Urban References

• There is much urbanisation occurring in the Global South, neoliberalism can be blamed for the creation of inequalities

• Slums are not all uniform and have varying characteristics

• The IMF and World Bank have ulterior motives and hidden disadvantages leading to urban poverty and slum growth, SAPs entrench this poverty in their restructuring of economies

• There are many risks associated with living in slums as well as working in the informal sector, these are especially challenging for women and children

Davis, 2006

• IMF structural adjustments as ‘the equivalent of a natural disaster’

• Definitive blame on neoliberal ideology championed by the Bretton Woods organisations

Balogun, 1995

• Problems with simplifications of African urban data viewed as ‘the more urban, the better’ to problems policy relevance

• Policy makers often misrepresent trends as they chose to ignore important bits of data

Potts, 2018

• There has been insufficient attention paid to adaptions occurring over the past 30 years in urban migration patterns, within the Sub-Saharan region Nigeria is particularly important to understand as it holds over 50% of West Africa’s total population

• Since 1952 all census results have been contested, Africapolis data in 2008 showed that nearly half of the smaller urban settlements had a lower urban population than the 1963 census, there are lower levels of urbanisation and slower increase for West Africa as a whole

• This is due to weak urban economies after 1980/90s SAPs, foreign competition and unreliable electricity

Potts, 2012

• There is much scope for improved research and information on urbanisation in Africa, this is important to improve the wellbeing of urban communities

• Many settlements grow without economies moving away from agricultural activities towards higher productivity sectors meaning incomes remain low and quality of life suffers, this reveals a problem in tying economic criteria to urbanisation

• Natural growth and rural-urban migration sees Nigeria’s urban population continue to grow when understanding wider social and environmental implications within demographic data

Turok, 2018

• Using more diverse sources of evidence shows urbanisation is not stalling in Nigeria, rural transformation and natural increases have been overlooked in the past and will contribute to Nigeria’s growing population in the future

• Declining mortality and high fertility see urban populations grow as well as rural ones that then become classed as urban

• Migration also occurs as people move to find employment, education, marriage, escape conflicts or environmental pressures etc.

• Demographic forces should be better considered in understanding Nigeria’s urban transition

Fox et al., 2018

• Definitions of the urban and city boundaries are not set to universal criteria meaning exaggeration is easy and comparisons are inaccurate

• There is a lack of census data particularly in SSA as they are expensive and international donors do not support them, this means UNDP relies on estimates and projections

• Claims of economic and population growth in SSA being unprecedented are not true, urban primary measures also lack real data

• Data limitations also understate the extent of depth of poverty in Asia and Africa as the application of a universal poverty line in inappropriate, there is also little data on housing and living conditions in informal settlements as well as GHG emissions of these urban areas

Satterthwaite, 2010

• Urbanisation is no longer rapid in Africa due to informal urban economies, SAPs and circular migration

• African economies are often trapped in viscous cycles due to the impact of SAPs and liberalised international trade being harmful due to a lack of competitive advantage

• Rates of urbanisation are important indicators of large economic structures and smaller economic livelihoods that provide essential context for policy making; we must move away from generalisations in the region

Potts, 2012

• Processes of urbanisation in SSA are occurring far more slowly than reported, false figures often come to be regarded as fact due to being constantly restates

• Data relies on erratic censuses, the more reliable Africapolis data set showed urbanisation was slowing in the region

• This can be attributed to SAPs, SSA being unable to compete in an era of economic liberalisation and circular migration as migrants enter and then leave towns due to economic insecurity and hardship

• The future for much of SSA is predominantly rural

Potts, 2012

• To make international comparison easier, the UN Statistical Commission endorsed the Degree of Urbanisation approach

• This provides an objective and data-driven approach to classifying urbanisation that can be applied globally

• It is simple, transparent, helps monitor the SDGs, captures agglomeration and is cost-effective

• It will remain comparable over space and time

Dijkstra et al., 2020

• The urban age thesis has been widely repeated and has become common sense, but it is flawed based on statistical artefacts and chaotic conceptions due to improper data and misunderstandings of the urban

• Planetary urbanisation is based on the idea that the urban is a theoretical category, a historical process and it cannot be bounded or enclosed

• It sees that the non-urban is never disconnected from the urban as it has become a planetary phenomenon which erodes urban/rural boundaries

• The urban continually produces new differentiations that must be explored with a new and appropriate vocabulary 

Brenner & Schmid, 2014

• Theories of the global, hierarchical or privileged cities are part of a Western colonial regime that ignores the experiences of diverse cities in the Global South; there should be a universal theory that unites rather than divides cities

• Instead of dividing cities into groupings, they should all be seen as ordinary cities

• Ordinary cities are formed of unique assemblages of wider processes and bring together vast networks in a diverse and complex manner

• This allows for greater capacity for creativity, change on international levels and allows cities to imagine their own futures without being predetermined in meaningless categories

