Precarity, temporality, & translocality in Africa’s urban archipelagos Loren B Landau University of Oxford & University of the Witwatersrand loren.landau@qeh.ox.ac.uk London School of Economic | 5 February 2020
Diepsloot Extension 1: 2000-2009 2
Nairobi São Paulo Juarez Lagos
Cel elebrate hybridity, , im impurity, in intermingling, , th the tr transformation th that comes of f new and unexpected combinations of f human beings, cu cultures, , id ideas, , politic ics, , movies, , songs. . I I re rejo joice in in mongrelizatio ion and fear th the absolutism of f th the Pure. . Mel elange, hotchpotch, a bit it of f th this and a bit of f th that, is is how newness en enters th the worl rld. It It is is th the gre reat possibility th that mass mig igration gives th the worl rld, , and I I have tr tried to em embrace it. it. – Salman Rushdie
? city inclusive sustainable
The city
Paris London Chicago New York
Dubai Singapore Shanghai
Kinshasa Addis Dar es Salaam Luanda
Sagana, Kenya
Inclusion as aspiration?
God owns every rywhere, so even if if you break the la law here, he wil ill forgive you. - Stella, Ugandan migrant in Johannesburg
The marooned malaise We are waiting for the government. We are waiting for the UNHCR. We are waiting for God. - Estefanos Worku Abeto ‘To be existentially and socially stuck is not just a question of being stuck in place but equally about being stuck in time’ - Jefferson, et al
People now experience, ‘spatio - temporal dis isruption . . . . . . where their fu futures wit ithin the cit ity remain stall lled and fi fixed in in uncertainty, , ult ltimately in infl fluencing notions of f belo longing and urban governance ’. - K. Ramakrishnan, 2013
The pro rolif iferation of f re refugee camps is is as s in integral a pro roduct/manif ifestation of f glo lobaliz ization as s is is the dense arc rchipelago of f stop-over nowherevill lles thro rough whic ich the new glo lobe-trotting eli lite moves. . . . . What they sh share is is ext xtra raterritorialit ity, their not tru ruly belong to the place, being ‘in’ but not ‘of’ the sp space they physicall lly occupy. - Z. Baumann (2002), Society Under Siege
governing for sustainability
Building archipelagic futures • City remains site of imagination and potentiality, despite precarity • City life is constructed by the market and politics, but not as Simmel, Weber, Lefebvre and other describe • Solidity and site-based connection can be risky: ethics of disconnection and self-fabrication
Governing for inclusion? Hang in There, Reconsider: Senzo Shabanugu • Meaning and desirability of bounded sustainability • ‘Rights to the city’, mechanisms of inclusion and planning • Marginality and agency • Urban upgrading
A A new relational perspective on cit ities means that it it is is im impossible to understand cit ities as territories prio ior to their engagements wit ith other pla laces. – McFarlane 2011: 664
Precarity, temporality, & translocality in Africa’s urban archipelagos Loren B Landau University of Oxford & University of the Witwatersrand loren.landau@qeh.ox.ac.uk London School of Economic | 5 February 2020
Recommend
More recommend
