Fluidities and Fixities: Examining the Alignment of Digital Platforms Within Nairobi's Heterogeneous Infrastructural Configurations

Joseph Chambers

doi:10.3389/frsc.2019.00008

Abstract

Across the Global South, digital platforms have become increasingly present in the understanding, management and operation of cities and their infrastructures. In examining the impact of digital platforms within urban infrastructures however, the experiences of cities of the South, and especially informal urban settlements, remains significantly overlooked when considering the impact of digital technologies on urban processes. With digital technologies and associated platforms becoming ever more embedded within the infrastructures of informal settlements, the lack in understanding around the consequences of this insertion for one billion of the world’s population, is something that urgently needs to be addressed. This paper attends to this deficit by examining how digital platforms are being designed in respect of the socio-technical setting of informal settlement infrastructures and the consequences for infrastructural change of their insertion. Focusing on four digital platforms deployed within Nairobi’s water and energy infrastructures, the paper builds on the theoretical efforts of urban political ecology framing infrastructures as power laden socio-environmental constructions and goes on to utilise the analytical entry points provided by the notion of heterogeneous infrastructural configurations. The findings identify that, although the digital platforms developed new avenues for infrastructural change via opportunities for utilising data as leverage, they also created fixities for users that caused disjuncture with the natural fluidity that existed within the informal settlements. The findings note that not only do digital platforms reconfigure dynamics of power within heterogeneous infrastructural configurations but they also create opportunities for learning around the intersection of infrastructural flexibility and digital fixities.

Highlights

For the one billion of the world’s population residing within informal settlements (UN Habitat, 2016), their infrastructural reality is one that often differs markedly from the networked and uniform versions of infrastructures that most of the Global North experiences
For informal settlements of cities in the Global South, the infrastructures that guide the daily lives of one billion operate in stark contrast to the dominant, networked infrastructures of cities in the Global North
For Lawhon et al (2018), the dynamics of these infrastructures can be viewed from a perspective that frames them as “heterogeneous infrastructural configurations” and in doing so, intends to encapsulate the different aggregations of technologies, relations, actors and capacities

Summary

Introduction

For the one billion of the world’s population residing within informal settlements (UN Habitat, 2016), their infrastructural reality is one that often differs markedly from the networked and uniform versions of infrastructures that most of the Global North experiences. For Nairobi and many other cities in the Global South, the infrastructures serving informal urban. With ongoing rates of urbanization and informal urban settlements predicted to absorb large portions of the build out of urban populations (UN Habitat, 2016), understanding the infrastructural dynamics of these areas is key in efforts to develop sustainable and equitable cities in the future. Areas traditionally defined as sites of insecure land tenure and a lack of adherence to planning and building regulations (UN Habitat, 2003), uneven urban geographies, a lack of governmental oversight and inadequate infrastructural provision have resulted in communities within these areas establishing alternative arrangements of infrastructures so as to enable their survival. With increased academic attention regarding the emergence, dynamics and growth of informal urban settlements (Dovey and King, 2011), it emerges that these areas vary in their manifestation, many share similar infrastructural challenges (McFarlane, 2008). Initiated and led by various actors such as governments, charities, and technology companies, cities across the Global South are witnessing an increasing convergence between digital and physical spheres at points of infrastructure (Datta, 2015, 2018)

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Conclusion