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This chapter discusses visions of the urban periphery in South Africa and Ethiopia and how these have influenced development in the case study cities of Johannesburg, Tshwane, eThekwini and Addis Ababa. In the context of international policy debates over appropriate spatial policy, it draws on empirical material from key informant interviews and documentary analysis to demonstrate the complex ways in which urban spatial policy and implementation are shaped by (shifting) politics, institutions, agencies and actors. Although urban peripheries may be considered in spatial policy, little attention is given to their diversity, their dynamism and to the everyday lives of residents, which emerge in other chapters.
This chapter explores lived experiences of access to work and livelihoods on the urban peripheries of South Africa and Ethiopia, relating these to the varying logics of peripheries spelled out in the Introduction (i.e. speculative, vanguard, auto-constructed, transitioning, inherited). It contributes to debates on the extent to which new growth on the edge is likely to be associated with poor access to employment and a reliance on commuting, at least for the urban poor. It considers the extent to which major infrastructure and economic investment in vanguard and speculative peripheries result in better access to employment and economic opportunity, and the types of jobs and livelihoods generated in these and other areas. It suggests that while there may be higher levels of employment and more opportunities in economically dynamic areas, jobs available can be short term or inaccessible to the poor. Despite differences across areas, there is a significant reliance on commuting, diverse local livelihood strategies, social grants (in South Africa) and (often politically mediated) public works programmes, none of which are adequate to meet the challenge of secure livelihoods on the urban edge.
Focusing on Ethiopia and South Africa, this chapter explores the dynamics and drivers of investment and economic change on urban peripheries in the case studies, focusing on areas where there has been significant private and public investment at some point: Tulu Dimtu and Yeka Abado in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and in South Africa, Lufhereng in Johannesburg, Ekangala in the City of Tshwane and northern eThekwini. Taking each country in turn, it presents some of the general policy trends and frameworks shaping investment in each national context, and some of the ways in which these are experienced, before considering the city-regions and case study areas. Using empirical evidence, it highlights the diverse trajectories of these places, key actors and agencies, and some of the specific major investment projects that have been shaping our case study peripheries. It adds substance to concepts of speculative, vanguard and inherited peripheries which are developed and presented in the Introduction to this book, in relation to the case studies.
This chapter examines transport and mobility in the urban peripheries of South Africa and Ethiopia through an analysis of existing forms of transportation and argues that the urban peripheries produce particular challenges around cost, time and infrastructure tied to the histories and logics of the varying peripheries. It discusses investments in road and rail infrastructure and considers the significance and limitations of walking for residents, impacted by often very significant geographic peripherality. Stuckness and immobility are key concepts underscoring the experiential realities for residents, and the chapter calls for a relational understanding of these concepts to situate peripheral locations relative to more centralised environments.
The edges of cities are increasingly understood as places of dynamism and change, but there is little research on African urban peripheries and the nature of building, growth, investment and decline that is shaping them. This multi-authored monograph examines African urban peripheries through a dual focus on the logics driving the transformation of these spaces and the experience of living through these changes. As well as exploring the generic dynamics of peripheral change across the continent, it provides rich qualitative insights into the specificity and distinctiveness of a range of peripheral locations. Using substantial comparative empirical data from city-regions in Ethiopia, South Africa and Ghana, in conversation with research in other African contexts, it provides a cogent analysis of spatial transformations and everyday life on the African city periphery. It argues that urban peripheries are formed through five distinct but interconnected logics that capture the complexities of periphery formation and changes therein. However, it illustrates that to fully understand the nature of change in urban peripheries, we need to situate these logics in relation to the varied lived experiences of people living there. Developed within a framework of comparative urbanism, the book considers multiple issues, including economic and infrastructural transitions, political practices, social outcomes and differences, and spatial and material changes. In order to bring the realities of ‘living the periphery’ to life, the book foregrounds the voices of residents throughout, supported by visual images.
