New metropolitan sites of policy innovation and resilience: civic imagination in Kibera Slum in Kenya

Abstract

Today, slums have become prominent features of urban inequalities in developing nations. According to statistics, over half of the urban population in Africa resides in slums. This proportion is projected to reach 1.3 billion people by 2050. In Sub-Sahara Africa, two-thirds of the urban population live in slums (UN-Habitat, 2011; UN-Habitat, 2015). In Asia, 30% of urban residents dwell in slums while in Latin America and the Caribbean region, about 24% (United Nations, 2015). By 2050, the proportion of the urban population living in slums globally is projected to reach 3 billion people (UN-Habitat, 2003; UN-Habitat, 2013). Scholars and policy actors alike agree that left unaddressed, slums will continue to expand, posing a greater risk to urban sustainability, particularly in developing nations. In this work, I present an analysis demonstrating how independent, internal efforts within an Africa slum, Kibera in Kenya are responsive to some of the presumed deficits of institutionalized slums. I demonstrate how radical innovations can evolve, with excellent benefits in resource-constrained environments (Gupta, 2016; Pansera, 2013; Thieme, 2017). The work presented in this dissertation is a practical re-imagination of slums as new sites of metropolitan policy innovations and resilience. Using narratives from key informant interviews coupled with field observations and document reviews, this study demonstrates how social resilience, practicality, collectivity, and agility in Kibera Slum compose skillsets that enable Kibera residents to navigate diverse pressures presented by their environment without external support. The findings underscore the importance of urban informality to the contemporary investigation of urban struggles in global south metropolitans. The assemblage of social experimentation presented in this work provides important lessons to urban development theories and policies seeking to build on community capabilities and resilience.