Disassembling connections: A comparative analysis of the politics of slum upgrading in eThekwini and São Paulo

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative comparison that works creatively with the entangled spatialities of policy mobilities, drawing on a city-to-city cooperation between São Paulo (Brazil) and eThekwini (South Africa) municipalities for the exchange of slum upgrading expertise. The proposed comparative tactic entails tracing the establishment of this connection in order to disassemble the constituent flows and localities merged within it. Subsequently, by posing questions to one another, a relational comparison of the trajectory of slum upgrading policy in each locality is composed, unearthing the political and institutional conditions that preceded the existence of the connection per se. In that sense, both eThekwini and São Paulo are considered equivalent starting points from which local actors engaged in circulating ideas and mobilised slum upgrading policies. This paper not only brings a fresh approach to comparative methods – incorporating political contexts and their extensive overlapping networks of relations alongside a focus on particular policy trajectories – but also contributes to furthering global urban studies in two other ways. First, it provides insight into the processes by which policies are put on the move and localised (or not). Second, it demonstrates how repeated instances of urban practice may be unravelled by allowing each context of policy formation, with its distinctive trajectory of slum upgrading, to speak to one another. In this regard, the comparative analysis identified how, in both São Paulo and eThekwini, the consolidation of democracy was followed by the development of more technocratic approaches to the detriment of earlier slum upgrading initiatives focussed on community empowerment.

Constructing comparisons: Reflecting on the experimental nature of new comparative tactics

“…It embodies the experimental nature of comparative tactics developing during the course of the research and is illustrative of the potential for a less structured, more reactive approach to identifying and unpacking processes and using those insights to continually question what is happening elsewhere. In other forms of experiment, Saraiva (2022) utilises the benefits from established ways of constructing comparison – for example employing the relational approach advanced by Massey (1994) and others – and stretching it to work in new ways. As Saraiva shows in their 1 work across Brazil and South Africa, using ideas of assemblages to focus on how policies are disassembled in the course of a learning exchange highlights the possibilities of a comparative agenda that foregrounds political dynamics in the two case study cities (São Paulo and Durban).…”

A more global urban studies, besides empirical variation

“…In contrast to Montero and Baiocchi’s study of relatively discrete contexts brought together by a shared trajectory, Camila Saraiva’s tracing of slum upgrading policies in São Paulo and eThekwini shows how understanding the cooperation between these two cities helps to better theorise slum upgrading in general (Saraiva, 2021). She connects the international institutions, capacity building programmes and specific events that facilitate expertise exchange, and shows through evocative detail that these are not only coincidental meetings.…”

Tracing as comparative method

“…And, though all the papers theorise comparisons of, in and by the Global South, some also draw on historical (Kipfer, 2021; Stanek, 2021) or a posteriori (Montero and Baiocchi, 2021) approaches. Three explicitly draw on the concept of tracing –Saraiva’s (2021) study of slum upgrading in Durban and São Paulo, Kanai and Schindler’s (2022) insights into infrastructure-led development in East Africa and South America and Montero and Baiocchi’s (2021) reflections on a posteriori comparison in Bogotá and Porto Alegre. These three papers, in addition to many others in the special issue, allow us to further explore the three definitions of tracing.…”

“…This second definition highlights the role of actors in pursuing tactics of tracing. Several of the papers consider the policy actors working between the Global North and Global South (Niranjana, 2022; Teo, 2021) as well as across the Global South (Kanai and Schindler, 2022; Montero and Baiocchi, 2021; Saraiva, 2021). Saraiva (2021) for instance draws on experiences, reflections and observations of policy actors working within and between eThekwini and São Paulo; while Teo (2021) considers the ‘symbiotic collaborations’ between municipal officials and their professional collaborators in Shenzhen and London; and Kanai and Schindler (2022) focus on the policy networks spearheaded by the World Bank and the G20 that are fuelling infrastructural investment.…”

“…The positionality and the geographical locatedness of the researcher are undeniably fundamental in each of these approaches to comparison – perhaps most perceptibly in the second definition. We can imagine the researcher and their physical travels between Durban and São Paulo (Saraiva, 2021) and across continents (Kanai and Schindler, 2022) as well as their historical (Kipfer, 2021; Stanek, 2021) shifts. To varying degrees, all of the papers expose the methodology of academic research – how do we actually do comparative urbanism has been a question at the forefront of this research agenda – and their approaches provide tremendous insight.…”