Paper short abstract:

Since 2004 Amsterdam’s Diamantbuurt has been employed as a stand in for Dutch dystopian urban landscapes. Local young men of Moroccan descent are the villains of the story, “Dutch” residents their victims. Such framing is echoed in local policies. In this paper I discuss how different actors engage with top-down gentrification policies and their framing of the troubled Diamantbuurt.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2004 Amsterdam's Diamantbuurt has consistently been used as an example of dystopian urban landscapes that are the cause of Dutch distress. Local young men of Moroccan descent are the archetypical villains of the story, "Dutch" residents their classic victims. Such framing is echoed in local policies in terms of the definition and framing of problems, the cast of characters that is presented, and the ways in which affections are distributed among these iconic figures. In this paper, I explore such resonances in gentrification policies.

In the Diamantbuurt, the sale of social housing is seen as a way to redeem what in media discourses is portrayed as an abject space. In line with current urban policy wisdom, gentrification is seen as a road to redemption through the replacement of parts of the sitting population, figured as troublesome and fraudulent, with wealthier urbanites who are expected to bring a different social life and present a better match with the market value of this "underdeveloped" part of central Amsterdam. Such policies imply iconic figures that are indelibly race, class and gender-inflected: the large, poor migrant family versus the young white yuppie couple. In this paper I discuss how different actors - real-estate agents, housing professionals and activists, and various residents - engage with such top-down gentrification policies and their framing of the troubled Diamantbuurt.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I describe how ’sedentary nomads’ inhabiting the marginal areas of Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, apply what I conceive of as increasingly subversive nomad tactics to creatively navigate aggressive urban renewal projects intended to ”clean-up” the so-called peripheral and precarious slum areas which encapsulate the original grid-structure of the city.

Paper long abstract:

Today, the densely populated slums of Nouakchott have become virtual theatres of speculation, as the state-owned land which people inhabit illegally becomes an increasingly valuable commodity in the wake of urban restructuration plans and vast infrastructural development projects. This paper shows how the figure of the 'sedentary nomad' constitutes the nexus in a dynamic and contested reconfiguration process of the urban landscape through a complex range of mobile 'poaching' tactics and anticipatory strategies. As such I present a 'nomadic reading' of large-scale urban renewal.

Over the course of five decades, the capital city of Nouakchott, which was constructed ex-nihilo in 1957, has exploded from 500 to 800,000 inhabitants - an urbanisation rate unparralled anywhere in the world. This paper explores how former livestock rearing nomads who inhabit - and thus produce - the dusty labyrinths of the kébé, i.e. bidonvilles or shanty towns, and the vast, windblown gazras, i.e. illegally inhabited areas, which encapsulate the original grid-structure of Nouakchott have reoriented their traditional nomadic strategies into a form of urban tactics (De Certeau 1984) that enable them to not only counter the aggressive urban renewal projects, but also to carve out a productive and in, its own subversive way, powerful space of living in spite of - or perhaps because of - the sedentary state. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2011, I argue that the nomad, in fact, thrives in this interstitial space of immanent potentiality (Cresswell 1997; Deleuze & Guattari 2004).

Paper short abstract:

Brazil will host both FIFA 2014 World Cup and IOC 2016 Olympic Games and Rio is the central part of this project. Its harbour region is now managed by private corporations such as big real estate companies. This paper shows the uncertainty among inhabitants that live in those areas under renewal.

Paper long abstract:

Rio de Janeiro harbour region is now managed by private corporations such as big real estate companies. This area has many important urban cultural heritage sites like the hills of Conceição and Providência. The first hill represents an ancient colonial urban tissue that is officially a national heritage and the second one is the first favela of Brazil. In spite of the different conditions of those two spaces, both are susceptible to the renewal project impacts:

- Conceição hill is starting to show significant changes towards the process known as gentrification due to its "cultural appeal" which puts it as a place to be transformed for the future tourism-consumers that will visit Rio;

- Providência Hill suffers a kind of official blackmail in order to restart the ancient process of removing poor population from downtown to distant areas. Many houses were painted with the inscription SMH - Municipal Housing Services - and a mysterious number that menaces those inhabitants. The information they have now is: if your house is painted you must go out! But why, when, where to go, and the price they will get paid for their houses they just don´t know...

Both situations showed us that one important focus to be understood in our future research is the way these tools of territory control are being institutionally build. Our studies are tending to show that there are no reliable social pacts in order to assure safety to Rio de Janeiro´s inhabitants that now live in those privatized areas.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ongoing fieldwork at an inner-city tenement building in Johannesburg this paper investigates how urban renewal policies exacerbate tensions among its unlawful occupants.

