetition of certain actions and practices.”—Jason Sumich, author of The Middle Class in Mozambique: The State and the Politics of Transformation in Southern Africa
"From discourses around the aesthetics of urban landscapes to the status associated with the ‘capacity to build’ and the growth of ‘archipelagos’ of suburban lifestyle services, Mercer takes us on a journey through the long-term and everyday processes of middle-class construction that are reconstituting the city. For anyone interested in how the middle classes come to define themselves and their spatial milieu—not just in Tanzania, but anywhere—this will be essential reading."—Tom Goodfellow, author of Politics and the Urban Frontier: Transformation and Divergence in Late Urbanizing East Africa
“Through her dynamic notion of the ‘suburban frontier,' Claire Mercer has produced a model study of spatial sociology that analyzes historical and contemporary patterns of urbanization. The result is a culturally informed argument about how the aspirations, anxieties, and investments of African middle classes are shaping the world’s fastest growing cities.”—James R. Brennan, author of Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania
"The Suburban Frontier connects very well with debates about land in the region by linking the struggle for land with middle-class aspirations. Mercer truly shows us what 'middle-classness' means and effectively utilizes the historiography of Dar es Salaam, deploying an archaeology of historical and social science research over the last thirty to forty years or more."—Garth Myers, author of Rethinking Urbanism: Lessons from Postcolonialism and the Global South
"Based on deep reflection on Dar es Salaam city and selected neighborhoods, Mercer examines and brings to the fore nuances that depict the everyday life shaping the urban frontiers. The ethnographic narrative approach captures quite well the sociocultural practices including the new consumption, lifestyles, leisure, and movement modes that have eluded most studies on spatialization of African cities. This is much-needed food for thought for those who are curious to understand and are acting on African urbanisms."—W. J. Kombe, Professor of Human Settlements Studies, Ardhi University, Dar es Salaam
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"From discourses around the aesthetics of urban landscapes to the status associated with the ‘capacity to build’ and the growth of ‘archipelagos’ of suburban lifestyle services, Mercer takes us on a journey through the long-term and everyday processes of middle-class construction that are reconstituting the city. For anyone interested in how the middle classes come to define themselves and their spatial milieu—not just in Tanzania, but anywhere—this will be essential reading."—Tom Goodfellow, author of Politics and the Urban Frontier: Transformation and Divergence in Late Urbanizing East Africa
“Through her dynamic notion of the ‘suburban frontier,' Claire Mercer has produced a model study of spatial sociology that analyzes historical and contemporary patterns of urbanization. The result is a culturally informed argument about how the aspirations, anxieties, and investments of African middle classes are shaping the world’s fastest growing cities.”—James R. Brennan, author of Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania
"The Suburban Frontier connects very well with debates about land in the region by linking the struggle for land with middle-class aspirations. Mercer truly shows us what 'middle-classness' means and effectively utilizes the historiography of Dar es Salaam, deploying an archaeology of historical and social science research over the last thirty to forty years or more."—Garth Myers, author of Rethinking Urbanism: Lessons from Postcolonialism and the Global South
"Based on deep reflection on Dar es Salaam city and selected neighborhoods, Mercer examines and brings to the fore nuances that depict the everyday life shaping the urban frontiers. The ethnographic narrative approach captures quite well the sociocultural practices including the new consumption, lifestyles, leisure, and movement modes that have eluded most studies on spatialization of African cities. This is much-needed food for thought for those who are curious to understand and are acting on African urbanisms."—W. J. Kombe, Professor of Human Settlements Studies, Ardhi University, Dar es Salaam
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