Paper short abstract:

Urban citizenship and its marginalisations are examined through narratives of access and agency of a city and a people. Understanding notions of citizen-centric agency and their (in)ability to naviagte politicalised realities are vital to building strategies of survival in the contested urban space.

Paper long abstract:

Currencies of access continue to impact spatial belonging in Zimbabwe through the interplay of politicised bargaining power. Therefore, when future proofing the urban space and its realities, it is vital to understand currencies of access at all levels of the political settlement. On one hand, access to spatial belonging and its operationalisation between the ruling elite and the citizens exists. On the other hand, access to spatial belonging and its operationalisation between citizens themselves at different levels of bargaining power is inescapable. Here, the interplay between urban citizenship as a concept and the operationalisation of urban socio-economic dynamics at all levels becomes invaluable to expressing agency. Using the second city of Zimbabwe as a case study to show the effects of this interplay, the added complication of a mythicised urban history adds tension to this dynamic. Where urban citizenship in Bulawayo is guided by agency and belonging, the perceptions of the city and its people - seen through historical policies, mythicisations, and statistical discrepancies that impact budget allocations - is important to note. Notably, this paper first recognises the negative effects of a marginalised second city. Secondly, it examines pathways to future proofing Bulawayo and its people in recognising urban citizenship as part of historicised inclusivity and social justice narratives. Lastly, it locates these conversations within Zimbabwean state survival strategies and their effect in claiming the city and a rightful sense of belonging within it.

Paper short abstract:

African cities need to embed citizen-based participatory approaches into their formal top-down planning mechanisms to understand the challenges and needs of their residents and create more context-related interventions for inclusive place-making, while cities continue to evolve and grow.

Paper long abstract:

The rapid growth in population experienced in African cities is leading to significant urban growth, with consequent infrastructural development required to support it. Nairobi (Kenya) typifies many aspects of the challenges African cities face, as a post-colonial planned city with rapid urban growth rates and largely unplanned urbanisation. Consequently, Nairobi is experiencing significant stress for transport and infrastructure services, with challenges linked to increasing traffic congestion, road safety and traffic-related pollution and social inequalities.

Through a case study of the ‘Missing Link#12’ bypass development, passing through the informal settlement of Kibera, this study investigates the wider impacts on transport infrastructure development in Nairobi, and how the impacted community responds and/or adapts to such changes. The study employs a mixed-method approach comprising a survey involving 452 households of Kibera, focus group discussions and community engagement workshops. Findings indicate the development created social issues linked to evictions and displacements, creating a divisive effect within Kibera, impacting the community's social interaction and exclusion. Concerns about health due to the environmental risks of increased exposure and vulnerability to air and noise pollution also emerged strongly.

The findings stress the need in African cities for a shift in planning approaches to formalise participatory mechanisms to create more context-related interventions and inclusive place-making. Formal top-down planning often fails to consider the wider impacts of its processes upon communities. This is especially valid for informal contexts, where the concept of informal processes of alternative-substitute place-making and how communities construct their environment is overlooked by formal planning mechanisms.

Paper short abstract:

Africa's urban margins are marked by lived experiences of recurrent displacement and resettlement, compelling many urban dwellers to be always "on the move". Focusing on housing pathways of people who left state housing, I explore people's ways of making a home at dynamic urban margins over time.

Paper long abstract:

While Africa’s cities are growing, physically and symbolically, land prices and speculation are growing, and housing affordability is shrinking. Today, urban margins around the continent are increasingly under pressure. With evictions, displacements, and resettlements as characterising features of urban (re-)production, lived experiences of inhabiting urban margins are increasingly marked by an overlapping and entanglement of spatio-temporal uncertainties (waiting, fearing, expecting, hoping) and recurrent ruptures (expulsions, evictions, relocations, occupations). In other words, many people are compelled to be always “on the move” – unable to settle at a particular place close to urban centralities. Approaching such time-sensitive and less place-centric notions of unstable urban marginality, this paper seeks to explore the ways urban dwellers in Salé, Morocco, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Gauteng, South Africa, seek to make a home at dynamic urban margins over time. Particularly, it looks at people who left state-subsidised housing units, which were initially intended to make an end to informality, uncertainty and permanent temporariness. Based on own narrative interviews in three countries, I compare and analyse housing pathways, stressing people’s residential strategies as well as lived experiences and meanings of housing – both before and after state housing provision. Why are people leaving “formal” housing provided by the state, where are they going and what are their future residential strategies? Such subjective long-term perspectives should help to grasp a more dynamic, future-oriented understanding of urban marginality, that acknowledges both residential constraints and aspiration as being shaped by societal and economic, hence, structural factors of marginality.

Paper short abstract:

How does immobility shape the everyday experiences and future life chances of youth in informal settlements? How does it further urban inequalities and marginalisation? We explore how youth mobility is restricted by urban violence, and how this affects social, political and economic participation.

Paper long abstract:

Mobility and immobility are key factors shaping the experiences and future life chances of young people in sub-Saharan Africa (Porter et al, 2010: 796). While cities offer opportunities for social mobility, we found that the fear of violence limits the physical mobility of already marginalized youth in informal settlements across Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. This immobility inhibits urban citizenship by discouraging participation in social, political and economic life.

We found that insecurity affects movement within communities and when moving around the city, including when using public transport. Immobility is accentuated in certain spaces, as well as at certain times of the day. Yong people also commonly face violence at home, which results in few or no places of safety in their lives. Young women and girls were far more likely to feel unsafe in all spaces compared to young men.

Our findings include:

One in three young people feel unsafe in public spaces inside their community

Around 50% feel unsafe in public spaces outside their community

Around 50% feel unsafe on public transport and when waiting at public transport hubs

37% of youth avoid doing certain activities in their everyday life because they feel unsafe

Restrictions on everyday physical movement impacts the mental and physical wellbeing of young people and compounds their marginialisation.

To examine how young people experience and cope with urban violence, this paper uses a mixed methods approach. The data analysed includes more than 11,000 household survey responses and focus group interviews with hundreds of participants.