International Planning Studies

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Urban mobility and spatial justice: Prospects for non-motorized mobility in Nairobi
(2024) Nyamai, Dorcas Nthoki; Schramm, Sophie; Mireri, Caleb
This research investigates the relationship between mobility and justice in the context of Nairobi. Deriving from Amartya Sen's notion that justice addresses remediable injustices, the study explores justice as a dynamic concept influenced by diverse cultures, political ideologies, and philosophical paradigms. Spatial planning is taken as a canvas for these philosophical debates, manifesting in the spatial distribution of resources. Justice in relation to mobility is invoked and performed in various ways. This is based on the premise that space not only contains resources that can be distributed but also consists of individuals who are highly mobile within that space, and whose perceptions play a pivotal role in shaping the concept of justice in relation to mobility. Mobility, as a key element, plays a pivotal role in addressing spatial inequalities, as it facilitates access to the resources that are spatially disjointed. The intersection of mobility and justice unfolds in the streets and neighbourhoods, where spatial planning decisions impact infrastructure provision and access to services and opportunities. In Nairobi, a focus on motorized mobility has subtracted from the advancement of the modes of mobility used by the majority especially the most vulnerable, with a discernible outcome of injustices. Planning for motorized mobility has historically been at a higher level of consideration although a much larger percentage of the population travels on foot. The technical engineering design that lacks integration of social aspects of mobility has presented challenges in provision of safe non-motorized infrastructure, enduringly dismissing non-motorized mobility as a valid mode of mobility. Through a four- dimensional framework that includes space, mobility, individual characteristics and time, this research explores how spatial injustices in Nairobi’s mobility landscape unfold and are made manifest. Viewed from this perspective, the organization of space and the prioritization of the mobility needs of the most vulnerable present a notable way in which spatial justice unfolds and is understood.
Co-production between insurgency and exploitation: promises and precarities of a traveling concept
(2024-03-28) Schramm, Sophie
Co-production has inspired planning practice and research in the past decades. Along with its appropriation in the planning literature it has undergone manifold translations and its boundaries have become blurry. In this commentary I propose a conceptualisation of co-production not only as efficient service provision by citizens and state actors together but furthermore as a kind of city-making that has transformative potential beyond concrete interventions in the present moment. This matters because it enables a conceptual discrimination between co-production and the exploitation of marginalised people’s resources, time, and labour. I argue that the necessity of this discrimination becomes apparent when analysing co-productive efforts in their embeddedness in space and time.
Between the “structural” and the “everyday”: bridging macro and micro perspectives in comparative urban research
(2023-12-26) Appelhans, Nadine; Schramm, Sophie
The discussion around placing cities within a larger network of cities and the criteria by which they are assessed has recently gained new momentum. Consideration of Southern, disadvantaged, or “peripheral” geographies previously neglected in comparative approaches are now being considered and have opened up new perspectives on the wider urban context. This thematic issue, thereby, explores the practical challenges of how comparative urbanism across a broadening range of dissimilar places across the globe is handled. The collection of empirical studies presented will lay out the challenges and insights gained into applying comparative methodologies to the real-world context, thereby contributing to the advancement of empirical tools for complex and multi-scalar research environments.
Housing pathways of the “missing people” of public housing and resettlement programs: methodological reflections
(2023-12-26) Beier, Raffael
This article deals with methodological challenges and presents solutions for the study of people who depart from state-subsidized housing in Ethiopia, Morocco, and South Africa. Having sold or rented out their units, these people have left and now live at dispersed locations. Assuming that many “missing people” leave state housing because of project-related shortcomings, studying the reasons for their departure is crucial to understanding standardized housing programs. “Missing people” urge scholars to emphasize the afterlives of housing policy interventions as a necessary analytical dimension. However, such research is confronted with three major methodological challenges: How is it possible to approach and study people who have disappeared from the area of a housing intervention? How can one link exploratory, in-depth qualitative accounts, rooted in subjective perceptions of the everyday, to potential structural deficiencies of standardized housing interventions? What kind of methodologies may help take into account the temporalities of displacement and resettlement? In order to overcome these challenges, the article presents innovative forms of purposive sampling and discusses analytical strategies, which—based on Clapham’s framework of “housing pathways”—bridge relational and structural perspectives to housing programs.
