Abstract
This chapter outlines the theoretical and methodological framework that guided the research process. It presents a critical review of the main theoretical references, including post-colonial, informality, and vulnerability studies, and lays out the arguments and reflections that led to the formulation of the research question. Inadequate interpretive and planning approaches are defined as being caused by ‘asymmetrical ignorance’, and the basic content of alternative approaches is identified, particularly the ‘people as infrastructure’ approach. In order to explore the limits of asymmetrical ignorance, the study focuses on the interaction between urban development and environmental change in peri-urban areas of the sub-Saharan city by investigating households’ environmental management practices. This knowledge is essential not only to shed light on the development and environmental management dynamics in peri-urban areas and the interdependence thereof with urban areas, but also to define the necessary conditions for effective adaptation to environmental change.
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Notes
- 1.
An understanding of the various reasons for this state of affairs raises a series of questions about the condition and experience of the other, and the diversity with which the Western philosophical tradition has always clashed. In the relationship with Africa, the concept of ‘absolute otherness’ is recognized as a polemic and sometimes extreme argument, used in the West in order to affirm its own difference from the rest of the world. In many aspects Africa therefore constitutes a metaphor through which “the West brings into play the origins of its norms, constructing an image of itself and integrating it into the sum of indicators that reaffirm what it imagines to be its own identity” (Mbembe 2001).
- 2.
Mbembe refers to three main elements in order to characterize traditional societies: facticity and arbitrariness, a strong connection to the tradition of magic, and the symbolic and the prevalence of the person over the individual (Mbembe 2001: 11–12).
- 3.
According to the perspective of dependence theories, rapid urban growth, the commercialization of peri-urban activities, and the land market are considered destructive for the livelihoods of households and institutions (Mbiba/Huchzermeyer 2002: 125).
- 4.
Many theorists, whose own roots are in post-structuralism and who choose to construct their work on African theories and practices, often emphasize the informal, the invisible or the new geographies of connection, movement, fluidity, flexibility, and contingencies as relevant in creating the urban areas of Africa (Myers 2011: 139).
- 5.
From a historical perspective, Freund analyzes the era of globalization and the consequent exclusion of Africa from “global cities” (Freund 2007: 171) in contrast with Afro-pessimism. He underlines the positive aspects of African cities and their creative and original responses to changes in the global economy, pointing out that some of the changes that are occurring in other world cities are also occurring in Africa, and the possibilities for transformation are considerable. They contain ‘the seeds of new types of urban forms and solutions’ (Freund 2007: 172), and are not merely the helpless victims of colonial and post-colonial attempts to implement modernist plans. Globalization is not, therefore, something that ‘strikes’ Africa from outside, rather it works within Africa in a way that suggests future models. Some strategies for pursuing development are clearly exclusive in this context, but the alternative solutions that people develop in order to carry on with their lives, which are increasingly ‘urban’ (according to forecasts), are the most unpredictable. In this sense the future is open, uncertain, and not without contradictions (Freund 2007: 172).
- 6.
“Abandoning dichotomies (such as the rural-urban divide) allows us to fight the tendency, generally present in both academic and popular literature, to group all African cities under the same generic umbrella of examples of the Third World or peripheral urban planning” (Murray/Myers 2006: 9).
- 7.
The Rome Club has been developing a variety of theories and manoeuvres for degrowth (e.g. transition towns) since the 70s (Illich 1994; Latouche 2005; Bateson 1976; Bologna 2004; Brown 1980).
- 8.
Over-urbanization refers to the relationship between the national level of urbanization and work force distribution across various sectors (e.g. agriculture, manufacturing, industry, and services). A country would be defined as over-urbanized (or under-urbanized) if the relationship between the percentage of the urbanized population and the percentage of the work force employed in industry was significantly different when compared with the same relationship in advanced economies. At the 1956 UN conference it was declared that in over-urbanized countries, urban and rural poverty exist one beside the other (Sovani 1964: 113, in Beall/Fox 2009: 20).
- 9.
“It was clear that the creation of employment in the manufacturing sector was lower than expected and could not absorb the rapid growth of the urban population. Concerns regarding over-urbanization translated into policies that sought to limit workers’ migration towards the city. At the same time, the first studies on the informal sector (Hartm 1973; ILO 1972; Weeks 1973) joined the debate already under way on the development potential of that sector (Portes et al. 1989; Moser 1978; Standing/Tokman 1991)” (Tacoli 1998: 150).
- 10.