Paper long abstract:

In July 2010 the occupiers of an inner-city tenement building in Johannesburg, South Africa, were issued with an eviction order affirmed by the High Court. The building is situated in a post-industrial neighbourhood which is home to thousands of migrants, both national and non-national. Most live unlawfully in warehouses and tenements without access to basic water, sanitation, electricity and waste services; many are blind or otherwise disabled. The area is being targeted by the city's urban renewal project and, ironically, the evictor is a low-cost housing company. Focusing on the case of this threatened eviction, this paper analyses how such larger renewal policies have exacerbated tensions among the occupiers which were channelled along nationalist lines, as well as between the able-bodied and disabled. In particular, it investigates how a group of blind Zimbabweans experienced violent threats and accusations of betrayal as they had been offered alternate accommodation by the evicting lawyer due to their disability. Others in the building, particularly South Africans, felt that they had been abandoned by the state and legal system which offered them no safety net. This study indicates that ongoing private sector driven renewal policies, in the absence of affordable accommodation for the poorest and most marginal groups, are likely to continue to exacerbate social divisions along national and other unexpected lines. Hence, the title refers not only to the blind migrants in this ethnography but also to the pervading social and political blindness towards marginal groups in the rhetoric and policy of urban renewal in Johannesburg.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to examine the privatization of reconstruction of the postwar urban space in Beirut and how the market-led rebuilding strategy resulted in the development of perpetual uncertainty. Also, it addresses the strategies Beirutis developed to cope with the changes imposed on their lives.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of postwar reconstruction initiatives in Beirut was to regenerate and promote the capital as "Beirut: an ancient city of the future" (Beirut madina ariqa lil mustaqbal); this slogan was coined as a reconstruction motto. These interventions have largely impacted Beirut's fabric and texture, especially the Beirut Central District. In fact, many critiques and concerns have been voiced by city residents, urban planners, political and religious leaders as well as social scientists. Yet, first and foremost, this urban renewal led to displacement of a large number of inhabitants, many of whom had already been affected by displacement both prior to the civil war (1975-1991) and during wartime. And, in the postwar era they were one more time experiencing this state of anxiety due to their relocation and exclusion from the reconstruction project.

This paper intends to discuss how the top-down reconstruction project generated a state of perpetual uncertainty and anxiety among Beirutis, in particular, among thousands of the displaced living in Beirut after the war. Also, it investigates the strategies the city dwellers and the displaced have developed and employed in order to negotiate their role in the renovation project as well as their rights to certain places.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses Angola’s post-conflict urbanization and urban renewal strategy which has resulted in forced evictions and demolition of houses in the Capital, Luanda. This has evoked increased uncertainty and anxiety among the city’s population, all in the name of modernization, development and post-conflict reconstruction.

Paper long abstract:

Living in Uncertainty: Urban Renewal, Land Tenure Insecurity, Land Laws and Forced Evictions in Post-conflict Luanda, Angola

After decades of war and a steady influx of internally displaced people, Luanda, Angola's capital, consists largely of settlements categorized as informal. During the newfound era of peace the Angolan government has decided to "formalize" the informal urban land market through a new Land Law which has made all unregistered land the property of the State. The post-conflict land strategy has had grave consequences for many Angolans who face forced evictions and the demolition of their houses, often with little or no compensation. This has evoked increased uncertainty and anxiety among the Luandan population in the name of urban renewal, post-war reconstruction, modernization and development. This paper offers a glimpse into what was taking place in peri-urban and central Luanda during my ethnographic fieldwork in 2009-2010 around the time the new Land Law took effect. In particular it looks at the effects of Luanda's post-conflict urbanization and urban renewal strategies, forced evictions and relocations. Furthermore, it poses the question for whom this so-called modernization and post-conflict reconstruction really is when people are relocated to the city's periphery, away from schools, clinics, markets, and employment opportunities.

Key Words:

Land Tenure Security, Urban Planning Policies, Post-Conflict Societies, Urban Anthropology, Informal Economy

Paper short abstract:

Gentrification processes are often seen as contributing to the socio-economic improvement of a neighbourhood, but simultaneously decrease diversity. Based on interviews with native and non-native Dutch residents as well as professionals, I argue that the loss of positive diversity due to gentrification can be stopped.

Paper long abstract:

Gentrification processes are often seen as contributing to the socio-economic improvement of a neighbourhood, but simultaneously decrease diversity, resulting in the homogenization of residents in inner city neighbourhoods. Migrants, as one branch of diversity in a neighbourhood, may be adversely affected because they are also often overrepresented in a lower socio-economic classes which might be pushed out by gentrification. For many communities, 'diversity' is a problematic keyword, that can be a valuable resource or a source of tensions.

