AbdouMaliq Simone is an urbanist and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, London. In his latest book City Life from Djakarta to Dakar: Movements at the crossroads (2010), he describes the surprising ecologies of everyday life in some of the fastest-growing urban centres in the world.

What happens when bodies, materials and affect intersect in these global cities of the South broadens our understanding of what cities are and could be. This is not to say the direction of change has shifted, rather that urban development today is part of the global circulation of ideas and stories of what it is possible to do in cities. In and among ducking and diving is imagination and resilience and an acute sense that difference and diversity are critical if, in future, people in cities are to thrive.