BRINGING INFORMAL FOOD SPACES INTO THE ORDINARY

Re-imagining the use of space in a formalising neighbourhood of Nairobi.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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v. List of Abbreviations

CBD – Central Business District IIED - International Institute for Environment and Development KSHs. – Kenyan Shilling USD- United States Dollar

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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.

The second part of the chapter is a walk through the neighbourhood of Groganville Estate. It takes the reader from the Westlands bus station and explains the observations of the neighbourhood particularly the ‘white’ spaces; so, the formal buildings, roads, commercial offices and restaurants. The chapter aims the reader to feel like they have walked through the case-study area and observed how the ‘white spaces become ‘greyed’ through the day dwellers use the of ‘black’ spaces of informal activity. This aids to answer the first research sub-question by explaining how the urban space becomes closed through formalisation.

Chapter 6 – Informal Food Spaces: Spatial Strategies This chapter will locate the formal and informal food spaces in the streets outlined in the case study area. It will then consider the significance of these locations in context to the changing neighbourhood. The mapping of the food outlets provides some spatial observations of tactics used by a street vendor in order to emerge and sustain itself in the neighbourhood.

Chapter 7 - Informal Food Space: Emergence and Sustaining in the Space This chapter is aims to provide a clearer context of the food vendors, their size, longevity and strategies of how they emerged and made sure they could stay on the space.

Chapter 8 – Informal Food Space: Infrastructure of the Space This chapter looks at the infrastructure of the food spaces. By presenting photos of the stalls, a visual analysis will be made to see the reoccurring strategies of how the vendors sustain in the neighbourhood. The chapter will delve deeper into at the food space seating, stalls, how they cook, and the water networks they have created.

Chapter 9 – Opening of Space: Day Dwellers The chapter will first look at who the day dwellers are, through traditional data indexes of demographics like age, occupation, sex. but then the second half will discuss their motivations of going to the stall, and how they aid to appropriate and open up the socio-materiality’s of informal food spaces in a formalising neighbourhood.

Chapter 10 – The Ordinary Space This chapter outlines the food vendors experience of semi-formality and semi-permanence, and considers what this means for the socio-materiality appropriation of the space.

Chapter 11 - Discussion and Conclusion This chapter is the final chapter in the thesis. It starts by starting a short discussion of the findings of the research, and finish with a summary of the main findings the research, and some further questions about space.

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1. Introduction

‘African cites are still typically studied through the lens of development, or in a manner that remains stuck ‘between modernity and development,’ where ‘these “other” cities have been thought to borrow their modernity from wealthier contexts.’ (Ordinary Cities - Jenny Robinson, 2006: x)

Nairobi is the fastest growing capital city in East Africa. With recorded inhabitants of over 3.1 million from the 2009 census, the population was estimated to be 4.5 million in 2015 (UN, 2010), and estimated to double in the next 10 years. After decades of poor urban planning, the Kenyan government has recently created a master plan with the help of the Japanese. This plan aims to create a world-class city-region by 2030 which is largely based on Eastern and Western urban plans (Myers, 2015). This vision remains within the hegemonic boundaries of development (between modernity and development), and lacks the incorporation of experiences and needs of the urban poor in Nairobi. The development of the city is therefore for the middle classes, and is consequently causing the informal sector to continue growing. This makes the binary of ‘informality’ and ‘formality’ a re-occurring theme in African cities, particularly when trying to understand how the informal emerges and sustains. One form of the growing informal sector in Nairobi is through informal street food. Research papers on this topic have mostly chosen a case study within informal settlements. This has led to informal food vendors rarely being studied out of the informal context.