A historical account of walking in Nairobi within the context of spatial justice
(2022-11-27) Nyamai, Dorcas Nthoki
In the ostensibly unceasing prioritization of motorized infrastructure, walking has remained a ubiquitous mode of mobility for a large proportion of Nairobi’s urban commuters. Planning for motorized mobility has historically been at a higher level of consideration although a much larger percentage of the population travels on foot. The conspicuous pedestrian has been and continues to be masked under the spotlight of the motor vehicle with a discernible outcome of spatial injustices. Using secondary data, historical literature and expert interviews, this paper examines how walking as a mode of mobility has developed over time and the challenges experienced by pedestrians in Nairobi. Linking to the notion of justice, the paper attempts to assess the association between walking and spatial justice using three dimensions—spatial, modal and individual dimensions—that are used as a framework to assess how injustices unfold and are experienced by Nairobi’s pedestrians. The historical path dependency that has restricted and attempted to replace walkability by prioritizing motor vehicle use as well as the technical engineering design that lacks integration of social aspects of mobility has presented challenges in provision of safe non-motorized infrastructure in the contemporary urban travel in Nairobi, enduringly dismissing walking as a valid mode of mobility. Advancing spatial justice in Nairobi’s urban mobility will require more than a technical process of extending the side of the road by a metre or two but rather deliberate effort in understanding the pedestrians’ mobility needs that can best be understood by attuning to the everyday realities of travelling on foot.
Water infrastructure governance: practices, modalities, spatialities and pricing beyond the utility in Dar es Salaam
(2023) Dakyaga, Francis; Schramm, Sophie; Greiving, Stefan
Cities in the global South have been typified as geographies where networked water infrastructure remains uneven in terms of coverage. They are also characterized as geographies where networked and heterogeneous non-utility-networked water infrastructure co-exist. These comprised, community shared water schemes, protected wells, boreholes with hand pumps, tanker trucks water delivery, water kiosks, pushcarts, rainwater harvesting, and private mechanized networked water infrastructure that supply water beyond the utility. While networked water infrastructures exist in tandem with these infrastructures in cities of the global South, access to water is yet problematic. In the context of rapid urbanization and climate change, urban scholars have advocated for the adoption of varied water infrastructures that supply water beyond the utility network as alternative ways to lessen the burden of networked water infrastructure. Scholarly advocacy on thinking beyond the network infrastructure, encourages policymakers and urban scholars to pay attention to non-utility-networked water infrastructures. They highlight how rainwater harvesting, groundwater, boreholes, tanker truck water supply, Community-based water schemes, and wastewater recycling just to mention a few—hold potentials for adapting water supply to the present changing socio-ecological conditions. Likewise, they demonstrate the crucial role of governance in facilitating water access within multiple water infrastructures, especially infrastructures beyond the utility network. In sub-Saharan African cities, heterogeneous non-utility-networked water infrastructures such as boreholes, shallow wells, tanker trucks for water distribution, pushcarts, and protected deep and shallow aquifers (tubes), supply water beyond the utility network. Though state governance via the institution of formal policy mechanisms and enforcement can promote public and environmental health and improve water access, the governance of water supply of the aforementioned infrastructures remains understudied and less understood in urban studies. This dissertation focuses on the governance of heterogeneous non-utility-networked water infrastructures in cities in the global South. It examines the extent to which water supply beyond the utility is governed, the practices mediating water supply of the non-utility-networked water infrastructure, and how governance of water production and distribution beyond the utility network can improve water access. I frame governance as a “practice, an act of doing” grounded in practice theory through which I, (i) explore and analyze the governance arrangements of heterogeneous non-utility-networked water infrastructures, in terms of water production and distribution beyond the utility, (ii) determine how everyday practices of non-state actors