Urbanization: No fast lane to transformation

Associate Professor Noah Nathan is generating a body of scholarship on the political impacts of urbanization throughout the global South. Accra, Ghana, "is a city I've come to know as well as any place in the U.S," says Associate Professor Noah Nathan, who has conducted research there over the past 15 years. The booming capital of 4 million is an ideal laboratory for investigating the rapid urbanization of nations in Africa and beyond, believes Nathan, who joined the MIT Department of Political Science in July. "Accra is vibrant and exciting, with gleaming glass office buildings, shopping centers, and an emerging middle class," he says. "But at the same time there is enormous poverty, with slums and a mixing pot of ethnic groups." Cities like Accra that have emerged in developing countries around the world are "hybrid spaces" that provoke a multitude of questions for Nathan. "Rich and poor are in incredibly close proximity and I want to know how this dramatic inequality can be sustainable, and what politics looks like with such ethnic and class diversity living side-by-side," he says. With his singular approach to data collection and deep understanding of Accra, its neighborhoods, and increasingly, its built environment, Nathan is generating a body of scholarship on the political impacts of urbanization throughout the global South.