Paper short abstract:

The paper offers a reading of Janoob Al Hizam (Khartoum, Sudan) as a territory where overlapping land value systems are experienced spatially. It constitutes them as spatial forms of resistance to secure land access through community mobilization at the intersection of land and resistance.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past five decades the peri-urban landscape of Khartoum has been drastically (re)shaped by state-led planning strategies and humanitarian responses that concentrate in and around old villages, agricultural lands, and informal settlements. Located south of Khartoum’s city center and originally inhabited by agropastoral communities, it is known by its inhabitants as ‘Janoob Al Hizam (1)’ (South of the Belt). The city which has been built here stems from multiple histories of urban displacement and in-migration due to desertification, drought, and armed conflict since the 1970s. Despite the state’s efforts to develop land policies that enable displaced communities to own land through titling and land registration driven by market logics, this contribution sheds light on the overlapping value systems that are attributed to land by its inhabitants. By mobilizing critical mapping as a methodology, the paper offers a reading of Janoob Al Hizam as a territory where these overlapping attributions to land and means to access it are experienced spatially, foregrounding what has risen in the interstices of state-and humanitarian-led schemes. The research constitutes them as spatial forms of resistance to secure land access through community mobilization and are characterized as enactments of urban citizenship at the intersection of land and resistance.

(1) referring to the once green belt (a forested landscape) which demarcated the extent of Khartoum’s expansion until the 1960s. From the 1970s onward, it became the location where resettlement schemes were planned for displaced communities and the urban poor away from the city center.