The churn of the land nexus and contrasting gentrification processes in Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, Tanzania

Abstract

This article contrasts gentrification and related processes of displacement across two of Tanzania’s fastest-growing cities. Some groups are particularly vulnerable to gentrification, with smallholder farmers particularly vulnerable on the periphery, and tenants particularly vulnerable near the centre. In the cities’ newly urbanizing peripheries, many of the longest-standing residents from farming families sell their land to upwardly mobile newcomers moving out from the city centre. In inner-city informal settlements, populations have become far denser and tenants outnumber owners, whilst developers and other large formal-sector land users are potentially interested in securing the land for upmarket residential or non-residential uses. Bringing the planning system and the informal settlements into better alignment is important, but regularization efforts can unnecessarily amplify the risks of exclusionary gentrification. While better-organized communities should be able to mitigate these risks, for this to be achieved the most vulnerable groups need to be adequately represented.

The Peri-Urban Gentrification Process in Cisauk Subdistrict, Tangerang Regency, Indonesia

“…Moreover, as Ghaffari et al (2018) argued, community empowerment is crucial and should be supported through the use of several strategies, such as encouraging citizens' participation and social movements, incentivizing local job creation, educating the local population, offering legal assistance, implementing community benefits agreements, and managing the social functioning of the area. These strategies will encourage better-organized communities, and they should be able to help mitigate negative impacts (John et al, 2020).…”

“…The phenomenon of gentrification must be recognized, especially by the city government, as an inseparable part of the urban development process (John et al, 2020). In peri-urban areas, this is evident from the emergence of new cities around the core city.…”

“Bringing Sandton into Soweto”

“…Gentrification research in urban Africa is uneven and mainly restricted to coastal cities. Urban areas that have received some attention include Egypt (Eldaidamony & Shetawy, 2016;Elsorady, 2018;Mahmoud, 2017), Ethiopia (Nunzio, 2022), Ghana (Twumasi & Oppong, 2016); (Cobbinah et al, 2019;Nimo-Boakye & Badu-Nuamah, 2022), Kenya (Dok, 2020), Mozambique (Roque et al, 2016;, Nigeria (Ajayi & Soyinka-Airewele, 2020;Godswill & Ukachukwu, 2018), Rwanda (Shearer, 2020), Tanzania (John et al, 2020) and Tunisia (Ben Salem, 2018). It is shown that state-led gentrification in Africa has been predominantly associated with establishing new or satellite towns at the periphery of historical areas characterised by excessive urban density.…”

Sustainability in Peri-Urban Informal Settlements: A Review

“…Both natural growth and movement of population through internal, cross-border, and circular migration; gentrification; and forced or voluntary displacement have an impact on the process of urban expansion and informal peri-urbanization [40,87,139,142]. This may generate social fragmentation along ethnic or social status groups but is also an opportunity to develop new safety nets and social capital [53,108,110].…”

“…The availability of water, sanitation services, and infrastructure is a driver for occupation, and may accelerate gentrification, pushing out the poor [40,66,146]. Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services [97] in peri-urban settlements, as with access to other utilities, is provided either by the government or municipal authorities, eventually in partnership with the private sector and co-production, through networks and through non-network self-help or other strategies that are sometimes illegal [47,80,112].…”