Over the previous decade, African cities experienced a wave of frenzied construction driven by imaginations of world-city status. While these projects provoked new discussions about African urbanism, the literature on them has focused more on the paperwork of planning than actual urban experiences. This article addresses this lacuna by investigating residents' reactions to the post-conflict building boom in Luanda, Angola. I show that Luandans' held highly ambivalent orientations towards the emerging city. Their views were shaped by suspicions about pacts between Angolan elites and international capital that recapitulated longstanding tensions over national belonging. These concerns were voiced via discussions of the very aesthetics of the new city. Buildings became catalysts for expressions of dissent that put into question the very project of statedriven worlding. The paper therefore argues that the politics of aesthetics are central to grasping the contested understandings of urbanism currently emerging in various African cities.

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While state institutions are involved in planning and governance in African cities, their relevance in shaping urban life is sometimes questioned given what residents often experience as the extreme incapacity of state agencies. In response, some scholars have sought to rethink the nature of institutions, while others have shifted their attention to the role of the everyday in the making of cities. This article builds on literature that seeks to better understand the links between quotidian actions and institutional constraints, in order to critically assess how state power is exercised in African cities. It does this by tracking the Presidency's role in shaping Angola's capital, Luanda, in the 1990s and 2000s. The Presidency consolidated power through the urban landscape even in moments when it seemed state presence had totally collapsed. The article therefore shows that a more nuanced understanding of the logics of power in African cities can reveal the ongoing significance of state institutions to their making, even in contexts where the everyday experience of state capacity is one of absence or negligence.

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