mediate the development of water infrastructures and the mechanisms that sustain such infrastructure for water supply; (iii) analyse the practice of pricing water, the mechanisms that determine water prices, and how they are regulated, and (iv) evaluate the potentials and limits of the ordinary ways in which water supply (production and distribution) beyond the utility is governed in Dar es Salaam. Drawing on an inductive approach alongside a case study strategy, I conducted interviews and surveys, Focus group discussions, and household case studies in the city of Dar es Salaam. Additionally, I developed a comprehensive framework of governance modalities, actors, and interactions within heterogeneous infrastructures as a heuristic device for analyzing non-utility-networked water infrastructures in terms of their governance. The findings reveal the existence of varied categories of water infrastructures, including privately networked water (non-utility pipe water supply systems), self-supply water infrastructure, communal/shared water infrastructure, and hydro-mobile infrastructure. The study highlights the dominant governance modes facilitating water supply beyond the utility to include (in)formal co-production, market-oriented governance and self-governance. Residents used low-cost water servicing models, including drilling and mechanizing water systems, to address water issues. Other activities included installing equipment and storage tanks, extending PVC pipelines to interested neighbours that could afford the cost, and negotiating with plumbers for water network extensions. These practices were varied based on the type of water infrastructure and the water delivery model. Prices were determined by factors specific to different water infrastructures and providers, including distance, fuel costs, vehicle maintenance, profit margins, recurring costs like electricity, material technologies, repairs, maintenance, and paying employees. These practices improved spatial access to water but were limited in terms of quality and cost. The study suggests mixed governance model: co-governance, co-management, formal co-production as means of fostering collaboration between state and non-state actors and improving water access beyond the utility network.
Why low-income people leave state housing in South Africa: progress, failure or temporary setback?
(2023-01-24) Beier, Raffael
The delivery of houses for homeownership to low-income urban dwellers has been a cornerstone of post-apartheid policies fighting both land and socioeconomic inequalities in South Africa. In this context, policy stakeholders and scholars have been puzzled by housing beneficiaries who leave their state houses, either selling or letting them. On the one hand, this might signal upward mobility where “leavers” successfully integrate into the housing market, climbing the next rung of the “property ladder”. On the other, it could indicate that “leavers” cannot afford to stay in their state houses and are consequently displaced to worse living conditions. However, due to methodological challenges, research on the experiences and perspectives of “leavers” is scarce. Based on narrative interviews with “leavers”, this article questions the progress/failure dichotomy. Instead, it argues that “leaving” could be construed as people-led reconfigurations of pro-poor housing policy – representing alternative, individually adapted but partly constrained pathways towards inclusion, 25 years after the end of apartheid.
Storage city: water tanks, jerry cans, and batteries as infrastructure in Nairobi
(2023-02-01) Kasper, Moritz; Schramm, Sophie
Against the ‘normative concept of the networked city’, urban studies and infrastructure research have seen a shift towards investigations beyond the network that engage with the post-networked city, heterogeneous infrastructures, and other situations ‘on, off, below and beyond’ the grid, especially in southern cities. Expanding on debates around southern urbanisms and their socio-technical infrastructures, we explore a ubiquitous yet rarely discussed element of contemporary urban infrastructures: storage. In Nairobi, a city shaped by infrastructural heterogeneity and uncertainty, households of all backgrounds and sizes store water and electricity within various constellations of actors, practices and artefacts. We show how domestic storage, its artefacts and practices cumulate in a storage city that is not opposed to a networked or post-networked city but rather entangled with it. We present domestic storage as crucial infrastructure to the socio-technical functioning of Nairobi, discuss diverse storage artefacts and practices, and highlight how a focus on storage can contribute to re-imaginings of infrastructural articulations beyond networks and flows.
