Understanding residential mobility: Why the African context matters

ABSTRACT

Residential mobility in a Sub-Saharan African (SSA) context is substantially different from in the Global North. This paper provides three position statements to substantiate this claim. The first relates to residential mobility dynamics and posits that in SSA they are characterized by a much more transient and mobile population who frequently move to, from, between and within urban areas. Secondly, formal mechanisms that enable access to decent living conditions in the city are largely absent as compared to most of the Global North context and, as a consequence, poor households have to resort to other options to find a place in the city. Thirdly, real estate markets in SSA are less transparent as social networks interplay with market mechanisms and markets often function on the edge of or outside formal regulatory frameworks. The second part of the paper reflects on the implications of these differences for the African city. It argues that (1) translocal living reduces place attachment to the city, (2) processes of residential sorting and ethnic exclusion aggravate spatial inequality, and (3) limited spatial governance leads to developments that go beyond the capacity to sustain the city.

KEYWORDS:

• Sub-Saharan Africa
• residential mobility
• translocality

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Colin Marx for his insights and Mary Stewart for proofreading the article. We are also grateful to the peer reviewers for their feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Els Keunen

Els Keunen holds a Master’s degree in Architecture and an additional Master’s degree in Cultures and Development Studies. She works for GIZ (a German agency for international cooperation) in Cameroon and is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Stuttgart on the topic of residential mobility among tenants in Douala. Her main expertise is in urban development related subjects, especially in the Global South, such as multi-stakeholder strategic planning, urbanization processes and related urban socio-spatial dynamics. Her research interests furthermore include residential mobility, urban justice and inequality.

Astrid Ley

Astrid Ley is Chair of the Department of International Urbanism, co-director of the Institute for Urban Planning and Design (Städtebau-Institut) and course director of the international masters’ program on Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design (IUSD) at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Stuttgart. She holds a degree in architecture and urban design from Rheinisch-Westfälisch Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen and a Doctor of Engineering degree from the Technical University Berlin (TU Berlin). Her field of expertise comprises diverse topics related to urbanization processes in the Global South with an emphasis on informality, housing and upgrading processes, local governance, community-led processes, participation, and co-production in urban development.