Urban statecraft: The governance of transport infrastructures in African cities

Through the lens of infrastructure governance, this article explores the configurations and operations of the urban state in sub-Saharan Africa. We deploy and extend the concept of ‘statecraft’, drawing on the recent scholarship within urban studies which explores city and municipal statecraft. Consolidating insights across several studies on transport governance in African cities, we identify three ‘sites’ of urban statecraft evident in urban Africa. First, we look at sectoral authorities, which we analyse through the common experience of ringfenced national road agencies. Carving off urban functions can fragment power over urban infrastructure. Second, we look at metropolitan authorities, which we analyse through bus rapid transit (BRT) agencies. Metropolitanisation crafts new scales of governance in Africa’s larger cities. Finally, we turn to the regulation of informal service delivery systems, which we analyse through popular transport regulation. The regulation of minibus and motorcycle taxis shows the central importance of everyday practice in urban statecraft in Africa. The case of transport governance provides a particularly vivid display of the institutional fragmentation that exists between state agencies and institutions in African cities. In this context, the urban state is not a static municipal entity, but is enacted through complex and multi-scalar relationships. These relationships relate not only to the assignment of functions or territorial design, but also to the practices which animate infrastructural systems. More generally, we argue that there is ample scope within the African urban governance debates for deeper interrogation of statecraft.

Territorial dynamics of an urban state park in Pará-Brazil

The Utinga State Park (PEUt) is one of the few green areas with the function of preserving the biodiversity remaining in the urbanization process of the Belém area. Add to this the fact that the effectiveness of the use control is directly linked to maintaining the quality of the city's water supply. In this context, the idea of environmental protection involves different perspectives, which are directly linked to territorial challenges in view of the patterns of development of the metropolitan form in the Amazon.

Austerity, teleological ‘ends’ and the timespace practices of the state organisation

The impact of austerity on urban governance has become a key area of academic concern, but many studies tend to interpret the effect on individual urban state bodies through analysis of broader governance relations, whilst also framing austerity as an overarching and homogeneous set of ideas, values and practices. In response, this paper examines a city government’s economic development department as a means in which to understand how the heterogeneous agency of the organisation mitigates austerity. In examining the adaptation to austerity, the paper deploys the practice theory of Schatzki. This involves utilising his conceptualisation of the construction of practices through various elements in producing the organisation, and their related ‘timespaces’. In conclusion, examining practices are important in understanding the intricacies of the ‘agency’ of the organisation, with the paper elucidating the uneven reconfiguration of the case study towards forms of timespace governing based on entrepreneurial pro-growth practices.

The Peer Group’s Agency in a Brazilian School

Black working-class boys are the group with the most significant difficulties in their schooling process. In dialogue with Raewyn Connell, we seek to analyze how the collective conceptions of peer groups have influenced the school engagement of Brazilian boys. We conducted an ethnographic research with students around the age of 14 at an urban state school in the periphery of the city of São Paulo. We analyzed the hierarchization process between two groups of boys, demonstrating the existence of a collective notion of masculinity that works against engagement with the school. Well-known to the Anglophone academic literature, this association is rather uncommon in the Brazilian literature. We have therefore attempted to describe and analyze here the challenges faced by Black working-class Brazilian boys to establish more positive educational trajectories.

Dates Consumption in Malaysia

The aim of this study is to analyse and identify date consumption patterns by region in Malaysia. In addition, this study also will identify demand on dates in Malaysia. Currently, there is a lack of study on prophetic food, especially in Malaysia. The data were collected through survey questionnaires. The sample size of this study was 1739 respondents from various socioeconomic backgrounds, profession, and level of education. The survey was conducted in several states in Peninsular Malaysia in June 2015. Descriptive statistics and crosstab have been used to find the results. The findings showed that Selangor had the most date consumers. The reason is that Selangor is an urban state, and the level of income of respondents from this state is higher compared to other states. Moreover, the level of education and awareness among respondents in Selangor are better compared to other states. This study also showed that people tend to consume dates not only because of religion but also because of health factors. Findings of the study can be used to formulate and develop a systematic supply chain in the dates market.

Security Urbanism and the Counterterror State in Kenya

This article offers a theoretical and ethnographic analysis of 'security urbanism', examining the spatial practices of the Kenyan security state and the urban impacts of the War on Terror in Nairobi. From counterterror policing to forced disappearances, demolitions, military operations and the proliferation of checkpoints and security searches, the War on Terror has left its indelible material and affective impacts in Kenya. Counterterrorist policing operations such Operation Usalama Watch have left many marginalized Nairobi residents fearful and traumatized. Meanwhile, in rich suburbs, the twin specters of terrorism and crime fuse in the imaginations and gated compounds of the affluent. I analyze the urban, state and spatial transformations produced by the War on Terror across several geographical scales (from the highly local to the neighborhood and the national). In a first section, I focus on the 'state spatial strategies' of counterterrorism and analyze the emergence of a 'counterterror state' in Kenya. In a second section, I draw on several ethnographic vignettes to demonstrate how urban residents internalize and perform fears, fantasies and politics thoroughly saturated by the imaginaries of the War on Terror. Ultimately, I argue that Nairobi's security urbanism is the material articulation of War on Terror at the scale of the city, produced through the confluence of state strategies and everyday practices of securitized urban subjects. But how stable is the new hegemony of security in the country?