Navigating the city: dialectics of everyday urbanism

Abstract

How might we conceptualise and research everyday urbanism? By examining the making of everyday life in a low‐income neighbourhood in Uganda, we argue that a dialectics of everyday urbanism is a useful approach for understanding urban poverty. This dialectical approach examines how marginalised urban dwellers navigate the city in the relative absence of formal infrastructure systems, service provision and state welfare, and in turn exceed those limitations through forging connections, capacities and opportunities. We reveal the ‘social infrastructures’ that people put together to sustain life, as well as the limits of and placed on these infrastructures, from the legacies of structural adjustment to ongoing forms of demolition and disinvestment. We identify a set of practices that operate alongside social infrastructure – ‘coordination’, ‘consolidation’ and ‘speculation’ – important in the composition of everyday urban life. In doing so, we reflect on how we might research the dialectics of everyday urbanism, and here a ‘follow‐along participant observation’ (FAPO) methodology has significant potential. Our arguments emerge from research with residents in Kampala, but open out questions for how we conceive and research everyday life and urban infrastructure more generally.

Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces

“…A lot of informal human, political, and cultural work gathers around and goes into infrastructure (Amin, 2014;Cesafasky, 2017;Truelove, 2011). Simone (2004) has taken this argument further, arguing that people themselves can be understood as infrastructure: They help the economy, communications, power, and water of cities to function (McFarlane & Silver, 2017). Much of this work comes in the context of radically uneven and unequal provision of infrastructure that excludes the poor and disadvantaged (Wakefield, 2018)-a kind of infrastructural violence (Harris, 2013;Rogers, 2012;Rogers & O'Neill, 2012;Salamanca, 2015).…”

Towards a geography of informal transport: Mobility, infrastructure and urban sustainability from the back of a motorbike

“…McFarlane and Silver () suggest informal infrastructure provides the medium through which informal lives are “stitched” together, but the rhythm and pattern of boda mobility that emerges here is more akin to the practice of weaving. Bodas support the dense networks of connectivity that sustain livelihoods, forming part of the distinctive mobility of African cities whereby daily survival depends on movement (Simone, 2004a, 2011).…”

Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism

“…Importantly, as Lawhon et al . () attest, ‘everyday urbanisms' are thus also important to understand how urbanisation processes in the global South may be different to those in the global North, where much urban theory originates (see also, Derickson, ; McFarlane and Silver, ). This is also an aspect of the planetary urbanization literature that has recently attracted criticism from various urban theorists who have argued that its focus on universalism omits the importance of different forms and routes of knowledge production (Derickson, ; McLean, ).…”

“…Such forms of analysis could also be extrapolated to non-cities such as Huasco (see Arboleda, 2016a), or exurban fringes (Walker and Fortmann, 2003;Cadieux, 2008, Taylor andHurley, 2016) to identify how these spaces are being impacted by urbanization, as understood by local inhabitants. Importantly, as Lawhon et al (2014) attest, 'everyday urbanisms' are thus also important to understand how urbanisation processes in the global South may be different to those in the global North, where much urban theory originates (see also, Derickson, 2015;McFarlane and Silver, 2017). This is also an aspect of the planetary urbanization literature that has recently attracted criticism from various urban theorists who have argued that its focus on universalism omits the importance of different forms and routes of knowledge production (Derickson, 2015;McLean, 2017).…”