The City Makers of Nairobi

The City Makers of Nairobi PDF Author: Anders Ese
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000096777
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
The City Makers of Nairobi re-examines the history of the urban development of Nairobi in the colonial period. Although Nairobi was a colonial construct with lasting negative repercussions, the African population’s impact on its history and development is often overlooked. This book shows how Africans took an active part in making use of the city and creating it, and how they were far from being subjects in the development of a European colonial city. This re-interpretation of Nairobi’s history suggests that the post-colonial city is the result of more than unjust and segregative colonial planning. Merging historical documentation with extensive contemporary urban theory, this book provides in-depth knowledge of the key historical roles played by locals in the development of their city. It argues that the idea of agency, a popular inroad to urban development today, is not a current phenomenon but one that has always existed with its many social, spatial, and physical ramifications. This is an ideal read for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students studying the history of urban development and theories, providing an in-depth case study for reference. The City Makers of Nairobi broaches interdisciplinary themes important to urban planners, social scientists, historians, and those working with popular settlements in cities across the world.

The City Makers of Nairobi

The City Makers of Nairobi PDF Author: Anders Ese
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000096777
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book

Book Description
The City Makers of Nairobi re-examines the history of the urban development of Nairobi in the colonial period. Although Nairobi was a colonial construct with lasting negative repercussions, the African population’s impact on its history and development is often overlooked. This book shows how Africans took an active part in making use of the city and creating it, and how they were far from being subjects in the development of a European colonial city. This re-interpretation of Nairobi’s history suggests that the post-colonial city is the result of more than unjust and segregative colonial planning. Merging historical documentation with extensive contemporary urban theory, this book provides in-depth knowledge of the key historical roles played by locals in the development of their city. It argues that the idea of agency, a popular inroad to urban development today, is not a current phenomenon but one that has always existed with its many social, spatial, and physical ramifications. This is an ideal read for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students studying the history of urban development and theories, providing an in-depth case study for reference. The City Makers of Nairobi broaches interdisciplinary themes important to urban planners, social scientists, historians, and those working with popular settlements in cities across the world.

Urban Planet

Urban Planet PDF Author: Thomas Elmqvist
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108186963
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Global urbanization promises better services, stronger economies, and more connections; it also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. To deepen our understanding of this complex process and its importance for global sustainability, we need to build interdisciplinary knowledge around a systems approach. Urban Planet takes an integrative look at our urban environment, bringing together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines: from sociology and political science to evolutionary biology, geography, economics and engineering. It includes the perspectives of often neglected voices: architects, journalists, artists and activists. The book provides a much needed cross-scale perspective, connecting challenges and solutions on a local scale with drivers and policy frameworks on a regional and global scale. The authors argue that to overcome the major challenges we are facing, we must embark on a large-scale reinvention of how we live together, grounded in inclusiveness and sustainability. This title is also available Open Access.

Nairobi in the Making

Nairobi in the Making PDF Author: Constance Smith
Publisher: James Currey
ISBN: 9781847013262
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Examines the making and remaking of Nairobi, one of Africa's most fragmented, vibrant cities, contributing to debates on urban anthropology, the politics of the past and postcolonial materialities.

Cities for Life

Cities for Life PDF Author: Jason Corburn
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831727
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In cities around the world, planning and health experts are beginning to understand the role of social and environmental conditions that lead to trauma. By respecting the lived experience of those who were most impacted by harms, some cities have developed innovative solutions for urban trauma. In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma--including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.

African Urban Harvest

African Urban Harvest PDF Author: Gordon Prain
Publisher: IDRC
ISBN: 1441962492
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book seeks to answer the question of how much urban agriculture helps feed and support people living in towns and cities with evidence and proposals based on studies in Eastern and Central Africa.

The Elgar Companion to Urban Infrastructure Governance

The Elgar Companion to Urban Infrastructure Governance PDF Author: Finger, Matthias
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800375611
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
A comprehensive overview of the governance of urban infrastructures, this Companion combines illustrative cases with conceptual approaches to offer an innovative perspective on the governance of large urban infrastructure systems. Chapters examine the challenges facing urban infrastructure systems, including financial, economic, technological, social, ecological, jurisdictional and demand.

