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- Convenors:
-
Marco Di Nunzio
(University of BIrmingham)
Taibat Lawanson (University of Lagos)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Economy and Development
- Location:
- 50 George Square, G.01
- Sessions:
- Thursday 13 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
African cities are booming. This panel explores how exceptional regimes of production, dispossession, urban politics, moral responsibility and finance are reconfiguring the landscape of African cites, while imposing ideas of the necessary, the inevitable and the certain on African urban citizens.
Long Abstract:
Large infrastructural projects, new housing developments and high-rise buildings are reshaping the landscape of African cities. Construction booms, such as the ones African cities are now witnessing, explode at exceptional times of economic growth. The time projections for such booms are affected by the fact that economic growth is hoped to be "structural" and not "conjunctural", that is, triggering a continuous and cumulative expansion of the economy. Construction booms and economic growth are there to last, projections say.
The idea of continuous growth is often a myth, as downturns cause resources to dry up. At the same time, the idea of economic growth as continuous and construction booms as lasting moments in the history of a city are "real fictions" that significantly affect policies of urban development and governmental ideas of responsibility. Economic growth is believed to hold the promise of a more just and abundant society, while construction booms are taken as living proofs that a better society is about to emerge. Spectacular highways and brand new high-rise buildings stand in the present as time machines connecting ordinary citizens to a future of urban abundance.
The objective of this panel is not to prove these projections wrong, but to explore how construction booms are made possible through exceptional regimes of production, dispossession, urban politics, moral responsibility, and finance that rest on the assumptions that these booms are there to last and that economic growth will deliver benefits to society as a whole.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 13 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
Cement production is supposed to boost African economic growth. Tracking the cement chain from cement plants to construction sites, this paper critically questions the impacts of this "cement boom" and its role on the emergence of the West African coastal corridor from Accra to Lagos.
Paper long abstract:
Development partners and donors are openly promoting cement as a lever for economic growth and 'unlocking Africa's potential' (World Bank, 2016). By focusing on the "cement chain", this paper tries to decipher these narratives and the concrete effects of the « cement boom », intrinsically linked to the « construction boom ». Cement is a binder: concretely, it binds sand, water and clinker. In Africa it also, metaphorically, binds urban politics, environment, economy and the daily practices of urban dwellers.
Through the lens of cement and crossing « building and dwelling perspectives » (Ingold, 2013), this paper aims to: i) understand the transformation of the construction sector, analysing the point of view of dominant stakeholders (companies, technicians, architects, planners) ii) examine the practices, imaginaries and material life of city dwellers who become foremen and building entrepreneurs, iii) demonstrate how cement symbolises the new 'metropolitan condition', initially defined by Walter Benjamin (1999), being (re)manufactured in contemporary Africa. This is particularly true along the West African urban corridor (linking Accra, Lomé, Cotonou, Porto-Novo, and Lagos), the Africa's largest urbanised zone, dominated by cement grayish color, where over 30 million people live, travel, consume and build…
Paper short abstract:
Booms in Ethiopia's national economy and textile manufacturing industry depend on the labor of young rural women. This paper examines the techniques employed by the Ethiopian state to reproduce women's labor and maintain rapid economic growth.
Paper long abstract:
During the past decade Ethiopia has had one of the fastest rates of economic growth in the world. Industrialization in the form of textile manufacturing is a key component of the Ethiopian state's plans to transform this economic boom into long-term growth. This paper examines struggles over labor, housing, and real estate that have emerged around the Hawassa Industrial Park (HIP). Just one year after opening the HIP hosts eighteen international companies specializing in textile manufacture. Thirteen thousand people work at the park and park officials expect sixty thousand jobs to be created. The young rural women employed at the park are the foundation for multiple intersecting booms - the national economy, the textile industry, and Hawassa's housing market. It is largely an abundance of extremely cheap labor that has attracted international companies to Ethiopia. The state recruits young women from small towns and rural areas to work in factories that manufacture textiles for international markets. Ethiopian women's labor is not intrinsically cheap. Rather, it is cheap because the cost of reproducing labor is low in urban Ethiopia. Or, more accurately, a continual struggle is underway to minimize the cost of the reproduction of labor in a context of rapid urban growth and rising real estate prices. This paper examines government techniques for reproducing labor that are intended to maintain an economic boom. These techniques place the burden of reproducing women's labor on their families, private citizens, and the residents of informal settlements.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the deployment of PPP in the Lekki toll road and Tejuosho market (re)construction projects and seeks to tease out key learnings from the tensions between public and private interests and its implications for governance and inclusive development.