The World Bank published its version of the urban bias theory and a critique of the bureaucratic underperformance of the African modernizing state.
- 11.
The global urban population is expected to grow approximately 1.84 % per year between 2015 and 2020, 1.63 % per year between 2020 and 2025 and 1.44 % per year between 2025 and 2030.
- 12.
Anomaly is understood in this case not as an extraordinary phenomenon, but as an imperfection and a deformation of urban or rural areas.
- 13.
Here we refer to the assertions made in the agency’s Strategy Paper, Meeting the Challenge of Poverty in Urban Areas. Strategies for Achieving the International Development Targets (2001: 24), as an example.
- 14.
They propose three distinct but complementary modalities of suburban governance: the state, capital accumulation and private authoritarianism to critically discuss the governance of suburbanization and diverse ways of suburban life.
- 15.
Although there has been a considerable increase in the diffusion of and access to communications technology, due to poor infrastructure many African cities are still fully or partially excluded from the ‘network society’ at the centre of Castells’ ‘information capitalism’ (1998: 92–95, cited in Lourenço-Lindell 2002: 22). Nevertheless, they do constitute another type of ‘network society’.
- 16.
As old and new variants of the debates on ‘informal security systems’ and the tradition of ‘social networks’ (Lourenço-Lindell 2002: 22).
- 17.
“The cities of the Global South have begun to take on an important role in urban planning theory, to the point that such cities no longer represent an anomalous category, but a fundamental dimension of the global experience of urbanization. A focus on cities such as Lagos has the potential not only to illuminate a peculiarity of the African experience, but also to answer broader questions on the nature of modernity, urban governance, and the interaction between flows of global capital and material conditions that actually exist in the Global South” (Gandy 2006: 250).
- 18.
This notion seeks to extend what Lefebvre (1974) intended by the social space of practices, modalities of organization on a variety of scales, and connections that link expressions, attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes, and changes and fusions that effect urban residents and their social interactions. The modes of doing and representing things become an increasing ‘familiarity’ with the other. They participate in a changeable series of reciprocal exchanges, in such a way that positions and identities are not fixed, nor in some cases can they even be determined. These ‘urbanized’ relationships reflect neither the dominance of a linguistic history or structure, nor a chaotic primordial mix (Simone 2004b: 411).
- 19.
In this sense, Simone moves closer to those who criticize classical policies of separation between bios and zoe (e.g. Agamben). Illich, in a conversation with Rahnema said “the possibility of a city being an environment that fosters a common search for good has disappeared. […] The drive for progress has extinguished the possibility of shared foundations for development. Irrespective of economic level, the good can arrive only from the type of complementarity that Plato, and not Aristotle, had in mind. To dedicate oneself to the other generates a unique space that allows for all that you ask: a mini-space in which we can agree on the search for the good” (extract from Lo Straniero, Year VIII—n. 45, March 2004).
- 20.
Simone (2010) has continued his work with the book City life from Jakarta to Dakar. Movements at the Crossroads, which connects African cities with Asian ones (Simone 2010: 14). He opens the debate by connecting the processes of African cities with those of other areas and develops the idea of “Black Urbanism” (Simone 2010: 268), drawing together a variety of situations and strategies that have worked in the long history of African people’s movements in the ‘urban world’. His use of the concept of ‘blackness’ is based on the hope that in the end it will be freed of its racial baggage.
- 21.
CLUVA is a Seven Framework Programme project which aims to develop methods and knowledge for African cities to manage climate risks, to reduce vulnerabilities, and to improve their coping capacity and resilience towards climate changes. It focuses on five African cities, including Dar es Salaam. Further information about the project is available at: http://www.cluva.eu/.
- 22.
Adapting to Climate Change in Coastal Dar es Salaam (ACCDAR) is a three-year project co-funded by the European Commission. Most of the studies on biophysical and social vulnerability in Dar es Salaam are accessible at: http://www.planning4adaptation.eu/041_Papers.aspx.
- 23.
Adaptation to Climate Change in Coastal Dar es Salaam is a three-year project co-funded by the European commission. More information about the project is available at: http://www.planning4adaptation.eu/.
- 24.
Divisions contain many Wards, which are comparable to districts, while mtaa and villages are comparable to neighbourhoods.
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Ricci, L. (2016). Cities of Sub-Saharan Africa: Failed or Ordinary Cities?. In: Reinterpreting Sub-Saharan Cities through the Concept of Adaptive Capacity. SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27126-2_2
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