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Mapping Hope: How Do Vulnerable Youth Locate Hope in Informal Settlements?

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Abstract

This paper contributes to lines of scholarship that both seek to interrogate the notion of hope within African urbanization as well as the integration of the needs of urban youth. It investigates drawn cognitive maps of informal settlements and accompanying essays authored by 123 vulnerable youth living in Lusaka’s informal settlements to better understand how the participants locate hope in their surroundings. The analysis suggests that there are several social-spatial anchors of hope in the city’s informal settlements that simultaneously orient their day-to-day lives and long-term aspirations. These locations and their associated aspirations are mitigated both by the larger social and physical contexts. These findings suggest that the youth locate hope and despair throughout their settlements in discrete locations and also see hope as a group effort. The findings are also used to make recommendations for how urban managers can use this information to support the hopes of informal settlement youth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Regional and City Planning, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    John C. Harris

  2. Landscape Architecture, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    Sarah Little

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Correspondence to John C. Harris.

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Harris, J.C., Little, S. Mapping Hope: How Do Vulnerable Youth Locate Hope in Informal Settlements?. Urban Forum 30, 289–306 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-019-09361-9

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