This chapter introduces the book, locating it within literature on urban peripheries, noting its insights but also limitations, particularly its ability to engage with the complexities of urban change as narrated by residents in these spaces. The book then details the methodological approach which combines an analysis of drivers of change with an understanding of lived experiences using mixed methods (social surveys, diaries, interviews) and the adoption of a comparative urbanism approach, drawing on both genetic and generative tactics informing our case study analyses and conceptual framings. We provide an understanding of African peripheries through a focus on three case study city-regions – Gauteng and eThekwini in South Africa and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia – and seven urban peripheral areas within these. We introduce the Accra cases used within the chapter on Ghana, where the urbanisation of land under traditional tenure systems and the conflict and politics of land are examined. Next, we outline five logics of urban peripheral development (speculative; vanguard; auto-constructed; transitioning; inherited), which we developed inductively through our research and which unpack the urban periphery concept in new ways. The value of these lies in their recognition of how logics of peripheral development can co-exist, hybridise and bleed into each other to differing degrees in specific places and at different temporal junctures. Importantly, our five logics also facilitate conceptual as well as substantive comparison across and within our seven cases and arguably beyond into other African peripheral contexts. Finally, the chapter outlines the structure of the book to follow.
This chapter examines the evolution and ‘lived experience’ consequences of housing policy in Ethiopia in recent decades, which was radically transformed by the introduction of the Integrated Housing Development Programme (IHDP) from 2005. This was a major ‘vanguard’ investment aimed at transforming the economic and social character of the urban periphery. The chapter situates this programme in relation to broader developments in Ethiopian housing policy, including the cooperative housing programme that was initiated in the 1970s but continued into the twenty-first century. It then explores some of the tensions at the heart of the IHDP, which set out to produce ‘affordable’ housing at the same time as being part of an economic growth and homeownership agenda, leading to escalating prices and rents as well as mass displacement. The lived experience of housing of various kinds in our case study areas is then examined. The chapter concludes that ultimately the apparent promise of the ‘vanguard periphery’ in these areas was partly undermined by limitations in infrastructural capacity but also by the simultaneous creation of auto-constructed, speculative and potentially future ‘inherited’ peripheries.
The book’s conclusions are briefly presented in the last chapter. Given that each chapter offers its own concluding reflections, this chapter returns to the question of urban comparison within African peripheries and considers the value of comparison for advancing understanding in these complex urban spaces. It briefly addresses the book’s contribution to core literatures detailed here at the start of this chapter, but primarily it returns to our conceptual framework and our five logics of African urban peripheries to consider their value and limitations. Finally, the chapter considers the policy implications, very generally, of some of the arguments and evidence presented in this text.
This chapter uses data from key informant interviews and resident diaries and interviews to examine the varied governance structures shaping the peripheries in both South Africa and Ethiopia. It opens with a discussion of key conceptual framings relevant to understanding governance trends in urban peripheries and moves to review the multiscalar institutional bodies, administrative structures, local committees and key figures including ward leaders and ‘strongmen’ operating in, and responsible for, the peripheral spaces in city-regions. Within this review the chapter offers brief reflections on hybridity, the limitations of the state and the role of the private sector shaping decision-making. It turns to an analysis of borders and boundaries as central to particular governance contestations and analyses state–citizen relations using the insights drawn from the book’s overarching ‘lived experiences’ approach. Throughout the chapter, conceptualisations of the periphery, developed in the Introduction, are drawn on to analyse particular governance arrangements and practices, including new structures within vanguard peripheries, ‘transitioning peripheries’ possessing hybrid governance structures and auto-constructed peripheries where informalised mechanisms of leadership are evident, alongside weakened state structures which are obligated to serve ‘inherited peripheries’.
This chapter examines the operationalising of research focused on understanding how transformation in the spatial peripheries of South African cities and an Ethiopian city is shaped, governed and experienced. We discuss both intellectual and methodological challenges and insights of undertaking the research which has at its core a desire to understand the dynamics and drivers of change and the ‘lived experiences’ of residents living on the peripheries of cities, using a mixed qualitative methods approach. We reflect upon and propose conceptualisations concerning terms such as periphery, ‘drivers of change’ and what or whose lived experiences are captured or can be known. In doing so we point to preliminary findings and consider issues of comparability and differentials in data depth and coverage. The chapter concludes by highlighting the richness of researching the peripheries.