Robinson, 2006

• The Chicago School is seen as the first example urban theory, the thinkers drew on Darwin’s arguments about competition and the process of natural selection

• Park saw the city as a mosaic of worlds where each group would find a habitat among equals, the groups would live in proximity but would be separated to form a peaceful coexistence

• Burgess created the concentric zone model whereby rings of higher status could be found as one travels further from the CBD due to invasion and succession of the inner city

• Often the Chicago School were criticised for focusing only on biological imperatives and ignoring human choice, unequal power and the role of politics; they saw inequality and segregation as inevitable and even necessary

• Wirth saw the urban as characterised by size, density and heterogeneity which would influence urban citizens to be anonymous and lack intimacy; although his theory is seen as a failure it moved away from the urban as a space to a social process

• The legacy of the Chicago School established a positivist urban tradition, saw that cities were social and established an interest in morphology, segregation and community

Harding & Blokland, 2014

• Early writing from theorists such as Simmel and Engels focused on the declining rural, the Chicago School derived ideas from eugenics and social Darwinism and the Frankfurt School carried forwards the legacy of Marx

• In the 1970s there was a shift to more critical urban theory focusing on weaknesses of capitalism, consumer culture and the loss of traditional social structures

• Postmodern urbanism saw world cities ranked in hierarchies, global cities emerged from this focusing on the relationships between cities by measuring flows

• A broader cultural turn now looks at feminist, critical Marxist, postcolonial and poststructural urban theory to understand immaterial and non-human actors or gender expression in forming experiences in complex cities

Jayne & Ward, 2017

• The term gentrification was coined over 50 years ago by Ruth Glass referring to the invasion of the middle class into the previously disinvested inner city working class neighbourhoods in London where they renovated old properties and displaced working class communities; this has since mutated beyond this and there is a need to understand the ‘comparative urbanism’ of the Global South

• Planetary gentrification refers to the process around the world today as we live in a ‘property movement’ where state led gentrification occurs in many rural and suburban spaces; land is continually appreciates to facilitate endless capital accumulation

• There are many new types such as slum gentrification, rental and creative; now the state leads gentrification agendas with the middle class taking on a new role

• There is much resistance against gentrification, there are few examples of success and these are all concentrated in the Global North

Lees, 2017

• Segregation can be ethnic or racial as well as social; these inequalities are produced at the intersections of people’s lives, their positionality inform where groups in the city can live and the extent to which they occupy separate sites as the city comes to reflect the social stratification of society; segregation is not voluntary

• Social segregation contrasts spatial segregation as it refers to the ways that people residing in mixed networks have separate social worlds, this is a study of what people do in the city rather than where they live

• Increasing immigration impacts segregation due to both socio-economic differences and prejudices/discrimination that constraints the mobility of individuals; it may not always be negative but can seen collective action rising from shared identities

• The assimilation thesis of integration of immigrants is criticised as societies are unwilling to define themselves as multicultural and it puts too much pressure on immigrants to adapt to their environments

Harding & Blokland, 2014

• Suburbanisation is a process where an increasing number of people move out of the city to its outskirts often to single family homes, in the US this has been seen as a middle-class white practice but in Europe includes much more of the working-class and has different characteristics 

• It is a class-based processes as it is historically a process of housing choices of the middle classes, it now has significance for more intersectional inequalities

• It is patriarchal as women become excluded from the city as they are trapped in the domestic suburbs, it is also racialised as building codes, processes and discrimination help the suburbs remain exclusively white gated communities

• Gated communities develop into areas of exclusive services for members in the inner city forming urban fear behind the fortified enclaves

• Suburbanisation is also a cultural approach as it forms new lifestyles and challenges traditional views on what living in the city is about

Harding & Blokland, 2014

• Gentrification comes with displacement of lower-status users of the space and directly affects inequalities by altering access to resources and creating political divisions

• Direct displacement occurs as people can no longer afford rent or repairs stop being done

• Indirect displacement is due to the pressure of displacement due to changes in commercial infrastructure, cultures and ways of behaving that are experiences as exclusionary 

• People forced to leave may be torn from rich social networks that they may not find again, this can hamper opportunities and in extremes form homelessness and overcrowding 

• There can be opportunities as some relocation programmes saw people more likely to have jobs and more likely to have children doing better in schools

• Gentrification assumes a well functioning community in the first place, ghettoisation shows this may not always be true

Harding & Blokland, 2014

• There are rising numbers of residential schemes in British and European cities upplying collectively consumed neighbourhood goods and services exclusively to households within the ‘gates’

• There is demand for less governmental control under the neoliberal regime, therefore local control rises

• Gated communities are able to be produced as services and amenities can be supplied most efficiently and effectively through small administrations allowing for greater security and product innovation within the communities 

• Therefore, the gated communities can be seen as a spatial expression of resources access related to neoliberalism and the ideology of the market

