The Thinker (Oct 2020)
A Cosmopolitan Ghetto: The Shifting Image of Kibera Slum From ‘Flying Toilets’ to a Centre for Metropolitan Innovation
Abstract
Today, slums have become prominent features of urban inequalities in developing nations. The proportion of urban residents who live in slums around the world is as follows: over half in Africa as a whole, two-thirds in Sub-Saharan Africa (UN-Habitat, 2011; UN-Habitat, 2015), 30% in Asia, and about 24% in Latin America and the Caribbean (United Nations, 2015). By 2050, the number of people living in slums globally is projected to reach 3 billion (UN-Habitat, 2003; UN-Habitat, 2013). Scholars and policy actors alike agree that left unaddressed, slums will continue to expand, posing a greater risk to urban sustainability, particularly in developing nations. In this article, I present an analysis of how independent, internal efforts within an African slum – Kibera in Kenya – are responding to some of the presumed deficits of institutionalised slums. I demonstrate how radical innovations can evolve, with excellent benefits in resource-constrained environments (Gupta, 2016; Pansera, 2013; Thieme, 2017). The work presented in this article is a practical re-imagination of slums as new sites of metropolitan policy innovations and resilience. Using evidence from field observations, I demonstrate how social resilience, practicality, collectivity, and agility in Kibera Slum compose skillsets that enable Kibera residents to navigate diverse pressures presented by their environment without external support. The findings underscore the importance of urban informality to the contemporary investigation of urban struggles in Global South metropolises. The assemblage of social experimentation presented in this work provides important lessons to urban development theories and policies seeking to build on community capabilities and resilience.