Planning by exception: the regulation of Nairobi’s margins
(2022-11-10) Schramm, Sophie; Bize, Amiel
Nairobi’s planning regime is characterized by two conditions of exception: on the one hand, exceptions from regulation, that is, planning offices granting exceptions from planning rules and, on the other hand, regulatory regimes that are enforced by low-level administrations outside the planning office but that significantly impact Nairobi’s urban space—we call this exceptional regulation. We argue that it is these two intertwined conditions of exception that make possible the building of shiny modern city as well as the provision of essential urban services. We examine the two conditions of “planning by exception” by analyzing a scrap heap that has endured in central Nairobi for over a decade, even as the neighborhood around it has radically changed. The position of the scrap heap makes the contradictions of this regime of planning particularly visible. On the one hand, the construction sites dotting these neighborhoods provide a wealth of scrap for dealers to gather—and dealers, in turn, provide an essential recovery service. On the other hand, in these increasingly exclusive spaces, businesses like scrap metal heaps are no longer welcome. Thus, the construction boom simultaneously grants scrap dealers opportunities for accumulation and makes the conditions of that accumulation highly uncertain. This scrap metal heap thus offers important insights into Nairobi's spatial regulation because it is both a leftover from the neighborhood’s earlier socio-spatial form and intricately entangled with the redevelopments currently reshaping the city. Our key contribution is that we can only understand urbanization of Nairobi—and other postcolonial cities—if we understand planning as simultaneously working through a regime that grants exceptions to formal planning and by employing exceptional regulation of marginalized spaces.
Ordinary neighbourhoods
(2022-05-30) Beier, Raffael
Emphasising implicit assumptions behind our ways of seeing ‘slums’, this essay calls for a radical understanding of ‘ordinary neighbourhoods’. Borrowing from Robinson’s ‘ordinary cities’ concept, it conceptualises ‘ordinariness’ as a way of rejecting the ‘absolute otherness’ of slums, stressing heterogeneity within and between neighbourhoods as well as the significance of comparative empirical research. Beyond the need for alternative, less stigmatised terms, the article urges for a new territorial ethics, a radical deconstruction and de-mystification of the ‘slum’. Such conceptualisation should make aware of the term ‘slum’ as a non-physical, spatially detached social construct that discredits marginalised people and diverts attention away from precarious living conditions and possible ways of improving them.
Online podcast production as co-creation for intercultural participation in neighbourhood development
(2022-09-29) Barbarino, Robert; Herlo, Bianca; Bergmann, Malte
This article describes the usage of an online podcast workshop as an arts-based research method to reflect on intercultural participation. The podcast workshop was co-developed by researchers, local civil society actors, and administrative employees and deployed in a research infrastructure based on real-world labs. We show how the online podcast workshop as a research tool elicits co-creation with agonistic as well as communicative practices. The podcast combined practices of making with socially engaged research, using digital storytelling. It aimed at enhancing intercultural dialogue and participation and was used as an opportunity for voices that are not sufficiently represented in local public discourse on neighbourhood development to become recognised and challenge marginalisation. Based on one online podcast workshop, the article addresses new possibilities for collective and collaborative action during the Covid-19 pandemic and frames the podcast as a moderated place for exchange and reflection in the digital space. The podcast workshop intended to foster further discussion on the topic of intercultural participation and was conceived as a tool for empowerment that participants can use for further conversations and exchange in their communities.
