Paper short abstract:

The city of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is often described as modern,performing and smart city with futuristic connotations. This article aims to analyse how particular ephemeral events crystallized to shape the current spatiality of the city and render it a futuristic prone city.

Paper long abstract:

The city of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is often described as modern,performing and smart city with futuristic connotations. This article aims to analyse how particular ephemeral events crystallized to shape the current spatiality of the city and render it a futuristic prone city.

The article mobilizes postcolonial urbanism theory in general to understand how ephemeral events and dicourse around them produce space.The article particulary dialogues with the idea of “invention of Africa” advanced by the congolese scholar Valentin Mudimbe where he demonstrates how the discourse and reprensentations of space coalesces to form an imagined geography of that particular space.

Using three settlements in Kigali namely: *Biryogo*, a former “indigenous workers quarter” during the colonial period now core of the city. *Kangondo I* and *Bukinanyana* which resulted from the post genocide rural to urban migration now highly populated. The article the article investigates ways in which pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial ephemeral events and ensuing discourses have shaped the imagined geography of Kigali and its actual spatiality. Furthermore, the article investigates ways in which these historical ephemeral events foregrounds the actual and projected digitilization of the city.

The article employs archival research for both historical documents and maps to relate events and the ensuing discourse and spatiality, it also employs spatial analysis using QGIS software. in so doing, the article contributes to the urban historiograpy of Kigali and offers a crtic to the neutrality of digitalization of the city by demonstrating its dependence to the localized spatial-temporal events.

Paper short abstract:

This paper speaks to the productive tension of temporary permanence through the presence of UN peacekeeping camps in Goma. Exposing the durations and itineraries that shape these settlements, this paper explores the ways that practices of camping can reconfigure urban spaces and futures of dwelling.

Paper long abstract:

This paper approaches the question of temporality and permanence relative to urbanization through the unexpected settlement of the UN peacekeeping camp. Between 2017 and 2019, the city of Goma temporarily accommodated military peacekeepers from southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America in over 20 different camps across its extended urban landscape. These socio-spatial formations, I argue, instantiate the productive tension of temporality and permanence in ways that can help us better understand how urbanization emerges in the continuous (re-)making of settlements between now and later, as well as between the city and elsewhere. The paper first introduces its audience to the geography and lived realities of these UN bases to illustrate how these camps come into being through a dual consideration of their ephemerality and endurance. The ways in which peacekeepers socially, spatially, and architecturally make their camps - drawing upon the places they (temporarily) inhabit and the places they call home - are analyzed to offer new ways to think about how urban spaces across Goma materialize correspondences between disparate place-times. Designed as a more theoretical contribution, this paper departs from the peacekeeping camp to propose an analytic of “camping” with which we might unsettle predominant notions of the urban to recover its inherent uncertainty, particular in peacekept places. In doing so, I seek to respond to southern urban theory’s call for new vocabularies of practice with a verb that may beget new understandings of temporary dwelling arrangements in Goma and in an increasingly mobile, transitory, and precarious world.

Paper short abstract:

This paper calls for urban planners, practitioners, and policymakers to take the temporality of the livelihood of translocal migrants and their needs into consideration while developing policies and planning cities. The research takes Kanyama informal settlement, in Lusaka, Zambia as a case study.

Paper long abstract:

Migration, development studies, and urbanization are frequently studied in isolation. In recent decades, however, experts have demonstrated that these themes are connected and interdependent. Migration in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa is inter-regional, multi-directional, multi-sited, multi-active, connected across the rural-urban divide, and characterized by strong rural-urban impersonal networks. Urbanization and translocalization are therefore concurrent processes, and it is impossible to think of African urbanity without translocality, which is best defined as "situatedness during mobility." Consequently, what happens to urban spaces/settlements where 'temporary/transitional' populations reside? Using Kanyama informal settlement as a case study, this research seeks to deconstruct the causes for 'situatedness' during the migration of translocal migrants dwelling in Lusaka, Zambia. To comprehend how transitory settlements become permanent habitats, one must first comprehend the dynamics of the livelihood of "temporary" urban residents‘. How do they occupants create and re-create permanent spaces? The research identifies 10 typologies of translocal migrants and their livelihood strategies by studying their livelihood capitals (financial, social and spatial). The development of livelihood typologies aids in comprehending the fundamental needs of translocal migrants in Lusaka's urban agglomerations. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that production space and the transformation of temporary spaces into permanent homes are significantly linked to the following translocality parameters: Multi-locality; Exchange and interdependencies; Temporality and transition; Hybridity and Belonging. Finally, the research calls for urban planners, practitioners and policy makers to take this temporality into consideration while developing policies and planning cities.

Paper short abstract:

The paper describes the kinds of place-making and mobilities that are occurring along Zambia’s urban development corridors with a focus on the country’s mining regions and its capital city.

