Cohabiting commerce in a transport hub: Peoples as infrastructure in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Based on a case study of Iyana Ipaja, one of the largest transport hubs with a spacious motor park and the most vibrant markets in North Lagos, we elaborate on the nuances of interactions between commercial actors and various forms of infrastructure in the spatial and temporal senses. In terms of materiality and mobility of their businesses, commercial actors are categorised into three types, shopkeepers, stallholders and hawkers. They have extensive interactions with the objects with which they are attached (shops, stalls and goods), the physical infrastructures (vehicles, roads, bus stations and motor parks), and ‘people as infrastructure’ – a term coined by Simone – including drivers, passengers, passers-by and government agencies. We suggest that a modification to the concept of ‘peoples as infrastructure’ should help to articulate interactions among differently positioned actors. We argue that the localities and mobilities of commercial practices manifest spatial conviviality among peoples as infrastructure. The temporality of their commercial practices is embedded in the urban rhythm of Lagos and remediates the flows of people and vehicles through the spaces of Iyana Ipaja. The focus of commercial actors provides a new perspective to rethink grassroots spatial politics of motor parks in Nigeria. Moreover, this case study critically engages the theory of relationality of ‘people as infrastructure’ in urban Africa.

Remote (Dis)engagement: Shifting Corporate Risk to the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’

“…This diverse informal institutional landscape constitutes a ‘social infrastructure’ at the bottom of the pyramid. Building on Simone's notion of ‘people as infrastructure’ (2004), ethnographic studies have highlighted the ways in which social networks come to plug the gaps left by the absence of formal material infrastructures, enabling the exchanges that support the perpetuation and reproduction of life in informal economies (De Boeck, 2012; Doherty, 2017; Xiao and Adebayo, 2020). Through the lens of social infrastructure, scholars have examined how cash‐strapped post‐colonial states with poorly functioning public systems ‘devolve “infrastructure onto labor”’ (Doherty and Brown, 2019: 8), enrolling the labouring bodies of informal workers to close the gaps in public services, from waste (Doherty and Brown, 2019; Fredericks, 2018) and water (Anand, 2017), to financial services (Kar, 2018; Kear, 2016; Tooker and Clarke, 2018).…”

Mobilizing social reproduction: gendered mobility and everyday infrastructure in Abidjan

“…In contexts of inadequate and uneven municipal service provision, the work of infrastructure is devolved onto and distributed across the bodies, everyday practices, and social relationships of urban populations (Diouf and Fredericks 2018;Graham and McFarlane 2014). Such socio-technical systems provision water, electricity, housing, and sanitation, as well as mobility for the majority of the world's urban population (Frey 2020;Turner 2020;Xiao and Adebayo 2020). They are, in turn, key sites for the development of urban livelihoods as well as new modes of accumulation, exploitation, and disposability (Doherty 2017;Gidwani 2015).…”

Navigating old age and the urban terrain: Geographies of ageing from Africa

“…Despite offering important conceptual insights, Simone's notion of 'social infrastructure' has been criticized for promoting an overly romanticized view of urban social relations, particularly its neglect of power, inequality, tension and ambiguity in the lives of urban inhabitants (Doherty, 2017;Xiao and Adebayo, 2019). As McFarlane and Silver (2017) begin to explore, mobility can infer added emotional risk suffused by the potential for failure, uncertainty and fear, which are characteristic of precarious urban living.…”

“…To develop Simone's conceptual framing of social infrastructure, recent scholarship has sought to repurpose the infrastructure lens to more broadly understand the interaction between everyday urban lives and the built environments in which people reside (cf. Graham and McFarlane, 2014;Larkin, 2008;Silver, 2014;Wignall et al, 2019) and how collectives of individuals serve and inhabit city spaces (Doherty 2017;Mann and Nzayisenga, 2015;Xiao and Adebayo, 2019). McFarlane and Silver (2017: 463) have recently called for a more people-centred conceptualization of urban infrastructure, which accounts for the connections between 'people and things in sociomaterial relations that sustain urban life'.…”