Purpose In a current trend of a growing amount of short city trips, it becomes crucial to understand how local residents perceive the presence of tourists and tourism in their cities and how their socio-cultural context influences those perceptions. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this understanding which will enable the city planners to take actions to create the well-balanced and resilient communities in which the needs of residents and tourists are equally met. Design/methodology/approach To understand residents’ perceptions’ about tourism in Bruges, this research applied photo-elicitation interviews with 28 residents who lived in various locations in the historical center to understand socio-cultural background of residents, their tourism-related concerns and whether they are in line with what is commonly perceived as problematic in Bruges. Findings Results show that as long as residents can benefit from tourism and tourism-related infrastructure, they support tourism. On the other hand, tourism decreases the liveability of the historical center due to supersession of infrastructure serving the residents by tourist-oriented amenities. Practical implications To build a sustainable and resilient city in the future, the authorities of Bruges should cease further “museumification” of the historical city by breaking the hegemony of tourism industry, providing affordable housing and rethinking the concentration model of tourism. Originality/value The photo-elicitation method proved to produce rich content and good-quality data by stimulating respondents’ memories and evoking experiences and emotions. Thus, this paper recommends that future research about residents’ attitudes is developed around visual methods as they give voice to the residents and are able to uncover issues which are difficult to capture with other methods.

In order to construct a suitable transport policy, based on the needs of the inhabitants and city users, planners have to be aware of the needs of urban residents. In this research, Hägerstrand's space-time geography is used to understand constraints that individuals from contrasting livelihoods experience regarding their daily mobility in Kampala. To carry out economic activities, both poor and non-poor face the need to travel, but moving in the city is hampered by congestion and poor walking infrastructure. While non-poor have the financial and economical flexibility to adjust the time and transport mode of their movements, the poor are constrained by affordability. Space-time prisms of the movements show that paradoxically the further the distance from the centre, the less movement is undertaken by the non-poor and more movement by the poor. The policy responses, driven by foreign investments, mainly from China, show that policy circulation plans prevail over tailor-made solutions.

Cities in sub-Saharan Africa are characterised by rapid urban sprawl, which has implications for urban food accessibility. Urban sprawl results in inefficient structures of cities, and is often related to patterns of socioeconomic segregation. An important research gap in food accessibility studies is that these local socioeconomic imbalances are not considered in broad-scale studies. This research analyses how the dimensions of food access (physical, social and economic) relate to the food insecurity and dietary diversity of inhabitants of different socioeconomic groups in the rapidly growing Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area (Uganda). We use the Food Insecurity Experience Scale and Household Dietary Diversity Score to assess the overall state of food consumption. To measure physical accessibility, we geographically map the formal food system potential. A radar chart was used to visualise the vulnerability of different socioeconomic groups within the city food system. The results show that more established urban dwellers experience different access vulnerabilities than newly migrated residents, depending on their income. Lower income groups compensate their limited economic accessibility by participating in food sharing networks. Obtaining a better understanding of the dimensions of urban food accessibility can aid stakeholders in the urban food system in their policy making processes towards a more food secure and sustainable future.

Currently, circa 30% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa resides in cities, and this figure is expected to double in 2040. The recent literature describes the urban expansion processes of African cities in much detail. However, the urbanization wave in Africa also leads to important intra-urban land use dynamics, which have important consequences on the quality of life within existing cities, which has received less attention. This study aims to contribute to these information gaps by (1) analyzing the extent of the urban land use conversion in contrasting urban locations using satellite images for physical criteria-based classifications and (2) assessing the potential consequences of these intra-urban conversions on the quality of life. Intra-urban land use changes were documented based on satellite imagery for the period 2002–2020. Based on some representative attributes, Addis Ababa city was selected for the case study. Urban land use dynamics and population density changes were examined based on the selected case study neighborhoods and randomly identified land parcels in the city, respectively. Urban development strategies and programs that emerged over recent decades had caused intra-urban land use dynamics, which brought significant population density changes. Moreover, these changes have caused an unbalanced distribution of socio-economic amenities across the city.

Due to rapid urbanisation, food systems in sub-Saharan African cities are increasingly under pressure. Through the lens of a foodshed, this paper quantitatively analyses the spatial extent of the food provisioning area for consumers of different socio-economic status in Kampala (Uganda). Based on a primary dataset of surveys with households and food vendors, we map the foodshed by registering where consumers obtain their food, and the origin of where it is grown. We show that 50% of the food consumed in the city originates from within a 120 km proximity to Kampala, including 10% from within the city itself. At present, urban agricultural activities are twice as important as international imports for the urban food provision. Established, high-income urban dwellers have a more local foodshed due to their broad participation in urban agriculture, while low-income newcomers rely heavily on retailers who source food from rural Uganda.