Continuity under change: Towards a spatiotemporal understanding of market-oriented urban and peri-urban agriculture – Insights from Kenya

Abstract

Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) operates in an ambiguous relation to rapid urban growth. While urban expansion constrains farmers' access to land and resources, resulting in a replacement of UPA, proximity to expanding urban economies creates new market opportunities leading to enduring UPA. While the literature on UPA in the Global South is burgeoning, little attention has been paid to market-oriented forms of UPA under rapid urban growth. In this paper, we analyse the spatiotemporal dynamics of UPA and market-oriented farmer's responses to changing socio-spatial circumstances in two rapidly growing Kenyan cities: Nyeri and Nakuru. By conceptualizing UPA's enduring existence as continuity under change, we develop a spatiotemporal understanding of market-oriented UPA that goes beyond a dominant dichotomous view on replacement versus persistence. Based on a mixed-methods approach combining geospatial analysis with quantitative and qualitative interviews, our findings show that the continued existence of market-oriented agriculture in the city is connected to highly dynamic processes of commercialization, specialization, and intensification. We conclude that market-oriented farmers are not inevitably pushed out of the city, but rather that they are – under certain conditions – able to actively respond to the pressures as well as opportunities that emerge during rapid urban growth.