This thesis examines the relationship between informal food spaces in a formalising neighbourhood within Nairobi. New buildings and commercial services in this neighbourhood are part of an exclusive ‘middle-class aesthetic’ that aspires to create ‘neat, tidy and planned’ neighbourhoods with no planned space for informal activity. This thesis will call this - closing space. Focusing specifically on a formalising neighbourhood in Nairobi, this research finds that informal street food vendors are locating themselves in this neighbourhood to sell food to the workers in the area. By using Massey’s (2005) understanding of space as a ‘multi-relational dimension’, and de Haan’s (2005) theorisation of the ‘appropriation of space’; the informal food spaces will be understood through a spatial analytical lens. This approach finds that space has to be taken as a serious dimension in order to explain the formalising process as it shows the different trajectories of hegemonic views of how a neighbourhood should ‘develop’. This means that the vendors re-open the closing space by engaging in spatial and social strategies to emerge and sustain themselves as the neighbourhood continues to formalise and close down space. The thesis concludes that informal food vendors should be considered as part of the ‘ordinary’ formalisation process. By changing the assumptions of how a neighbourhood should formalise, provides an innovative and exciting development trajectory for African cities.

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2. Background to the Research

In this thesis, the context of Nairobi represents the case of a city becoming more formalized to achieve developmental aspirations to become a ‘world-class city-region” (Myers, 2015: 331). However, the city faces a dilemma. The current formalisation of neighbourhoods in fact encourages informality, enhancing sectors with informal street food stalls. To understand why this happens, a deeper understanding of the case study area and Nairobi is needed.

The first part of this chapter will outline a formalising neighbourhood in Nairobi – Groganville Estate – which will be used as the case study area. To aid this context, a brief account of the colonial spatial legacies of Nairobi will be discussed. In the second part of this chapter, I will examine the emergence and rise of informal street food in Nairobi, and will emphasise the different approaches which researchers and policy makers have taken in order to frame street food. This will conclude by stressing how these frameworks lack contextual understandings of street food in Nairobi and I will argue in further chapters that this is needed to understand the informal sector.

2.1 Case Study Context

The case-study area investigated in this thesis is in Groganville Estate, and covers a surface area of approximately 6.5 square kilometres, in which seventeen informal food stalls are operating. To understand why this is significant a brief context of the area is needed.

Map 1: Nairobi, 2012. Source: ICT vile, 2012 Retrieved From: http://ictville.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/googlemaps-nairobi.gif

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The neighbourhood chosen for the case study – Groganville Estate (as shown on Map 1 in the orange ring) lies west of the central business district (CBD). It is situated south of the largest highway of Nairobi’s Waiyaki Way which connects the city to the west of the country. This estate falls under the division of Westlands which was a European residential area during the colonial period (see image 3), and it remains an affluent area to this day. The area was described to favour “flat-topped embellished buildings and small compounds...community clubs and sports grounds” (Nairobi City, n.d). However, it progressively shifted in the early 2000s from a residential to a more commercial area (Rodriguez-Torres, 2010: 204). There has been a rise of businesses and organisations like Google, the Westgate shopping mall, Barclays bank and embassies, all escaping the chaos and high rents of the CBD and re-locating in Westlands. This has also resulted in an increase of nightclubs, hotels and bars, as well as a large expat population in the area with luxury apartments selling for over 200,000 euros. The last census in 2009 estimated the recorded population in Westlands close to 250,000 people and the area has the lowest share of individuals under the poverty line (GOK, 2017: 2- 2 & 2- 8). The census in fact found Westlands to be one of the most affluent areas in the city, scoring the best in the development measures like household access to electricity, water, schools, formally built infrastructure, electrical goods etc. This begs the question, why is this division performing so highly in development indicators such as income, access to infrastructure such as roads and schools, yet the formalised space is still experiencing informality through street food? A brief look at the history of Nairobi is a start to understanding this affluent space in relation to the rest of the city.

