A diagnostic handbook for practitioners working with African streets, informality, corridors, land use, maintenance, procurement, and coordination.
How to Read an African City is a short field handbook for people working with African streets, informality, corridors, land use, maintenance, procurement, and coordination.
It is based on observation, practice, and urban diagnosis in Addis Ababa.
The central argument is simple:
Before redesigning an African city, we need to read what is already working, what is failing, who is coordinating daily life, and what the formal plan cannot see.
Free download. No email required.
African cities are often judged by what they lack.
What the handbook is about
African cities are often judged by what they lack.
Less often, they are studied through the systems people have already built to move, trade, wait, repair, adapt, and survive.
This handbook offers a different starting point.
It asks practitioners to slow down before intervention and read the city as a living system.
Not only through plans.
But through streets, pedestrians, informal economies, public-space managers, procurement systems, corridors, land values, and daily coordination.
Contents
- Introduction
- Informality Is Not Disorder
- Follow the Pedestrian Ledger
- Read Corridors as Power
- Read Land Use as Politics
- Who Maintains Public Space
- The Cost of Copying
- Procurement Is the Hidden Architect
- Who Coordinates the City
- The Legible Self-Renewing African City
Who it is for
This handbook is for:
- urban planners
- architects
- urban designers
- students
- researchers
- public-space practitioners
- people working on African cities
It is not a technical manual.
It is a diagnostic method.
A way to ask better questions before drawing, planning, clearing, upgrading, or rebuilding.
About the author
Brook Abebe is an urban practitioner, systems thinker, and writer based in Addis Ababa.
His work focuses on African cities, knowledge systems, institutional capacity, and the practical methods needed to understand complex environments before intervening in them.
Download
First Edition, 2026
Free download. No email required.
For feedback or inquiries:
contact@brookabebe.com