City of icebergs: materiality, surface and depth in Nairobi’s built environment

Abstract

This article considers the materiality and substance of the built environment in Nairobi in light of concerns about surface, depth and the power of the unseen. Taking Nairobi’s high-rise construction boom and a recent spate of collapsed buildings as its starting point, it examines how longstanding ideas about the hidden and invisible dynamics of African cities do not operate in a realm distinct from the material world, but often stem from it: the stuff from which the city is made generates thought and action. High-rise buildings are sometimes described as ‘icebergs’ (structures where much of what is going on is under the surface) or as ‘fakes’ (buildings that superficially promise something, but that are qualitatively and morally suspect). Exploring Nairobi’s construction industry from sites of building collapse, I show how an emerging vertical materiality in the city’s built environment drives debates about deception, (im)moral economies and popular suspicions of power, complicating discourses about the relationship of surface to underneath. I examine how Nairobi’s frail buildings induce anxieties about the seen and the unseen, illuminating how the materials of verticality are entangled in economies of deception.

Goats, materials and uncertainty in Nairobi

“…While slaughtermen, meat dealers and goat traders are all visible in Kiamaiko's goat industry, the larger business interests behind goat transportation and especially the slaughterhouses (the owners of which, rumours suggest, include influential politicians) are hidden and difficult to identify. As with other sectors in Kenya, such as land or housing, the invisibilization of powerful influence is often a crucial part of its political economy (Smith 2023;Manji 2020). Yet the ethnic or religious affiliations of slaughterhouse ownersmany are Burji or Somaliare often visible in the names of slaughterhouses displayed above open street-side entrances.…”