Meeting The Challenge In An African American City Summary

White Man’s City
In Macheria’s, “Meeting the Challenge in an African City” was a great description of the plight of many large cities (around the world). The white man’s city or the European city came up several times over the course of the essay. He first defined it as this type of city on page 45, where he stated the city was developed as a colonial city for the colonists. In that sense it is a European city built on African land. This is seen all over Africa in places like Port Harcourt in Nigeria, a city founded by Frederick Lugard. The Argentine city of Buenos Aires and many other cities around the world. With that clarified, he also implied that the city was European because it had roads and skyscrapers. He did this by saying that there was a convergence between the African city and European city. He said that Ibadan, a city founded before the Europeans came to Nigeria, was becoming more modern hence it was becoming more European (page 48).
I am of Nigerian descent but I have lived in Greece, Ireland, Nigeria and the US. There are stark differences between these countries and communities but there are also striking similarities. One of those similarities is the presence of areas where there is inadequate and lousy housing. There are illegal businesses that try to evade taxes and the law. In Kenya, it is the Jua Kali. In Nigeria, it the street hawker and marketmen and women. In the US, it is the prostitutes, drug dealers and the individual conducting underground businesses. The US example might sound like a stretch, but the Jua Kali according to the essay was formed because of the overcrowding of the city’s poorer areas by individuals looking for better