The African City Model was created by geographer Harm de Blij in the 1970s.

Quick Scoop: Who Created the African City Model?

  • The African City Model (often called the Sub-Saharan African City Model) was developed by Harm de Blij, a Netherlands-born geographer who worked mainly in the United States.
  • It was first published around 1977 in his human geography work and later appeared in his widely used textbooks, which helped popularize it in school and university curricula.

What the Model Tries to Show

  • The model is a simplified diagram of a “typical” sub-Saharan African city, showing zones shaped by pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial influences.
  • It highlights multiple CBDs (traditional, colonial, and market/commercial), segregated residential areas, and informal settlements at the urban fringes.

Cities That Inspired the Model

  • De Blij drew especially on his research in Mombasa (Kenya) and Maputo (Mozambique) when designing the African City Model.
  • Many examples used with the model are former colonial cities such as Nairobi, Harare (formerly Salisbury), and Kinshasa (formerly Léopoldville).

Why It Still Matters Today

  • The model is still taught in AP Human Geography and other courses to introduce students to African urban patterns.
  • At the same time, newer research on African urbanization stresses that real cities are often more complex, fluid, and diverse than any single diagram can capture.

TL;DR: Harm de Blij created the African City Model, first published in 1977, to explain the spatial structure of sub-Saharan African cities shaped by pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial forces.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.