Using the example of Lombok, located in Utrecht, NL, this paper discusses strategies of diversification in an atmosphere of gentrification. Based on interviews with native and non-native Dutch residents as well as professionals, I argue that the loss of positive diversity due to gentrification can be stopped both by residents as well as by policymakers. Lombok is known and perceived as a diverse neighbourhood, inhabited by a mixed population in terms of socio-economic classes, age and ethnicity. Resident organizations, housing cooperatives and NGOs working with the municipality have initiated a number of measures to change the dynamics of gentrification to promote diversity. Respondents perceive these initiatives as positive expressions of diversity on a local level. Specifically, by stimulating a collective memory, celebrating diversity and improving the quality of public spaces, original and new residents are involved in the neighbourhood in a positive way. These initiatives have resulted in increased acceptance of and even appreciation of diversity from residents of various socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes popular actions against bars and brothels in El Alto, Bolivia, as urban renewal from below. Through ethnographic analysis the paper discusses the relationship between state and non-state actors in the process of bringing “order” and argues that the closure of the bars entails a fight for the moral becoming of the new Bolivian citizen.

Paper long abstract:

The paper presents an ethnography of the 2007 clausura [closure] of (illegal) bars and brothels in the city center of the poor and mainly indigenous city of El Alto, Bolivia. On this occasion several sites were declared illegal, closed down and set on fire by crowds of students and neighbours. Although initially considered to be illegal the clausura was later celebrated by the police and the municipal authorities, and they invited civil organizations to participate in the nightly controls of the bars.

The paper contextualizes the clausura within the urban history of El Alto as a city that has come into be due to internal migration and in spite of urban planning. It also offers insight into the experiences of civil insecurity that lay ground to the clausura, and it elucidates how uncertainties regarding the living prospects of the poor are played out in people's imaginaries regarding proper urban space and conduct. Hence, the paper analyzes the complex, and sometimes violent, negotiations between state and non-state actors in the process of bringing "order" to El Alto by "cleaning up" and renewing the city center.

Finally, it is argued that the clausura is a form of urban "self help" renewal that renders certain forms of life undesirable while others are made viable. In this way, urban renewal from below must also be considered as a popular quest for the moral becoming of a new Alteño [inhabitant of El Alto], and for the definition of proper citizenship in today's revolutionary Bolivia.

Paper short abstract:

In a social housing area in Utrecht, the Netherlands, urban renewal policies aim at gentrification. Existing apartments are sold or demolished and new houses built. Meanwhile, tenants are 'engineered' to participate as 'active citizens' who take responsibility for the redesign of their neighborhood.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents a study of urban renewal in Overvecht, an underprivileged neighborhood in the Dutch city of Utrecht, with much social housing.

The paper sets out to understand how citizens are being 'engineered' by the key players in urban renewal: the municipality and the housing corporations.

Currently, social housing apartment blocks are being sold or demolished. Single family dwellings are being built, of which many are for sale. As such, the municipality and the housing corporations hope to create a heterogeneous housing mix which should lead to gentrification.

The urban renewal process has strong citizenship agendas, as presented in the participatory procedures that accompany it. Tenants are summoned to behave as 'active' and 'responsive' citizens. Doing so, they are being 'engineered' to take responsibility for a redesign of their living environment which is largely based on external interests.

These citizenship agendas are also present in the focus on gentrification, or, as it is generally referred to, the creation of a 'mixed neighborhood' (gemengde wijk). This implies a mix of different social-economic, but also ethnic, groups, with the purpose of countering a supposed culture of poverty among the poor through providing the latter with positive role models and new social networks which may enhance their access to the labor market.

In this study, I discuss how residents of apartment blocks that will be demolished experience the redesign of their neighborhood. I show how they perceive the participatory procedures and their rights, obligations and opportunities. Eventually, I set out to understand how these processes affect their citizenship.

Paper short abstract:

Through the ethnography of a participatory slum-upgrading programme, the paper analyses how these interventions affect the life projects and livelihood strategies of diverse sections of residents, leading to different responses and elite capture.

Paper long abstract:

Slums may not offer the ideal living conditions, however, they are a "good solution" to the need of urban tenants to spend little in housing in order to invest in their children's education and in their rural place of origin where they plan to retire, or to the need of economic returns that substitute pension schemes for the owners of the slum structures that are rented to poorer tenants.

Slum dwellers, whose livelihood strategies are linked to housing and service delivery in the informal settlements, attempt to make predictions on the effects of development interventions on their livelihoods, which often generate fear and uncertainty. Participatory programmes with their participatory construction of project outcomes - supposedly to be determined through a collective process - further increase uncertainty, fuelling residents' fears.

Through an ethnography of a 'slum community' undertaking a comprehensive upgrading project, the paper analyses elite capture and the effects on social exclusion of the technical implementation of participatory policies aiming to get community democratic representation in a context of pre-existing consolidated power imbalances and different livelihood strategies.

Development intervention in informal settlements may undermine the conditions that make slums convenient for large sections of their residents. Slum-upgrading is inherently destructive of certain livelihoods. To avoid worsening the lives of slum dwellers, slum-upgrading programmes have to prioritise the creation of alternative livelihoods rather than the provision of services and housing.