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- Convenor:
-
Ilda Lindell
(Stockholm University)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Onyanta Adama
(Stockholm University)
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH103
- Start time:
- 30 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Urban informality is being respatialized, as varied technologies are used as a means to sanitize urban spaces of informality. Street workers may also reconfigure the spatialities of urban informality. This panel explores these dynamics, and their implications for urban residents.
Long Abstract:
New urban ambitions are reworking African cities, their spaces, economies and politics. Urban informality is being respatialized as urban dwellers depending on public spaces for survival get displaced or relocated. Discursive, juridical and material technologies of control are increasingly used in many cities which seek to sanitize certain urban spaces of informality. Practitioners of street work may also devise strategies to protect their claims to urban spaces or to navigate the changing urban landscape, thus themselves actively contributing to the reconfiguring of the spatialities of urban informality. This panel seeks to explore these current spatial dynamics, the multiple forces driving them, the resulting multi-layered negotiations over contested urban spaces, their outcomes and implications for the urban majorities relying upon varied forms of street work for their existence in the city.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Kudus Adebayo (University of Ibadan)
Paper short abstract:
Wheelbarrows function as tools of goods conveyance and instrument of work but they have also taken on new roles as 'mobile shops' appropriated for street trade. The study profiles urban subjects whose lives and livelihoods depend on wheelbarrows and show how they reconfigure urban space in Nigeria.
Paper long abstract:
In many Nigerian cities, wheelbarrows are a common sight in markets, neighbourhoods and other areas where business opportunities exist. Within market particularly, wheelbarrows function as tools of goods conveyance and instrument of work and survival among urban poor. However, because of the surge in urban population, worsening unemployment, widespread poverty, and the high cost of, and diminished access to, urban space, wheelbarrows are taking on new roles as 'mobile shops' appropriated for street trade. This study profiles the urban subjects whose lives and livelihoods depend on wheelbarrows, describes the dynamics of economic activities symbolised by this tool, and analyses the processes through which wheelbarrow dependent workforce reconfigure urban space in everyday encounters with formal and informal space managers who secure, tax, and exploit space and space users. The exploratory study employs qualitative techniques of in-depth interviews, non-participant observation and pictures to collect information on the background, motivations, and encounters of people trading with wheelbarrows in Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria. Findings show that marginal economic actors reckon and respond to survival constraints of the city by investing in wheelbarrows and creating a livelihood that embodies personal agency. In the day-to-day interaction with formal and informal space managers, wheelbarrow dependent people deploy 'mobile shops' in ways that contradict, counteract or contest official rules, positions and actions in urban spaces. In conclusion, the study argues that 'wheelbarrow livelihoods' challenge elitist space governance rules and play an active role in reconfiguring space and negotiating mobility and access to the urban environment.
Ademola Omoegun (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the mechanisms through which traders claim space through a comparative study of street traders in Lagos and Dar es Salaam. Set within rights-based debates, the paper argues that subversive spatial claim and new strategies of coalition are reconfiguring urban space in Africa’s globalising cities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the mechanisms through which traders claim space and challenge persistent attempts at street 'cleansing' through a comparative study of spatial claim of street traders in Lagos and Dar es Salaam. The paper draws on extensive research in both cities, examining the effect of large-scale evictions at the major bus park and markets at Oshodi Junction in Lagos, and the on-going clearances in Dar es Salaam for the DART rapid transit and other projects, to examine the political economy of spatial claim, and poverty implications of approaches commonly adopted in African cities.
Widespread informality has now become a structural characteristic of low-income urban economies, and in Lagos and Dar es Salaam, like many cities of the developing world, the informal economy provides the majority of urban jobs. Street traders are at the forefront of battles for urban space, working in one of the most visible and contested domains of the urban informal economy. However, they are also rational actors in a globalised economy, are increasingly wily in negotiating urban claim through social capital and sheer force of numbers. Nevertheless they must overcome modernisation attempts to control the city, by urban police (in Lagos the KAI force and in Dar es Salaam the mgambo), informal landlords and 'thugs', and through a punitive legal context that make streets trading illegal across multiple domains.
Set within a rights-based framework, the paper argues that subversive spatial claim, and new strategies of coalition, are reconfiguring the modalities of space in Africa's globalising cities.
