Wetland gentrification in African cities: Implications for sustainable property development

Abstract

There is growing scholarly interest in notions of green gentrification in the global North, which explores how environmental improvement in gentrifying districts drives up real estate prices and subsequent displacement of lowincome residents. Although similar processes of increasing demand for property development and its attendant displacement of urban wetlands is occurring in African cities, previous research have simply conceptualized it as wetland encroachment and not as a form of gentrification. The objective of this article is to re-conceptualize the dynamics of wetland encroachment in African cities within the broader conception of gentrification and analyze its implication for sustainable property development. Drawing on insights from extant literature on African urbanism, wetland encroachment and gentrification, we term the African variant of green gentrification as 'wetland gentrification'. Wetland gentrification occurs when customary authorities, amid land scarcity and rising property values, alienate wetlands in urban neighbourhoods. Property development practices, typically by high-income earners and private developers, on urban wetlands lead to the displacement of the ecological resources and subsequently poor households and settlements through urban flooding. We frame wetland gentrification as tantamount to unsustainable property development because it deteriorates water quality and ecological lives, causes urban flooding, and deepens urban poverty.