Paper long abstract:

The resurgence in global demand for copper, Zambia’s important export commodity the country has attracted investment in new large-scale mines and transport infrastructure. This has seen the emergence of new mining towns in the country’s North-Western province and increased economic activity along the routes and border regions along which copper is transported, including the Copperbelt province. Additionally, the country’s capital Lusaka, a prime city has grown beyond its limits to encompass former farmland. Drawing from ethnographic data, as well as survey data on Zambia, conducted as part of a multi-country study including Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the paper describes the spatialisation of these developments with a focus on the economic geographies that these trends have produced. The paper engages with the literature on development corridors in Africa, highlighting the varying kinds of mobilities and the materialisation of place along their routes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a literature review on TRAs and similar formations, exploring whether they support notions of permanent temporariness or a temporary-permanent continuum.

Paper long abstract:

There is an ambiguity concerning the temporary or permanent nature of socio-spatial formations articulated across different contexts. Temporary relocation areas (TRAs) and Refugee camps are critical nodes that affect the urban fabric. The temporary-permanent continuum presents one lens to view their form, function, change process and lived experiences. Read against South African TRAs, conceptual representation is anything straightforward but reveals contradictory functioning logic that forgoes binary assessment. Developed as temporary sites, TRAs become areas of long-term residence, interminable waiting and uncertainty. In this paper, TRAs are urban built environment features embedded in wider socio-spatial web relations and meaningful in people’s daily lives despite their deficiencies. Simultaneously, the continued TRA implementation is problematic, contested, and results in adverse and unintended consequences. This is not unique to South Africa. A rich literature reveals insights from diverse places such as Zimbabwe’s holding camps, India’s transit camps and Jordan’s Jabal al-Hussein refugee camp. A literature review on these and similar socio-spatial formations highlight that while planned as temporary features, they become seemingly permanent temporariness places that impose new living forms on residents who still hope for permanence. As part of a larger study which will include an empirical component, this paper presents a literature review on TRAs and similar formations, exploring whether they support notions of permanent temporariness or a temporary-permanent continuum. The paper differentiates how TRAs in South Africa are made sense of in the literature as opposed to their equivalents elsewhere, facilitating an opportunity for analysis across conceptual representations and varied experiences.

Paper short abstract:

We argue that urbanization should be understood as a geodemographic phenomenon and present a range of plausible estimates for levels of urbanization across Africa based on these criteria. We find that most current classifications likely underestimate the size and extent of African urbanization.

Paper long abstract:

How urban is Africa? The answer has very concrete implications for policy framing and resource allocation, yet it remains unresolved. The answer depends upon how human settlements are classified, which in turn hinges on the extent to which urbanization and economic development are considered inextricably related. We argue that it is both conceptually and empirically problematic to consider urbanization as a by-product or indicator of economic development. Instead, urbanization should be understood as a geodemographic phenomenon in its own right with important but complex associations with economic development. We present a range of plausible estimates for levels of urbanization across African countries based solely on geodemographic classification criteria. Using the UN's Degree of Urbanisation (DEGURBA) as a benchmark, we test the sensitivity of urban population and settlement counts to different population datasets and urban density thresholds. By calculating national urban shares and urban area counts, our analysis highlights uncertainties in existing estimates of African urbanisation. We find that most classifications are likely to underestimate the size and extent of Africa's urban populations, highlighting the widespread phenomenon of ‘low-density urbanization’ across the continent. While this remains highly sensitive to methodological decisions, we conclude that more African's are living in urban areas than previously thought. Geodemographic change will continue to have profound impacts upon urban development and governance in Africa and, as such, warrants sustained attention and policy engagement.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the 29-year struggle of an informal settlement community, in South Africa, to achieve legal permanence and improve their living conditions. This is despite a rights-based constitution and a formal upgrading policy instrument being in place.

Paper long abstract:

This paper revolves around a case study of an informal settlement, Slovo Park, in South Africa. It was established some 29 years ago, through the illegal occupation of land, about 15 km southwest of the Johannesburg CBD. With the end of apartheid legislation that restricted black citizens from urban areas there was rapid urbanisation, often involving illegal land occupations. Since then, Slovo Park has grown to over 5000 households, but remained precarious with limited consolidation, no tenure security, inadequate road, water and sewage infrastructure.

Despite a rights-based constitution providing people the right to housing and a specific informal settlement upgrading policy being formulated by the state in 2004, the community of Slovo Park have been fighting the local authority of the City of Johannesburg for over twenty years to have their settlement formally upgraded. This fight culminated in a high court judgement ordering the city to apply the upgrading policy to the settlement in 2015. This order has had limited effect on the local authority and the struggle continues.

This paper traces the last seven-years of engagement between the Slovo Park leadership and the City of Johannesburg as they have attempted to formalise the settlement using the Upgrading of Informal Settlement Program (UISP). It is hoped that this research can contribute to improving policy instruments supporting community-based consolidation and increased permanence of such settlements throughout Africa.