The growing scholarship on urban historiography in Zimbabwe is neither widely published, nor particularly well known. The editors have here gathered the scattered and growing work on urban history into a representative volume, displaying the diversity of work that is available. The essays show that the study of urban history in Zimbabwe brings into focus a wide array of subjects: the spaces which were created for Africans in the urbanisation process; the contradictory responses of the colonial state; the effects of rural- urban linkages on labour organisation; and the struggles over the mapping of the city along racial, class and gender lines. The editors argue that the problems faced by colonial administrators continue to face their post-colonial counterparts, but in exacerbated form.