Black Citymakers

Black Citymakers PDF Author: Marcus Anthony Hunter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199339775
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
W.E.B. DuBois immortalized Philadelphia's Black Seventh Ward neighborhood, one of America's oldest urban black communities, in his 1899 sociological study The Philadelphia Negro. In the century after DuBois's study, however, the district has been transformed into a largely white upper middle class neighborhood. Black Citymakers revisits the Black Seventh Ward, documenting a century of banking and tenement collapses, housing activism, black-led anti-urban renewal mobilization, and post-Civil Rights political change from the perspective of the Black Seventh Warders. Drawing on historical, political, and sociological research, Marcus Hunter argues that black Philadelphians were by no means mere casualties of the large scale social and political changes that altered urban dynamics across the nation after World War II. Instead, Hunter shows that black Americans framed their own understandings of urban social change, forging dynamic inter- and intra-racial alliances that allowed them to shape their own migration from the old Black Seventh Ward to emergent black urban enclaves throughout Philadelphia. These Philadelphians were not victims forced from their homes - they were citymakers and agents of urban change. Black Citymakers explores a century of socioeconomic, cultural, and political history in the Black Seventh Ward, creating a new understanding of the political agency of black residents, leaders and activists in twentieth century urban change.

The City in Transgression

The City in Transgression PDF Author: Benedict Anderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000093557
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The City in Transgression explores the unacknowledged, neglected, and ill-defined spaces of the built environment and their transition into places of resistance and residence by refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, the homeless, and the disadvantaged. The book draws on urban and spatial theory, socio-economic factors, public space, and architecture to offer an intimate look at how urban sites and infrastructure are transformed into spaces for occupation. Anderson proposes that the varied innovations and adaptations of urban spaces enacted by such marginalized figures – for whom there are no other options – herald a radical new spatial programming of cities. The book explores cities and sites such as Mexico City and London, the Mexican/US border, the Calais Jungle, and Palestinian camps in Beirut and utilizes concepts associated with ‘mobility’ – such as anarchy, vagrancy, and transgression – alongside photography, 3D modelling, and 2D imagery. From this constellation of materials and analysis, a radical spatial picture of the city in transgression emerges. By focusing on the ‘underside of urbanism’, The City in Transgression reveals the potential for new spatial networks that can cultivate the potential for self-organization so as to counter the existing dominant urban models of capital and property and to confront some of the major issues facing cities amid an age of global human mobility. This book is valuable reading for those interested in architectural theory, modern history, human geography and mobility, climate change, urban design, and transformation.

African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective

African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective PDF Author: Steven J. Salm
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580463140
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
This book presents new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of African urban history and culture. Moving between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary urban spaces, it covers the major regions, religions, and urban societies of sub-Saharan Africa. African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective presents new and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of African urban history and culture. It presents original research and integrates historical methodologies with those of anthropology, geography, literature, art, and architecture. Moving between precolonial, colonial, and contemporary urban spaces, it covers the major regions, religions, and cultural influences of sub-Saharan Africa. The themes include Islam and Christianity, architecture, migration, globalization, social and physical decay, identity, race relations, politics, and development. This book elaborates on not only what makes the study of African urban spaces unique within urban historiography, it also offers an-encompassing and up-to-date study of the subject and inserts Africa into the growing debate on urban history and culture throughout the world. The opportunities provided by the urban milieu are endless and each study opens new potential avenues of research. This book explores some of those avenues and lays the groundwork on which new studies can build. Contributors: Maurice NyamangaAmutabi, Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch, Mark Dike DeLancey, Thomas Ngomba Ekali, Omar A. Eno, Doug T. Feremenga, Laurent Fourchard, James Genova, Fatima Muller-Friedman, Godwin R. Murunga, Kefa M. Otiso, Michael Ralph, Jeremy Rich, Eric Ross, Corinne Sandwith, Wessel Visser. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; Steven J.Salm is Assistant Professor of History, Xavier University of Louisiana.

Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa

Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa PDF Author: Mary Njeri Kinyanjui
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1780326335
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
In this highly original work, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui explores the trajectory of women's movement from the margins of urbanization into the centres of business activities in Nairobi and its accompanying implications for urban planning. While women in much of Africa have struggled to gain urban citizenship and continue to be weighed down by poor education, low income and confinement to domestic responsibilities due to patriarchic norms, a new form of urban dynamism - partly informed by the informal economy - is now enabling them to manage poverty, create jobs and link to the circuits of capital and labour. Relying on social ties, reciprocity, sharing and collaboration, women's informal 'solidarity entrepreneurialism' is taking them away from the margins of business activity and catapulting them into the centre. Bringing together key issues of gender, economic informality and urban planning in Africa, Kinyanjui demonstrates that women have become a critical factor in the making of a postcolonial city.