Dialogues on informality

Abstract

Most African countries continue to use conventional land administration systems that are inappropriate to their tenure contexts, and unsustainable financially or in terms of capacity. As a result, most African urban land transactions occur in informal markets, leaving urban dwellers with a lack of access to land and/or poorly defined tenure rights, which in turn worsens poverty levels and access to basic services. Focusing on Kiandutu informal settlement in Kenya, this chapter presents the findings of a co-production approach to improving tenure security and land governance through ‘land sharing’. Using the participatory dialogue-oriented approach of a CityLab, this research explores land sharing not only as a potential solution to a housing problem, but also as a rights-based model that may illuminate new ways of teaching, conceptualizing, and implementing urban planning in contested and fragmented spaces. While the Kiandutu community showed openness to land sharing, the research underscored massive lack of trust in public processes, lack of community organization, and the need for a more practical and effective type of university training for urban planners in Africa to contribute more effectively to furthering the agenda of inclusive and sustainable urban development on the continent.

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