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. What does it mean to make a life in an African city
today? How do ordinary Africans, surrounded by collapsing urban
infrastructures and amid fantastical promises of hypermodern,
globalised futures, try to ensure a place for themselves in the
city's future? Exploring the relationship between the remains of
empire and the global city, and themes of urban belonging and
exclusion, housing and security, Constance Smith examines the
making and remaking of one ofAfrica's most fragmented, vibrant
cities. Nairobi is on the cusp of radical urban change. As in other
capital cities across Africa, the Kenyan government has launched
"Vision 2030", an urban megaproject that envisions the capital as a
"world class metropolis", a spectacular new node in a network of
global cities. Yet as a city born of British colonialism,
Nairobians also live amongst the dilapidated vestiges of imperial
urban planning; spaces designed to regulate urban subjects. Based
on extensive ethnographic research in a dilapidated, colonial-era
public housing project built as a model urban neighbourhood but
which is now slated for demolition, Smith explores how projects of
self-making and city-making are entwined. She traces how it is
through residents' everyday lives - in the mundane, incremental
work of home maintenance, in the accumulation of stories about the
past, in ordinary people's aspirations for the future - that urban
landscapes are formed, imaginatively, materially and unpredictably,
across time. Nairobi emerges as a place of pathways and plans,
obstructions and aspirations, residues and endurances, thatinflect
the way that ordinary people produce the city, generating practices
of historymaking, ideas about urban belonging and attempts to
refashion "Vision 2030" into a future more meaningful and inclusive
to ordinary city dwellers. Published in association with the
British Institute in Eastern Africa. Kenya, Uganda,
Tanzania,Rwanda: Twaweza Communications
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