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Bringing Informal Food Spaces Into the Ordinary

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Bringing Informal Food Spaces Into the Ordinary BRINGING INFORMAL FOOD SPACES INTO THE ORDINARY Re-imagining the use of space in a formalising neighbourhood of Nairobi. P a g e | 1 Master Thesis | Human Geography University of Amsterdam | Graduate School of Social Sciences Louisa Ellerker | 11244534 [email protected] Supervisor: dr. ir. Y.P.B. (Yves) van Leynseele October 2017 Cover photo (Image 1) by author P a g e | 2 i. Acknowledgments A thesis is never complete, it is merely due. So, for those who academically and personally supported me to explore, create, and endure, in order to make this thesis due – thank you. Big up to Mike, who without I would not have been able to collect the data, explore the city or share the many meals bought from the street vendors. Most of all, to the street vendors who daily provide good food and create lively, safe streets in Nairobi; thank you for giving me your time, compassion and honesty to make this research possible. With special thanks to Imiamour for taking photos, and allowing me to use some in this thesis. To give reference, and see more of her work: http://imiamour.com/ Thank you to Yves, for allowing me the time and space for this process, and providing constructive feedback when I most needed it. Also, thanks to Dave, for doing the mundane task of going through endless drafts fixing spelling and grammar mistakes. And to Nicolina for holding my stress when I most needed it to be taken. P a g e | 3 ii. Abstract Nairobi wants to be a ‘world-class city-region’ by 2030. Neighbourhoods changes are driven largely by middle-class growth and foreign investments. This thesis examines a changing neighbourhood in Nairobi using informal food vendors as an entry point to unravel their spatial and social strategies. It will argue that informal food spaces are an integral part to the ‘ordinary’ formalisation process in African cities. Other studies on informal street food have predominantly focused on the ‘formal – informal’ binary; however, I focus on the processes of ‘opening and closing space’ that takes place largely through unplanned practices and hidden relationships of the vendors and day dwellers within the neighbourhood. P a g e | 4 iii. Table of Content I. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 2 II. ABSTRACT 3 III. TABLE OF CONTENT 4 IV. OVERVIEW OF FIGURES, TABLES, IMAGES AND MAPS 6 V. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 7 VI. CHAPTER OVERVIEW 8 1. INTRODUCTION 10 2. BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH 11 2.1 CASE STUDY CONTEXT 11 2.2 COLONIAL SPACES 12 2.3 EMERGENCE OF INFORMAL STREET FOOD IN NAIROBI 14 2.3.1 Nairobi’s Informal Street Food 15 2.4 CONCLUSION & INFORMAL FOOD SPACE 18 3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 19 3.1 INTRODUCTION 19 3.2 CLOSING OF SPACE 19 3.2.1 ‘Ordinary’ Representations of Formalisation 19 3.2.2 Formalising the Informal Street Food Spaces 20 3.3 OPENING OF SPACE 21 3.4 INFORMALITY: BRINGING IT BACK TO THE ‘ORDINARY’ 23 3.5 DAY DWELLERS 24 3.6 CONCLUSION 25 4. RESEARCH DESIGN 26 4.1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 26 4.2 OPERATIONALIZATION 27 4.2.1 Case Study Selection 28 4.2.2 Data Collection 28 4.2.3 Observations 29 4.2.4 Semi-Structured Interviews 29 4.2.5 Surveys 29 4.2.6 Visual Data 30 4.2.7 Research Analysis 30 4.3 LIMITATIONS AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 30 4.3.1 Statement of Ethics 30 4.3.2 Statement of positionality 31 4.3.3 Limitations of Research 31 5. THE FORMALISING NEIGHBOURHOOD 32 5.1 INTRODUCTION 32 5.2 CHANGES: RESIDENTIAL TO COMMERCIAL 32 5.2.1 Changes Through Satellite Images 33 5.3 WALK THROUGH THE NEIGHBOURHOOD 35 5.3.1 On the Ground 36 5.3.1.i On Foot 36 5.3.1.ii Local Resident 39 5.4 CONCLUSION 40 6. INFORMAL FOOD SPACES 42 P a g e | 5 6.1 INTRODUCTION 42 6.2 STREET FOOD VENDOR LOCATION 42 6.3 SPATIAL IMPLICATIONS – WRITING THE SCRIPT 44 6.4 CONCLUSION 45 7. INFORMAL FOOD SPACE: EMERGENCE AND SUSTAINING IN THE SPACE 46 7.1 INTRODUCTION 46 7.2 THE INFORMAL FOOD SPACES 47 7.3 EMERGING VENDORS 48 7.3.1 Location 49 7.3.2 Lack of Stiff Competition 49 7.3.3 Existing Relationships 49 7.4 SUSTAINING VENDORS 50 7.4.1‘Sweet’ Food 50 7.4.2 Cleanliness 51 7.5 CONCLUSION 51 8. INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE SPACES: WRITING THE SCRIPT 52 8.1 VENDOR INFRASTRUCTURE 52 8.1.1 Seating and Storage 52 8.1.2 Stalls 54 8.1.3 Cooking 56 8.1.4 Water Networks 57 8.2 CONCLUSION 58 9. DAY DWELLERS: OPENING OF SPACE 59 9.1 INTRODUCTION 59 9.2 CUSTOMER PROFILES: WHO ARE THE DAY DWELLERS? 59 9.3 MOTIVATION OF GOING TO THE FOOD STALLS 61 9.4 SPACES OF LEISURE 62 9.5 CONCLUSION 63 10. THE ORDINARY SPACE 64 10.1 INTRODUCTION 64 10.2 DEALING WITH HARASSMENT 64 10.3 CONCLUSION 67 11. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 68 11.1 DISCUSSION 68 11.2 FURTHER RESEARCH 70 11.3 CONCLUSION 71 12. REFERENCES 73 13. APPENDIX 76 Appendix 1: Patrons Survey 76 Appendix 2: Food Seller Interview Guide 78 P a g e | 6 iv. Overview of Figures, Tables, Images and Maps Image 1: Rhapta Road (Cover photo) Image 2: Colonial Master Plan 1948 Image 3: The segregation of residential areas in Nairobi, 1909 Image 4: Nairobi City Council ‘Food Shops and Stores’ Policy. Image 5: Google Earth Image of Groganville Estate taken on 11/03/2002 Image 6: Google Earth Image of Groganville Estate taken on 13/01/2017 Image 7: Case-Study Streets Image 8: Rhapta Road junction Image 9: Tune Hotel Image 10: View of Rhapta Road Image 11: Bush Design Image 12: I am Westlands Poster Image 13: Playing Hockey Image 14: Luxury Apartment Image 15: Church Road Building Image 16: Collection of images of Informal Food Spaces infrastructure Images 17 a-d: Cooking and Preparation on informal food street stalls Image 18: Jerry cans seen on the street at 4am Image 19: Larger vendor staff preparing meat Image 20: Smaller vendor staff preparing chapatti Image 21: Receipt from City Council Map 1: Nairobi, 2012 Map 2: Map Representing Formal and Informal Food Spaces in Groganville Estate, Nairobi Table 1: Informal Food Space Categorisation Table 2: Description and Analysis of Stall Photos. Table 3: Food Choice of Day Dwellers Figure 1: Car and Foot Flow Figure 2: Profession of Day Dwellers Figure 3: Day Dwellers Reasons for Visiting the Kiosk P a g e | 7 v. List of Abbreviations CBD – Central Business District IIED - International Institute for Environment and Development KSHs. – Kenyan Shilling USD- United States Dollar P a g e | 8 vi. Chapter Overview Chapter 1 - Introduction This will introduce the research, provide motivations for the research and give a short summary of the overall findings. Also, will outline the chapters that are in this thesis in order to provide a clear framework for the reader. Chapter 2 - Research Context This first half of this chapter is to give the thesis context to the case study area. It will look at how space in Nairobi was racially zoned by the British colonials. Then it will highlight the post-colonial legacy on space in the capital of Nairobi. The aim of this section is to help the reader understand why the case study neighbourhood, Groganville Estate, is a formalising. The second part of the research context discusses street food in Nairobi and considers how it has been previously studied in research. The chapter is outlined in this way as this thesis is looking at a larger phenomenon of informality by looking at food spaces as the indicator towards understanding how space is closed through Chapter 3 - Theoretical Framework This chapter builds from the research context and frames a theoretical structure the thesis will use in the empirical chapters. In order to research why informal street food is emerging and sustaining in formalising neighbourhoods in Nairobi, a theoretical framework is needed to frame the terms and concepts that will be used for the research. The theoretical framework is divided into three elements to deconstruct the idea around the opening and closing of space. The first section will look at the closing of space. A neighbourhood formalises through eradicating or regulating informality in order to create a middle-class vision; this is seen as the ‘ordinary’ way to formalise. Massey’s (2005) concept of ‘re-imagining space’ will be used to force the reader to think about the imagined assumptions embedded in this way of formalisation and closing of space. The second section of the theoretical framework will explain de Haan’s (2005) notions of ‘open script’ spaces, ‘collective action’ and the ‘appropriation of space’, to aid the reader to understand how through different assumptions of space, formalisation also occurs. This allows the reader to see that informal spaces open up the closing spaces and therefore can form part of a new ‘ordinary’ formalisation process. Chapter 4 - Research Design This chapter will outline the research questions, and provide a methodical explanation of how the research was actually conducted through data collection and data analysis. Chapter 5 – Closing of Space: The Formalising Neighbourhood The aim of the first empirical chapter is to highlight how the case study area is formalising. To begin, this chapter starts with satellite images of the neighbourhood from 2002 and 2017 to show the changes in area over the last 14 P a g e | 9 years, from this is gives visual town-down evidence that the neighbourhood is becoming more formal through new buildings being built and the function of buildings becoming commercial; creating more white spaces.
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