Interview Guides - DFG Project "Analysing Moving Decisions of Former Slum Dwellers After Resettlement"
(2022-08-22) Beier, Raffael
Since the turn of the Millennium, many countries of the Global South have implemented new large-scale, supply-oriented housing programmes. Calling for cities 'without slums', their common objective is the fight against inadequate housing. Most of these housing programmes move population from inner-city 'slums' towards new housing at the urban spatial peripheries. Many resettled dwellers appreciate new housing comfort and shelter quality. At the same time, they criticise one-size-fits-all approaches that disregard the heterogeneity of target communities, low affordability for vulnerable population groups, as well as peripheral locations, further away from inner-city job markets and urban centre functions. However, scholarly works dealing with housing-related urban resettlement have focused exclusively on people that actually live in the new houses. While they recognise that many resettled residents never reach the new sites or decide to move further, they have disregarded this significant population group due to methodological issues. As it is difficult to locate these dispersed people, there are mainly assumptions about why people drop out of housing programmes. The objective of this research project is to look explicitly at these people to counter structural biases in the analysis of supply-driven housing and resettlement programmes. For this purpose, the research project analyses housing programmes in Ethiopia, Morocco, and South Africa in a comparative way. It relies on innovative, flexible, and locally adapted forms of snowball sampling to locate people that left new housing units. It should be analysed why people move out again, where they move, and under which conditions they live after the second move. Through narrative-biographic forms of interviewing the project sheds light on residential trajectories and subjective decision making in order to understand people's lived experiences of and aspirations towards adequate and affordable housing. Thus, the research goes explicitly beyond programmatic resettlement, analysing moving decisions from people's perspectives and in relation to their housing biographies. Due to the analysis of housing preferences of long-term disregarded population groups, the research project allows for more comprehensive and demand-oriented understanding of large-scale, standardised housing programmes. In the long run, this knowledge will be useful to develop innovative housing programmes that take heterogeneous housing demands of marginalised population groups seriously.
Rural sustainable development policies in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and their impact on migration
(2021) Nanakali, Hemna A. Mawlood; Schmidt-Kallert, Einhard; Gruehn, Dietwald
Rural migration in Kurdistan Region has occurred in two different patterns as a result of two different policies. The first pattern was a forced migration by a policy of the Iraqi government. This policy resulted in total demolition and evacuation of 4000 villages and lasted between five to 17 years, depending on the area. In contrast, the second migration was a consequence of push and pull factors. After the approval of the new investment law by the Kurdistan Region Government in 2006, this region was quickly developed and several sectors were significantly improved, such as the oil and construction sectors which pulled labour force everywhere to different sectors. However, the agricultural sector was not that much in the focus of the government and investors as compared like the other sectors. Hence, this development caused significant rural to urban migration and had severe adverse impacts, even ruin, for agricultural projects. This study describes the size of the demolition, and additionally investigates the most effective factor for migration after 1991. On the other hand, the study also explains how the government dealt with this phenomenon. The study employed a mixed-methods research design involving archival methods for the extent of the demolition. Furthermore, questionnaires were administered to 330 migrants and non-migrants (165 migrants in Mergasur and 165 non-migrants in Bahrka) to test the conceptual framework and the hypotheses. This was followed by an in-depth interview with 20 villagers and farmers to explore the push and pull factors in both origin and destination places. The last step in the research process were the expert interviews. These interviews were conducted with six persons at different levels from top management to low managerial level. The analysis revealed that the general effects of migrations in the rural areas were mixed. While migrations have had negative or positive impacts for some, they have also impacted on work culture, family size, lifestyle and education level. There were various factors such as physical security, income and other factors related to income that were the main factors impacting on migration after 1991. The factor of income was more deeply defined in this study as a “secured satisfied income”, which is addressed at a minimum by the Critical income level (CIL). The study concluded that the CIL is $137 and can be reached via proper policies in a proper conceptual framework.
Effectiveness of participatory approaches in rural development
(2019) Devrikyan, Rubina; Schmidt-Kallert, Einhard; Kohlmeyer, Christoph
Water, sanitation and poverty: CBOs activities and policy planning in Northern region, Ghana
(2015) Akanchalabey, Eva Azengapo; Schmidt-Kallert, Einhard; Bacho, Francis Zunuo Lankuu; Gaesing, Karin
Traditional work ethic in a changing context
(2014) Kinyashi, George Frank; Schmidt-Kallert, Einhard; Frank, Susanne

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