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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:34 pm
Time: 8:34 pm
Results for urban areas (kenya)
1 results foundAuthor: Muggah, Robert Title: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence Case Study of Nairobi, Kenya Summary: While the sources and forms of social and political violence have been extensively examined, the ways ordinary people along with their neighbors and officials cope with chronic urban violence have earned far less attention. This eight-case study of cities suffering from a history of violence explores this latter phenomenon, which we call resilience. We define resilience as those acts intended to restore or create effectively functioning community-level activities, institutions, and spaces in which the perpetrators of violence are marginalized and perhaps even eliminated. Fragile cities suffer from violence enacted on multiple scales concentrated in a single metropolitan space. How, then, do the spatial characteristics of the city shape violence? Are urban interventions successful in transcending sectoral approaches to violence by focusing on the greater community and city? Using case studies of cities suffering from long histories of chronic violence, this project examines how citizens have evolved coping mechanisms (strategies of resilience) at various scales. Insights from field research in these cities are combined with theoretical approaches to security, violence, and resilience in order to develop a systemic, multi-sectoral approach to chronic violence. The present study of service provision, violence, and resilience in Nairobi’s informal settlements has several objectives. First, it intends to describe various types of formal and informal services provided to residents of low- and medium-income areas. Second, it seeks to develop a more exhaustive review of the providers of these services and their interrelationships. Third, the assessment explores the character of resilience amongst residents of selected slums and the absence of formal state services. All of these objectives are of intense interest to national and metropolitan planners, preoccupied as they are with questions of urban violence and poverty. In order to unpack these questions, the assessment undertook focused research in a selection of sites as well as a literature review of the history of urbanization in Nairobi proper. Two of these sites included “informal settlements,” or slums in the vernacular. The third site was “middle class” and offered a control against which to examine patterns of service delivery and local forms of resilience. The assessment was also informed by a number of focus group discussions with municipal counselors, leaders in the various settlements, service providers, and residents to examine their perspectives and interrogate key issues. This report is itself divided into several discrete sections. The first section provides a cursory overview of the methodology deployed during the research period. Section two issues a historical assessment of Nairobi’s urbanization trajectory, which is critical in understanding contemporary realities. It also considers contemporary trends and patterns of exclusion and how these relate to older planning and development strategies. The third section explores in more detail issues of service provision in different neighborhoods of Nairobi, tracing out a range of services and the ways in which they interact. While a preliminary assessment, this study nevertheless generated a host of findings with implications for public policy in Nairobi and beyond. Overall, the assessment detects a surprising level of dynamism in the provision and supplementing of services in neglected informal settlements. It found that while residents frequently struggle to adjust in situations of adversity, there is a bewildering array of locally arising coping strategies in relation to security, water, sanitation, solid waste disposal, housing, and infrastructure provision. The assessment also highlights the more “negative” forms of resilience emerging both to fill the gaps left by an absence of state presence, but also in the wake of competition between rival service providers. Details: Cambridge, MA: Urban Resilience in Chronic Violence, MIT. 2012. 41p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 16, 2012 at http://urcvproject.org/uploads/Nairobi_URCV.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Kenya URL: http://urcvproject.org/uploads/Nairobi_URCV.pdf Shelf Number: 127220 Keywords: Urban Areas (Kenya)Violence |