Paper long abstract:
Public-private partnerships (PPP) have been identified as an efficient route to achieving urban development. To this end, the Lagos state government has embarked on a series of development policies and PPP projects aimed at strategically positioning the city to attract investment opportunities and achieve her vision of being Africa's model megacity and global economic and financial hub. In many of these projects, private capital and expertise often funds and implements public services. However, many of the recent PPPs have resulted in negative socio-spatial consequences for Lagos residents. Though PPPs have been deployed in practically every sector of governance, this paper specifically explores the deployment of PPP in the Lekki toll road and Tejuosho market (re)construction projects. The paper seeks to address the following questions: What power dynamics are at play? How successful are these projects? Whose interest are prioritized? What are the implications of PPP projects on the emerging urban form of Lagos? While it is necessary to explore private sector participation for urban development projects, this paper seeks to tease out key learnings from the tensions between public and private interests and its implications for governance and inclusive development.
Paper short abstract:
This paper uses scrap metal trading as a lens onto the opportunities and exclusions of Nairobi's building boom, and onto the city's regime of "planning by exception." We argue that a regime of "exceptional regulation" consolidates marginal spaces and practices in the rapidly changing city.
Paper long abstract:
This paper uses scrap metal trading as a lens onto the opportunities and exclusions of Nairobi's current building boom, and in particular onto the city's regime of "planning by exception." Accelerated road and condominium construction have dramatically changed much of Nairobi. Much of this construction is permitted through exceptions to regulations, creating a scenario in which private development is rapidly outpacing the planning and provision of essential infrastructures (among others, waste management).
The position of scrap metal dealers makes some of the contradictions of this regime of planning visible. On the one hand, the construction sites dotting the city's neighborhoods provide a wealth of scrap for dealers to gather—and dealers, in turn, provide an essential recovery service (allowing scrap to become construction materials again). On the other hand, in these increasingly exclusive spaces, "informal" business like scrap metal heaps are no longer welcome. Thus the boom simultaneously grants scrap dealers opportunities for accumulation and makes the conditions of that accumulation highly uncertain.
Describing the history and everyday tactics of one scrap heap in a rapidly transforming neighborhood, we trace the intersection of Nairobi's material and socio-political transformations. The paper both draws on and moves beyond Ananya Roy's concept of "informalization" by describing how scrap dealers are at once marginalized and given opportunities through a specific regime of "exceptional regulation." We argue that ultimately this regime of exception consolidates marginal spaces and practices in the rapidly changing city, such that scrap dealers are "stuck in the boom."
Paper short abstract:
Since the end of the civil war the government of Angola has used Chinese credit facilities to build prestige urban projects The most famous, Kilamba Centralidade, China's largest housing venture in Africa. was promoted as social housing, but was unaffordable, even for middle-level civil servants.
Paper long abstract:
Since the end of the civil war in 2002, the government of Angola has used Chinese credit facilities backed by petroleum-based guarantees to build prestige urban projects on a scale that in sub-Saharan Africa is second only to post-apartheid South Africa. The most famous is the publicly-privately developed Kilamba 'Centralidade' (new town) with 20,000 apartments, China's largest housing venture in Africa. The apartments, at first promoted as social housing, were too expensive for most of the population and the state had to draw more funds from its housing budget to subsidize the scheme to make units affordable, even for upper- and middle-level civil servants.
With the collapse of oil prices through 2014 and 2016, the Angolan state budget has been drastically reduced, and it is unlikely that the government will be able to provide investment and subsidies to continue building new housing in the form of centralidades like The private sector, both international and local, has been a major beneficiary of construction contracts from the state. The private sector, however, has been reluctant to provide its own financing and to invest in real estate itself, due to weak land tenure and the lack of legislative reforms to make a functional land market. Solving the problems around land may be a way to stimulate the engagement of private-sector participation in providing direct financing for the housing sector.