2.2 Colonial Spaces

The city of Nairobi was created as a train stop on the East African railway line (Mitullah, 2003, p. 1) and was built under formal planning by the British colonial rule in the 1900s. Before this, Nairobi was pasture land for the Maasai as well as agricultural land for the Kikuyu people. As the colonial headquarters shifted from Mombasa to Nairobi the Maasai and Kikuyus were displaced as the commercial trade and colonial zoning transformed the space into an urban setting (ibid: 1) for the British. The first urban plan created by the British was for a population of under 30,000 (Dutton, 1930; Myers, 2003), followed by a further master plan in 1948 as the population grew. This plan was created by academic planners from the South African regime, and led by Thornton White (Myers, 2015: 332). This plan is still available to look at in the national archives in Nairobi and as you can see from image 2, the central business district was designed to occupy government buildings, with a long straight road through the centre. This plan was hand-drawn and coloured using pencils predominantly green and red. It can be concluded that the green areas are to resemble spaces that remain luscious and green, as Nairobi was designed as a ‘garden city’ which meant urban sprawl was limited (K’Akumu, Olima 2007: 88). The red areas which represent other areas of development, for example the train station and industrial area, are located on the peripheries of the government buildings. This master plan is a view of the proposed central area. Even though it does not give specifics about the Westlands area, it does provide an insight into the colonial project of dividing the space up for single purpose use. There is a clear divide between the green and red areas while town planning was seen as a top-down project enhancing the interests of the white Europeans.

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Image 2: Colonial Master Plan 1948 Image 3: The segregation of residential areas in Nairobi, 1909 Source: Authors own photo, from colonial masterplan Source: Mazingira Institute, 1993, p. 2

Image 3 helps us understand the context of Nairobi, of how post-colonial spatial legacies still have an impact on urban realities today. Image 3 shows us how Nairobi was segregated by the British colonial regime through spatial residential zoning in 1900. This was a policy used to separate the politically and economically dominant white population from the poor indigenous black natives (Spinks, 2001), and Indian people. As a lot of building and low- income labour was needed, especially for the railway, the British coerced different Kenyan ethnic groups to the city and also Indians. As these groups of people migrated to the city, it resulted in three distinct racial groups, European, Asian and African, and the way the British tried controlling this was through zoning space according to geographical identities This had the effect of limiting people’s freedom to be able to choose where to live and work, in order to promote social identities for colonial projects (K’Akumu, Olima, 2007: 89). This residential segregation was designed in the 1900s to reproduce extreme spatial inequality under the colonial rule which then lasted another 63 years (K’Akumu et al, 2007). As represented on image 3, approximately an eighth of the residential districts was for the Africans in the east, a quarter for the Indians in the central north and the rest, in mostly the west, served the Europeans (Rodriguez-Torres, 2010: 29). It also restricted the areas where Africans and Indians could work, only household servants lived in the European residential zones in their own servant quarters (ibid). Africans even had to carry an identity card on them at all times, as laws were passed to purposely make it difficult for Africans to live, work and move in the urban areas (Otiso, 2005: 74). The racial segregation through residential zones is not a unique phenomenon for cities (cf. America with its ghettoization), however, this is unusual for most African cities. In

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Nairobi it was done under direct colonial rule (K’Akumu, Olima, 2007: 89), and the British made it very difficult for the Africans to become ‘urban’ as they were alienated and seen as ‘rural’ people (Otiso, 2005: 94). It resulted in urban space forming racial hierarchy and for Africans there was little opportunity of free movement around the city. This alienated the groups from each other (Otiso, 2005: 91), and it curbed the growth of informal trade in the affluent European zones.

