This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Despite the rise of global technocratic ideals of city-making, cities around the world are not merging into indistinguishable duplicates of one another. In fact, as the world urbanizes, urban formations remain diverse in their socioeconomic and spatial characteristics, with varying potential to foster economic development and social justice. In this book, Tom Goodfellow argues that these differences are primarily rooted in politics, and if we continue to view cities as economic and technological projects to be managed rather than terrains of political bargaining and contestation, the quest for better urban futures is doomed to fail. Dominant critical approaches to urban development tend to explain difference with reference to the variegated impacts of neoliberal regulatory institutions. This, however, neglects the multiple ways in which the wider politics of capital accumulation and distribution drive divergent forms of transformation in different urban places. In order to unpack the politics that shapes differential urban development, this book focuses on East Africa as the global urban frontier: the least urbanized but fastest urbanizing region in the world. Drawing on a decade of research spanning three case study countries (Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda), Politics and the Urban Frontier provides the first sustained, book-length comparative analysis of urban development trajectories in Eastern Africa and the political dynamics that underpin them. Through a focus on infrastructure investment, urban propertyscapes, street-level trading economies, and urban political protest, it offers a multi-scalar, historically-grounded, and interdisciplinary analysis of the urban transformations unfolding in the world's most dynamic crucible of urban change. "Goodfellow's book is a must-read for those who are working in policy or project development within any of these cities. It manages to show why attempting to supplant models from urban development elsewhere, including "best practices", will not work. Rather we need to understand local contexts and complex systems." -- Astrid R.N. Haas, Infrastructure Institute, School of Cities, University of Toronto "In this highly original analysis, the global condition of late urbanization forms the basis for retheorizing urban politics, starting in East Africa. Tom Goodfellow crafts a range of new concepts to explain the landscapes of urban development across three diverse but interconnected contexts, Addis Ababa, Kigali, and Kampala. Each is iconic in twenty-first century urbanization, each tracks pathways from recent violent conflict, rich pre-colonial histories, and scars of colonization or imperial power. This is an analysis which not only sheds light on the complex urbanization processes of this region, but generates rich concepts which urbanists in other contexts will be able to draw on." -- Jennifer Robinson, Urban Laboratory, University College London "This book is the most successful advancement and sharpest application yet of the political settlements approach to urban analysis. This way of explaining urban inertia and change might be controversial, but it is certainly original. Thought-provoking and written with both clarity and conviction, Politics and the Urban Frontier offers insights about urban vitality and variety in East Africa." -- Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Associate Professor of Global Development Studies, University of Helsinki "In this ambitious and important book, Tom Goodfellow maps out new territory for thinking comparatively about the political economy of African cities. Using East Africa as a global urban frontier, Goodfellow positions this fast-urbanizing region as crucial to understanding contemporary urban change in much of the world. Politics and the Urban Frontier unpicks the dynamics of infrastructure, land, property, and the politics of trade and the street to show how state and society both shape and are shaped by urban transformation in different ways in Addis Ababa, Kampala and Kigali. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of urban development in most of the world." -- Claire Mercer, Professor of Human Geography, London School of Economics and Political Science "Seen through the lens of the infrastructure boom, changing propertyscapes, informal economic hustling, and urban political cultures, East Africa's urban transformation is brought to vivid life through a decade of first-hand observations of Addis, Kampala, and Kigali. Tom Goodfellow moves beyond the now-standard critique of 'neoliberal urbanism' to offer a fuller and more nuanced analysis of the political drivers of urban trajectories that resonates beyond this region. This masterful account confirms Goodfellow's standing as