A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. African cities are under construction. Beyond the urban redevelopment schemes and large-scale infrastructure projects reconfiguring central city skylines, the majority of urban residents are putting their resources into finding land and building homes on the city edges. As the first book-length analysis of Africa’s suburban middle-class, The Suburban Frontier examines how self-built housing on the urban periphery has become central to middle-class formation and urban transformation in contemporary Tanzania. Drawing on original qualitative and ethnographic field research in the city of Dar es Salaam, Claire Mercer writes a detailed exposition of how the "suburban frontier" has become the place where Africa’s middle classes are shaped. This book offers a new lens on the African middle classes, making significant contributions to the study of urban social change in Africa and urbanization in the Global South.