The post-colonial legacy means the neighbourhoods of Nairobi are heavily embedded with cultural, racial and colonial ties. After independence was achieved in 1963, racial zoning was abolished but administrative divisions of Nairobi were redrawn and are now: Central, Dagoretti, Embakasi, Kasarani, Kibera, Makadara and Pumwani. Nevertheless, even though the divisions were redrawn, the spaces in the neighbourhoods remain “distinguished by the type of people who live there, how they live and what they do, as well as by the appearance of the area” (Obudho 2000: 105), unsurprisingly the most upmarket areas are in the west and north-central of Nairobi and on image 3 you can see where the European settlers resided. Nairobi therefore holds a post-colonial existence of unequal neighbourhoods, and the ‘white’ dominated areas are still intensifying in affluence, and the ‘black’ areas are rising in poverty and deprivation (Macoloo, 1998 in K’Akumu, Olima, 2007: 90). Otiso (2005) argues that post-colonial spaces are no longer controlled by race, instead income has replaced who is in the space. However, for the urban poor, there is little differences as it is argued that in European spaces during colonial times, there was a feeling alienation by the settlers for Africans in Nairobi that continues to have an impact on urban society. This alienation resulted in underdevelopment of these areas and could explain the conditions of the urban poor today, and the unequal formalization process.

The spatial legacy of Westlands, and Groganville Estate provides an understanding of why this area is formalised and why it is currently attracting commercial businesses. Post-independent Nairobi experienced economic and population growth, and struggled to implement the new independence urban plan of 1973 This allowed the pervasive effects of globalisation to plan the city through formal developments sprawling from the centre for example sky-rise buildings and more luxury private housing. The informal sector also developed alongside these formal developments creating an unequal terrain of power relations (Njeru, 2006: 1054-5 in Myers 2011). To understand the informality in the area, the following section will look at the rise of street food in Nairobi and why this means affluent areas such as Groganville Estate attracts vendors.

2.3 Emergence of informal street food in Nairobi

Since the 1990s the urban population has continued to grow in Nairobi (Potts, 2016), and is estimated by the Kenyan government (NCC, 2016: 6) to currently be just over 4.5 million people. This steady surge in the population is arguably due to the rural to urban economic migration (ibid). With high rates of inflation in Kenya, the cost of living for the majority of the population remains unaffordable even with an income (Mwangi et al, 2001) Combined with the lack of social welfare (and social urban planning) in the city, it means that the urban poor have developed modes of survival by creating informal sectors, like affordable street food.

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The informal sector in Nairobi, known as “Jua Kali” (‘hot sun’ as workers stand out in the open) (Muraya, 2006) typically consists of self-employed workers who use simple infrastructure, and have easy entry into the market (Meiner & James, 2005), they can be described as creative entrepreneurs who think of innovative methods and strategies to trade under the informal conditions. Their cliental is directed towards the urban poor, those consumers who are outpriced by the formal economy, especially in the area where they work; who want to buy the daily essentials like food, tea, beverages, newspapers, cigarettes and clothes. These people are called ‘day dwellers’in this thesis – low-paid workers who commute to their work but are out-priced by the formal economy when they want to make a daily purchase. The informal sector remains informal due to the businesses not being registered with the city council, or not possessing a license to trade (GOK, 1998: 65). The Kenyan government started referring to this sector as ‘small-scale enterprises’ in 1987 when they attempted to regulate these economic activities (Livingstone, 1986). Lyon and Snoxell (2005) found that only 7,000 licenses and formal sites were made available for an estimated 500,000 street traders. Mwangi (2002) found that street food in Nairobi provided a substantial amount of income for most vendors. with most earning an income above the official minimum wage while some earned twice this amount or even more. Street vendors in sub-Saharan African cities face daily oppression and hostility from local governments (Porter et al, 2007). One manifestation of the informal sector is through informal food stalls. In Nairobi, popular street food meals like ugali, githeri, and rice dishes contain 50% of the recommended daily allowance of protein (Steyn et al: 2014).