Paper short abstract:
Chinese developers Zendai purchased Johannesburg's Modderfontein, shrouded in corporate opaqueness but bolstered by BRICS and 'China in Africa' narratives. Failing to secure planning permission, despite the myths of huge expected budgets, Zendai did not realise their anticipated development.
Paper long abstract:
The construction boom in African cities has, in some cases, been fuelled by foreign direct investment (UN, 2018), especially Chinese capital. Whilst in Johannesburg 'Chinese spaces' have long been part of the urban fabric (Dittgen, 2017), the rise of South Africa to 'BRICS' status ushered in a new (highly anticipated) period of Sino-South African relationships (Harrison et al., 2012). In 2014, in the north-east of the city, a Shanghai developer, Zendai, announced a 'new city' of spectacular, high-rise real estate. Modderfontein was pitched as a new financial hub for Johannesburg and the wider Southern African region, and Zendai announced a budget of 87 billion ZAR. In 2016, the CEO divested from Zendai, leaving behind a masterplan which had failed to capture local political imaginations (Ballard and Harrison, 2017; Brill, 2018). In the years that followed Modderfontein failed to manifest, and whilst a mediated version of the masterplan secured planning permission in 2017, the promised construction has not been realised. Drawing on 50 interviews with those involved, this paper argues that the political exceptionality which led to Zendai's acquisition of Modderfontein was premised on their perceived relatively unlimited financial resources. I argue the myth of unlimited capital and concomitant narratives around Chinese growth masked the reality of Zendai's corporate structure and capacity to see through their vision to completion. In doing so I question the role of Sino-African relations in the urban politics of real estate production in Johannesburg, and the long-term consequences of the city's development landscape.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how Ethiopia's urban expansion and the construction boom that accompanies it have been enabled by the disjuncture between urban and rural land tenure regimes. The paper shows that the disjuncture between rural and urban tenure is a major source of speculation.
Paper long abstract:
Ethiopia's Oromo protests have thrust urban expansion and associated economic transformation and rural dispossession to the centre of political debates. This paper examines how urban expansion and the construction boom that accompanies it have been enabled by the disjuncture between urban and rural land tenure regimes. The government has frequently justified state land ownership in terms of state centralisation of rents and the need to limit speculation and rent seeking. However, this paper shows that the disjuncture between rural and urban tenure is actually a major source of speculation. While land under rural tenure has no formal value since it cannot be bought and sold, in booming urban centres where the urban leasehold system approximates a private land market, land values have skyrocketed. In the context of rapid urban expansion, the re-classification of land from rural to urban, involves the creation of massive rents. Through two illustrative case studies this paper shows that state attempts to capture these rents through state ownership and minimal compensation for displaced landholders leads to an 'economy of anticipation'—effectively a rush to sell land in urban peripheries as quickly as possible to avoid impoverishment that results from dispossession through formal procedures. The result is de facto land privatisation fuelling a construction boom in urban peripheries. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in September—November 2018 comprising more than 40 interviews and focus group discussions with federal, regional and local government officials and affected communities in Adama, Oromiya and Bure, Amhara.
Paper short abstract:
This paper juxtaposes two different, yet linked, construction booms currently reshaping Nairobi. While city authorities promise a 'world class' future founded on spectacular infrastructure, a more ad hoc property speculation is constructing substandard, precarious housing at risk of collapse.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on recent ethnographic research, this paper will juxtapose two forms of construction boom currently reshaping Nairobi. Under the Kenyan government development blueprint of 'Vision 2030', city authorities are re-envisioning Nairobi as a 'world class' city of spectacular infrastructure and gleaming highrises. At the same time, unregulated property speculation is constructing high density, poor-quality tower blocks at a rapid rate. These tenement blocks are architecturally precarious, and the city has recently suffered a spate of devastating building collapses in which many have tragically died.
When tower blocks collapse, the disparity between global city dreams and the everyday lives of ordinary Nairobians is materialised. Though Vision 2030 promises an aspirational future of urban inclusion and economic security, very little has actually appeared on the ground. Its seductive imagery appears superficial, masking more exclusionary forms of speculative future-making.
This paper reflects on Nairobi's drastic landscape of architectural failure, tracing the afterlives of collapses and how they are situated within larger processes of urban transformation. It explores what a focus on collapse might expose about construction booms in the city, as well as about urban precarity more broadly, and how this shapes the future of urban landscapes.