Reconsidering Informality: Perspectives from Urban Africa

by Hansen, Karen Tranberg

• ISBN13: 9789171065186
• ISBN10: 9171065180
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-06-01
• Publisher: Stylus Pub Llc

Summary

This book brings together two bodies of research on urban Africa that have tended to be separate, studies of urban land use and housing and studies of work and livelihoods. Africa's future will be increasingly urban, and the inherited legal, institutional and financial arrangements for managing urban development are inadequate. Access to employment, shelter and services is precarious for most urban residents. The result is the phenomenal growth of the informal city. Extra-legal housing and unregistered economic activities proliferate and basic urban services are increasingly provided informally. Recent decades of neo-liberal political and economic reforms have increased social inequality across urban space. After an introductory chapter by the editors, the contributions are grouped into the following sections: - LOCALITY, PLACE, AND SPACE - ECONOMY, WORK, AND LIVELIHOODS - LAND, HOUSING, AND PLANNING The case studies are drawn from a diverse set of cities on the African continent. A central theme is how practices that from an official standpoint are illegal or extra-legal do not only work but are considered legitimate by the actors concerned. Another is how the informal city is not exclusively the domain of the poor, but also provides shelter and livelihoods for better-off segments of the urban population.

Table of Contents

Preface	5	(2)
CHAPTER 1 Karen Tranberg Hansen and Mariken Vaa
Introduction	7	(18)
SECTION I: LOCALITY, PLACE, AND SPACE	25	(56)
CHAPTER 2 Gabriel Tati
Sharing Public Space in Pointe-Noire, Congo-Brazzaville: Immigrant Fishermen and a Multinational Oil Company	28	(17)
CHAPTER 3 Knut G. Nustad
The Right to Stay in Cato Crest: Formality and Informality in a South African Development Project	45	(17)
CHAPTER 4 Karen Tranberg Hansen
Who Rules the Streets? The Politics of Vending Space in Lusaka	62	(19)
SECTION II: ECONOMY, WORK, AND LIVELIHOODS	81	(58)
CHAPTER 5 Ilda Lourenco-Lindell
Trade and the Politics of Informalization in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau	84	(15)
CHAPTER 6 Barbara Mwila Kazimbaya-Senkwe
Home Based Enterprises in a Period of Economic Restructuring in Zambia	99	(21)
CHAPTER 7 Amin Y. Kamete
Home Industries and the Formal City in Harare, Zimbabwe	120	(19)
SECTION III: LAND, HOUSING, AND PLANNING	139	(88)
CHAPTER 8 Marco Burra
Land Use Planning and Governance in Dar es Salaam: A Case Study from Tanzania	143	(15)
CHAPTER 9 Rose Gatabaki-Kamau and Sara Karirah-Gitau
Actors and Interests: The Development of an Informal Settlement in Nairobi, Kenya	158	(18)
CHAPTER 10 Resetselemang Clement Leduka
The Law and Access to Land for Housing in Maseru, Lesotho	176	(17)
CHAPTER 11 John Abbott
Upgrading an Informal Settlement in Cape Town, South Africa	193	(17)
CHAPTER 12 Paul Jenkins
Beyond the Formal/Informal Dichotomy: Access to Land in Maputo, Mozambique	210	(17)
Abbreviations	227	(2)
Biographical Notes	229	(2)
Index	231