2.3.1 Nairobi’s Informal Street Food

Street food was first officially defined in 1986 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation on the ‘Regional Workshop on Street Food in Asia’ as: “(…) a wide range of ready-to-eat foods and beverages sold and sometimes prepared in public places, notably streets.” (FAO, 1986). Street food in Nairobi emerged in the 1960s and has rapidly increased since then (Mwangi et al, 2001), with its largest surge in 1980s-1990s. Before the 1960s there are no ‘official accounts’ of informal food being sold on the streets in the city (Mwangi et al, 2001: 503) outside the informal settlements. Rodriguez-Torres (2015: 49 - 50) highlights the fact that since Kenya’s independence in 1963, policies and tolerance regarding illegal commercial activities by the urban poor have been alternating from being banned, to being endorsed. He argues that this is dependent on the political party and leaders in power, and their relationships and attitudes towards informal vendors.

Towards the end of the 1960s, fresh maize started appearing as a snack which was sold by men, in areas where urban poor congregated (Mwangi et al, 2001: 503) for example, at bus stops. By the 1970s and 1980s maize started to be become a common snack in the CBD, with cooked foods like chapatti, boiled sweet potatoes also appearing in back streets and industrial areas; (see ibid for more food examples). As female vendors started their own stores, the type of food changed, with more cooked lunches for the growing number of casual labourers. The informal street food industry expanded by providing breakfast, lunch, and also dinner in residential areas like Eastland’s. This rise in informal street foods was due to the rise of low income skilled workers commuting to other neighbourhoods in the city who needed a place to eat during working hours (ibid: 505). This demand was quickly met by women who had

P a g e | 16 the necessary cooking skills due to their roles in society, having been taught to cook traditional Kenyan meals. By the 1990s, street food spilled over to middle-income residential areas and commercial areas, but street vendors were still absent in high-income residential areas. It was generally found that where the urban poor moved around the city, informal street food was likely to be found in that vicinity (Mwangi et al, 2001).

The informal street food sector has flourished in developing countries in the last 30 - 40 years as a result of urbanization processes and remains a topic that is largely researched due to the contentious issues between urban planning, public health and economic growth. It estimated that more than 40% of low-income households consume street food every day in Nairobi (Oyunga-Ogubi et al, 2009), and it provides a large source of nutrition in consumers’ diets. Particularly noticeable in Nairobi, and other African cities (Ayeh et al, 2011), is that street food is predominantly cooked hot meals and sold in the same location every day. These food stalls are known in Kenya as vibandas (kibanda in singular) and mostly located in the pedestrian flows, creating food arteries in the city. They are informal, semi-permanent structures often made from ad hoc wood beams, aluminium panels, and sometimes attached to a small kiosk rented from large corporations like Safaricom or Mpesa. They fall into the informal sector worker definition described previously, but street food vendors are particularly seen as illegal micro economies, mostly run by women who set up the stalls with minimal start-up costs. Selling patterns can also change throughout the day, as some vendors prepare lunches for workers in affluent neighbourhoods, while others mainly sell in the mornings or evenings, mostly in the informal settlements (Mwangi et al, 2001). The literature describes street food consumers in African cities as mostly ‘young, single, unskilled workers with low education levels (Martins, 2006, Rheinlander et al., 2008). Hill et al (2016: 26) also note that street food consumers often buy from stalls around taxi and bus stops, in other words transport interchanges. Rodriguez-Torres (2010: 49- 50) states that “all owners of kiosks have to pay a municipal tax in order to buy a licence to trade…despite this they are still threatened with expropriation”. Running an informal street food stall in Nairobi is risky for the vendors due to their illegality, yet the city council has also struggled to provide planning for food (Morgan, 2009) for the urban poor. The current food vending policy operated by the Nairobi city council has been taken from their website and is shown as image 4.

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Image 4: Nairobi City Council ‘Food Shops and Stores’ Policy. Source: http://www.nairobi.go.ke/home/common-city-laws-and-regulations/by-laws

The policy shown in image 4, is aimed at ‘food shops and stores’ and therefore places informal street vendors in limbo if they do not have a registered kiosk. The policy specifies “it is an offence to trade in food unless one is in possession of the appropriate licence or permit”. If a vendor does not possess a licence or permit, a medical certificate it makes the selling of food ‘illegal’ (Rodriguez-Torres, 2010: 49- 50).

