Abstract
Residents of informal settlements in urban centres in Africa are known to suffer disproportionate burdens of environmental and socio-economic inequalities and are often excluded from macro-level visions and policies that seek to make cities safer and prosperous (Birkmann, 2007; da Silva & Braulio, 2014; Dodman et al., 2013). This tension undermines the validity of orthodox, ‘expert-led’ visions, policies and measures of prosperity that are distant from the lived-experience of marginalised urban residents. Based on new empirical work with communities in three informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this article argues that novel methodological and theoretical approaches to co-producing context-specific policy-relevant knowledge about pathways to prosperity (translated by the communities as maisha bora, ‘the good life’) creates inclusive spaces for both community participation in processes of urban knowledge production and critical social enquiry that can lead to grounded theory building. By co-producing both an agreed and relevant methodological approach for the study, and its subsequent documentation and analysis, this work contributes valuable empirical insights about the capacities and capabilities of local communities to shape and influence urban policy-making and in this way speaks to calls for a global urbanism (Ong, 2011; Robinson, 2016) that brings diverse voices and geographies to urban theory to better account for the diversity of urban experiences and processes found in twenty-first century cities.
Highlights
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which launched the 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, opens with the statement: “This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity” (United Nations, 2015, p. 1)
We describe an innovative process of knowledge co-production with communities in three informal settlements in Dar es Salaam, which has generated a new context-specific framework for conceptualising prosperity based on lived experience
This section describes the process of using the Prosperity Index (PI) methodology in Dar es Salaam, a process led by Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI), working with a team of community researchers from three settlements and supported by academic researchers from the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) and the Development Planning Unit at University College London, as part of the “Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality” (KNOW) Project, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund
Summary
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which launched the 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, opens with the statement: “This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity” (United Nations, 2015, p. 1). Measurement frameworks must be developed from knowledge and understanding about prosperity as a lived experience in ways that allow for action on the ground and meaningfully include marginalised communities in the design and delivery of policies, thereby making them co-produced and relevant (Durose, Beebeejaun, Rees, Richardson, & Richardson, 2012) This is relevant in urban centres in Africa, where the urban poor suffer disproportionate burdens of environmental and socio-economic inequalities and are often excluded from macro-level visions and policies that seek to make cities safer and prosperous (Birkmann, 2007; da Silva & Braulio, 2014; Dodman et al, 2013). Co-production of visions of shared prosperity constitute a space of inclusion where marginalised urban communities have a central role in envisaging alternatives and more just urban futures
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