Abstract
With this article we contribute to debates on urban land governance and sustainable urban development in Africa by providing an empirical analysis of forced displacement and resettlement associated with infrastructure development in Beira city, Mozambique. In recent years Beira has become the recipient of numerous investment flows targeting the built environment by a range of international investors. By analyzing the micropolitical engagements associated with three different infrastructure projects, based on extensive qualitative interviews, observations, and document analysis, we demonstrate how each intervention has been associated with highly informal and divergent processes of forced displacement and resettlement. We argue that these land related impacts have been annexed from debates on sustainable infrastructure development, and that they exhibit some fundamental differences from established resettlement research. We conclude by arguing that forced displacement and resettlement should be understood as a deliberate and systematic feature of urban infrastructure development, through which new social-spatial arrangements are created. This ultimately points to the emergence of a novel mode of fragmented urbanism within the context of urban development in Africa which poses new challenges to urban sustainability.
Highlights
The port city of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest, has recently become the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from various international donors, targeting the expansion of the city’s infrastructure
How forced displacement and resettlement play out in the urban context, and how they relate to issues of urban sustainability, is currently poorly understood. It is against this background that this article aims to contribute to debates on urban land governance and sustainable urban development in Africa, through empirical and conceptual exploration of forced displacement and resettlement in Beira city
We argue that the urban context, as seen in Beira, provides distinct institutional and political challenges not yet observed in established resettlement literature, which has focused predominantly on rural realm interventions
Summary
The port city of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest, has recently become the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from various international donors, targeting the expansion of the city’s infrastructure. Ranging from public green space to economic infrastructure, these investments serve a variety of societal purposes and interests, defying sweeping categorizations. Despite their differences many investments have shared the common feature of disrupting established land uses, resulting in forced displacement and resettlement. In contrast to the high profile interventions which instigated their creation these dynamics have occurred largely outside the public eye, annexed from the city’s development narrative It is here, in the shadows of the primary intervention, that we see investment flows leading to the creation of new urban spaces to house the displaced
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