This caught the attention of international agencies like the FAO and researchers particularly in the 1990s (Winarno & Allain. 1991). Research on Nairobi’s informal street food has been approached in multiple ways; by looking at nutrition of the food, public health sanitary concerns (Githiri et al 2015), entrepreneurial economic benefits (Morange, 2015, ILO 1972, Hart 1973) and recently the use of public space (Morange, 2017, Ayeh et al 2011). As a whole, informal street food is seen as an integral part of food security for diets amongst the urban poor (Steyn et al. 2014: 1372, Riet et al. 2002). It is also argued that it can be seen as a valuable asset to the city in order to create effective policy to improve the working conditions and reduce sanitation risks. As there is arguably a gap in effective policy for informal food policy in Nairobi, and its 2030 vision.

One noticeable trend in the literature pertaining to street food in Nairobi is that the research, and subsequent policies often study food vendors as individual entities and consequently they are taken out of their spatial context. The IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development) have reacted to this and have undertaken a participatory research of informal street food ‘inside’ the informal settlements of Mathare, Kibera and Mukuru (Ahmed et al, 2015: 8). By using balloon mapping techniques, they explored the challenges of food safety. They found that food was prepared, cooked and consumed in spaces of uncontrolled environmental hazards: close to open sewage, uncollected rubbish, and possibly vulnerable to water contamination (ibid: 34). This was due to inadequate

P a g e | 18 infrastructure and services that pose a direct threat to food safety (ibid), and therefore the public health to those consuming food. Food safety is a prevalent issue in Nairobi at this moment, as a recent cholera outbreak has not only affected the vulnerable urban poor, but also the elites of the city (WHO, 2017). It is therefore important to follow the efforts of the IIED to pursue contextual understandings of informal street food. Also given the findings from Mwangi et al’s (2001) relating to the emergence of informal street food in formal residential neighbourhoods in the late 1990s, it is an epistemological step for informal street food to be understood in the context of a formalising residential neighbourhood.

2.4 Conclusion & Informal Food Space

The first section of this chapter gives historical context to Nairobi. It shows how the foundations of the city were built under British colonial rule and through racial zoning of neighbourhoods created inequalities in the urban space. The colonial rule implemented urban plans and built inhabitable neighbourhoods for the Europeans in the West of the city, where area used in the case study, Groganville is located. This explains why the neighbourhood is already well developed and already undergoing the formalisation process. The colonial rule also relied on heavy regulation (especially of Africans) and monitoring of activities, which suggests that informal activities were not a common occurrence in the European neighbourhoods. The second part of the chapter acted as a literature review of informal street food in Nairobi. In conclusion two key points emerge Firstly as Nairobi gained in independence in 1964, informal street food started becoming a highly visible trade and has flourished ever since. Secondly, informal street food in Nairobi is often studied within the informal settlement context. Combining the post-colonial legacy of freedom of movement and the rise of street food, the question to be asked is what is happening in post-European neighbourhoods that are currently formalising in order to become part of the 2030 vision?

By placing street food into its context, this thesis will shift the phrasing of informal street food vending, to ‘informal food space’. By adding the notion of space, it locates the vendors and forces the research to provide contextual analysis. The following theoretical chapter will deconstruct what is meant by space and how this incorporates not just spatial strategies, but also forces the researcher/planner to incorporate the infrastructural designs and social arrangements into the setting in which it is being studied. So, from now on, informal street food vendors will be referred to as the informal food space.

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3. Theoretical Framework

3.1 Introduction

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.

3.2 Closing of Space

As the empirical case-study is of a neighbourhood, the following section will look specifically at how a neighbourhood ‘ordinarily’ develops, and then move onto explain how space becomes ‘closed’ in this process. Henk de Haan (2005) uses Malone’s (2002) classification of ‘open’ or ‘closed’ spaces in street life. A closed space results from a “group of appropriation, imposing dominant values and exclusive access” (de Haan, 2005: 9) and is seen as a negative process by radical geographers as they are associated with the private sector filling spaces with “surveillance, discipline and exclusion” (ibid). This means that the process of ordinary formalisation involves regulation and planning by authorities that hold an element of power over the function of the space.