Webster, 2001

• Sao Paulo has become a city of walls with physical barriers everywhere, electronic devices and security men with the fortified enclaves physically isolated, turned away from the street and controlled by advanced security systems

• They rely on low-wage jobs and workers that the higher classes come to rely on in ambiguous relationships; isolation from the city is seen to create happiness and freedom through separation and total security 

• Social segregation is created in Sao Paulo by the use of physical dividers of walls and private security systems, being inward facing and aim to be independent worlds meaning they abandon the public life

• Private enclaves deny any of the basic elements constituting the modern experience of public life and openness

• LA is even more fragmented than Sao Paulo but less exaggerated in terms of security, domestic dependence and social movements but it does come ahead in economic transformation and urban dispersion

Calderia, 1996

• Urban informalities tend to occur outside of the formal mechanisms of state legislation, often it is used as a way to condemn residents as inferior but also is seen by some as a celebration of the agency and resilience of poor urban residents 

• Informalities occur within the practices of the urban-rich, Global South and Global North; not simply the global south

• Informalities are often seen as spatial, economic or political but these are highly interconnected as seen in Cato Crest, South Africa

• Urban theory has often seen informality as an opposition to the large scale, regulated formal sector and has historically been seen as a result of rapid urbanisation

• These characteristics are criticised for being simplistic and negative to justify inappropriate measures such as eviction and displacement; critics now develop ideas such as the ‘myth of marginality’, the solution of self-help housing and discuss the slum discourse

Lombard & Meth, 2017

• The ‘myth of marginality’ is often used to socially control the poor who are politically repressed through constructed opinions

• Contrary to myths suggesting the inferiority of the urban poor the Rio Favela dwellers were often socially well organised, had high aspirations for their children’s educations, were culturally optimistic and hard-working

Perlman, 1976

• In urban areas it is not possible to exist on subsistence agriculture or by foraging forcing urban residents to enter the labour market, make and sell goods or services though lack of an alternatives in order to gain the cash income essential for living in the city

• Often the work exists outside of formal conditions and is characterised by long hours in dangerous conditions

• The nature of informal work and incomes are shaped by the specific local contexts of a place, they vary from country to country and from household to household; there is a need for more research in order to more effectively advance urban poverty reduction

Mitlin & Satterthwaite, 2013

• Low-income urban dwellers in the Global South often have much worse health than middle and high income groups with high proportions dying at early ages often from preventable diseases or injuries

• These differentials are shaped by low quality housing, unhealthy living conditions and lack of access to healthcare services; health-related indicators often intersect with poverty-related indicators 

• Spatial differentials in health are useful for policy but often it is not specific enough to show differences in health within cities so healthcare policy cannot be adequately designed

Mitlin & Satterthwaite, 2013

• Borrowing from Robinson’s ‘ordinary cities’ concept, the concept of ‘ordinariness’ is a way of rejecting the absolute otherness of slums and stressing heterogeneity within and between neighbourhoods as well as the significance of comparative research 

• There is a need for alternative, less stigmatised terms; a new territorial ethnics, radical deconstruction and demystification of the ‘slum’ 

• These new conceptualisations should make aware of the ‘slum’ as a non-physical, spatially detached social construct that discredits marginalised people and diverts attention from precarious living conditions and ways of improving them

• Neighbourhoods should instead be seen as places with contextual characteristics, problems and demands only able to be understood through people-centred analysis; it should also deconstruct and decolonise dominant narratives of the ‘slum’

Beier, 2022

• Poverty has become increasingly concentrated in urban settlements due to economic cries and SAPs in the Third World having a disproportionate impact on the urban poor as well as rapid urbanisation growing urban populations fast

• Often poverty is defined using conventional measures looking at material deprivation which is useful for comparison but it restricts the number of criteria used to describe a multi-dimensional and evolving concept of urban poverty 

• There is often an external decision made about who is poor where people’s own conceptions differ from experts often attributing greater value to qualitative dimensions and the intersections with identities such as gender and ethnicity 

• Historically work has focused on urban-rural poverty but recent research has revealed much greater diversity in the extent and depth of poverty within the urban sector especially in the Third World 

• Urban poverty is unique from rural poverty and occurs in intersectional combinations of social, economic, political and environmental problems that must be tackled in integrated ways 

Wratten, 1995

• India’s urbanisation is seen as an urban crisis in two scenes, one of stalled and incomplete private developments such as Bangladesh airport and one of state violence by uprooting subsistence farmers on Calcutta’s peripheries 

• The form of urbanisation occurring is an idiom, a peculiar and particular process with the key feature of informality 

• The state engages in informality by unmapping and deregulating space in order to allow itself flexibility to alter land use and acquire land; informality also allows for insurgences against this but has little impact due to coming from the same structure it sees to overthrow

• Therefore, informality is not equal to poverty or illegality but is a deliberate absent of India’s urban planning used by both the state and private entities; this forms a fragmented urban landscape with failing plans brought about by the distinctive unregulated rationality determining urban planning

Roy, 2009