(this paper was developed in collaboration with Alison Brown and Peter Mackie)
George Owusu (University of Ghana) Aba Crentsil
Paper short abstract:
City governments in Ghana for the last decade have coined the term ‘decongestion policy’ as a simplistic approach for clearing areas of the city they perceived as undesirable. While the policy has been widely implemented for the past decade, not enough studies have been undertaken to assess its effectiveness.
Paper long abstract:
Metropolitan local governments in Ghana, especially the large city government of Accra (Ghana's national capital), have adopted and implemented a policy of decongestion of large metropolitan cities of Ghana for the past decades. The policy of decongestion has been implemented with the explicit aim of reducing congestion of informality activities and their operators in the central business districts (CBDs) and other key areas of the cities. While the implementation of the policy in Accra, Ghana's largest metropolis has been ad hoc in character due to a combination of factors such as limited public support and political liability most especially in election years, the policy in both theoretical and practical terms can be described as representing another form of the much criticized classical 'bulldozing or slum clearance' approach. Bearing in mind the backlash of the bulldozing or slum clearance approach as unsustainable means for promoting urban development, this paper argues that city authorities have coined the term 'decongestion' as a simplistic approach for clearing areas of the city of Accra they perceived as undesirable. While the policy of urban decongestion has been implemented for the past decade, not enough studies have been undertaken to assess the effectiveness of the policy. This paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap. It questions the policy of decongestion in both theoretical and practical terms as a means of promoting the sustainable development of large Ghanaian cities such as Accra.
Ismaël Maazaz (University of Tampere)
Paper short abstract:
Based on field research conducted in N’Djamena in Chad, this paper focuses on the Places à vivre (living squares) network as original “commoning endeavours” (Stavrides 2016) generating innovative social practices rooted in local neighbourhoods.
Paper long abstract:
Local cooperative schemes for effective resource governance in African have captured increased attention lately, more particularly with regards to access to water in urban settings (Mirumachi and Van Wyk 2010; Kim, Keane, and Bernard 2015). In N'Djamena, the Places à vivre (PaV, living squares) network gradually appeared in the 2000s. Funded by municipal authorities with the support of international donors, and put into place by Chadian and European contractors, this set of eight public squares aims at providing alternative sources of freshwater for residents of neighbourhoods disconnected from the Société tchadienne des eaux (STE) official network. Additionally, PaVs were designed as social spaces hosting activities ranging from neighbourhood association meetings to hairdressing or scrabble playing. In the challenging settings of a city marked by a conflictual history, PaVs embody original "common spaces" (Stavrides 2016) fostering social practices rooted in N'Djamena's diverse neighbourhoods and came to express public ownership by urbanites. However, they also face significant issues as exemplified by the lack of sustainable funding in time of striking recession and local attempts of political instrumentations.
Based on field research conducted in N'Djamena and focusing more particularly on the PaV of Chagoua, a dynamic neighbourhood of southern N'Djamena, this paper analyses the living square as alternative public spaces. After detailing the infrastructure and the governance of the PaVs, the paper delves into their social functions as common spaces implanted in neighbourhood across N'Djamena and the challenges lying ahead for the various actors involved.
Andreas Eberth (Leibniz University of Hanover)
Paper short abstract:
The paper focusses on aspects of the everyday life of the youth living in the informal settlement Korogocho in Nairobi, Kenya. Special focus is about the way how they are working in and with the informal economy.
Paper long abstract:
The presentation focuses on results of interviews with 19 groups of young people, aged between 15-24. All of them were born and raised in Korogocho, one of Nairobi's informal settlements. Due to their place identification the youth started different bottom-up activities for transforming Korogocho and create better urban conditions. Using hermeneutic photography as research method, the study from 2014/2015 shows how the test groups in Korogocho identify with this place as their home.
In this study the task for the groups was to take three photos of situations or places which were important and meaningful in their everyday life. After they had chosen their motives they communicated their reflections about the meaning they allocated to them. The outcome shows community awareness creating an atmosphere of responsibility and caring for self empowerment contributing to community development in a surrounding of urban informality.
Based on the geographical concepts Space and Place as theoretical frame the presentation shows selected pictures and interview sequences of the data analysis and discusses the potential of this research approach. How to use pictures in a critical way and with regard to changing perspectives is the leading question for discussing self-reflexive geographies in this context. Furthermore, the results may also contribute to think about different and differentiated images about 'Africa', and life in slums which is often stigmatised as hardship and poverty in a marginalized place.