Paper short abstract:

This paper sheds light on life ‘under pressure’ from the perspective of Nakuru, a secondary city in Kenya. It presents Nakuru as a place where pressure manifests itself as a highly volatile and affective force that is rich in meaning about what it means to (de)pressurize beyond the megacities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper sheds light on life ‘under pressure’ from the perspective of Nakuru, a (re)nascent, secondary city in Kenya situated 160 km Northwest from Nairobi. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork between 2016 and 2021, this article presents Nakuru as a place where pressure manifests itself as a highly volatile and affective force that is rich in meaning about what it means to (de)pressurize beyond the megacities. Against the backdrop of Nakuru seeking city-status at the time of fieldwork, the article foregrounds how smaller cities such as Nakuru compete with the metropole, how urbanites perceive this competition in terms of pressure and what a theorization of ‘pressure’ from the point of view of smaller secondary cities can contribute to the literature on urban Africa. The article ultimately argues that pressure in Nakuru is best described as a double bind: on the one hand, the city appears to be a place where life is ‘cooler’, away from the hassle of the metropole Nairobi, while on the other hand, youths struggle with profound feelings of ‘directionlessness’ and anxiety. These feelings echo larger concerns about the increasing pressure Nakuru’s city-status brings along in terms of expectations and life worlds the aspiring youth struggle to live up to.