Urban renewal is central to ‘world-class’ city aspirations on the African continent: demolitions and evictions exemplify the power of the state to restructure urban space, prioritizing elite forms of accumulation and enforcing aesthetic norms of cleanliness, order and modernity. The ubiquity of world-class city-making has been taken by urban studies scholars as evidence of African leaders’ converging on a unitary aspirational urban imaginary. This article contends that the concept of world class should instead be understood as a key terrain on which African governments’ distinctive and diverse ideational ambitions are expressed. In Oyo State, southwest Nigeria, vernacular political traditions—in this case Yoruba cultural nationalism centred on the ideas of Obafemi Awolowo—were deployed by the state governor to legitimize urban renewal. Drawing on the Yoruba notion that elitism can be ‘generalized’, the cultivation of globalized urban forms was not only a project of becoming ever more homogenously ‘international’ but a historically grounded aspiration to become ever more essentially Yoruba. Thus, beyond commonalities across the discourses used to legitimize neoliberal urban development—world class, international and global—these universal sounding imaginaries may at the same time express much more particularistic political projects.

中文翻译：

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尼日利亚伊巴丹的城市更新：世界级但本质上是约鲁巴

城市更新是非洲大陆“世界级”城市愿望的核心：拆除和驱逐体现了国家重组城市空间的力量，优先考虑精英积累形式，并执行清洁、秩序和现代的审美规范。城市研究学者将无处不在的世界级城市建设视为非洲领导人在统一的理想城市想象上趋同的证据。本文认为，世界级的概念应该被理解为非洲政府表达独特和多样化的理想抱负的关键领域。在尼日利亚西南部的奥约州，州长利用当地的政治传统——在这种情况下以奥巴费米·阿沃洛沃的思想为中心的约鲁巴文化民族主义——使城市更新合法化。借鉴约鲁巴人的精英主义可以“普遍化”的概念，全球化城市形态的培育不仅是一个变得更加同质化“国际化”的项目，而且是一个历史上扎根的愿望，即变得更加本质上是约鲁巴人。因此，除了用于使新自由主义城市发展合法化的话语——世界级、国际和全球——的共性之外，这些听起来普遍的想象可能同时表达了更加特殊的政治项目。