3.2.1 ‘Ordinary’ Representations of Formalisation

Urban formalisation typically occurs when city authorities have an urban plan to implement. Part of this process is to remove informality and gain a monopoly of control over the activities that occur in the urban space. Activities include certain buildings like houses, offices and roads being built, public transport being controlled by the state, economic industries being taxed and licensed, natural resources like water being controlled, and even involves the micro management of where people spend their leisure time. This ordinary type of formalisation aspires to achieve a certain middle-class neighbourhood aesthetic, and in a city like Nairobi, requires a great deal of informal activity removal, as informality does not fit the current 2030 urban planning vision (Myers, 2015).

Without going too deep into concepts of neighbourhoods, the words of Lewis Mumford will suffice; “neighbourhoods…exist wherever human beings congregate…” (1954: 258). As explained in the research context

P a g e | 20 chapter, the bulk of Nairobi’s affluent neighbourhoods were the legacy of ‘white’ zones where British colonials dedicated state budgets to build ‘pleasant’ neighbourhoods. Post-independence arrived in 1964 and the majority of new building developments in Nairobi started becoming funded and provided by the commercial private sector. In the 1980s real estate companies started to radically change the residential landscape of the city by buying land parcels (a group of lots), dividing them up, and building large residential developments on those sites in order to meet the private housing demand in the city (Rukwaro & Washington, 2003: 144). These developments are part of the ‘clean-up’ process that is often associated with world-class city-regions (Goldman, 2011). By closing the space, the physical buildings are a powerful way to manipulate human behaviour; where humans respond to the embedded practices and rules in this space. Through this clean-up the idea is to remove certain behaviours and interactions that do not fit into the middle class vision, for example street vending. However as the following section explains, this is not as simple as it sounds.

3.2.2 Formalising the Informal Street Food Spaces

A way to clean-up a neighbourhood in Nairobi and close down space is to control the informal activities. Smart & Smart (2017: 439) state that formalisation can be achieved through eradication (by ending informal practices), or by regularization (changing the law to make it accepted or easier to regulate). Smart & Smart’s (2017) first method of formalisation is to eradicate informality by forcefully and consistently closing down, cleaning up and punishing any informal activity. This has recently been the case in Bangkok where every street vendor has to move out of the street by the end of 2017. The Thai capital is famous for its street food, yet the military authorities this year enforced existing city regulations. They started to eradicate street food vendors off the pavements in order to achieve the middle class aesthetics of “cleanliness, safety and order”. However, the authorities claimed they were not ‘eradicating’ street food entirely but instead ‘regulating’ it by moving vendors to special market stall areas in order return the pavements to pedestrians. The question of the where the location of these ‘special areas’ will be, is asked by the Guardian (Holmes, 2017), and is in fact a very crucial question. Ayeh et al (2011) found that the location of street vendors is the most integral part of their business. This research looked at the micro spatial practices of street traders in Kumasi, Ghana to investigate why street traders locate where they do. They found that the three key factors of street trader’s choice of location are determined by a large foot fall of customers, availability of access to roads, and the lack of alternative sites. The research found that 58% of street traders in Kumasi located on pavements, and even though they had no permit or licence to operate in that location, they would operate there every day despite the harassment from city authorities. They found that this causes conflict in the public spaces of Kumasi as the space in which they locate themselves often serves the function of pedestrian mobility and crowd safety. As well as, the self- made infrastructures that the street traders build degrade the ascetics that the city is aspiring to (ibid: 26). Ayeh et al (2011) also look at how the authorities deal with street vending and like in Bangkok, find relocation is a mandatory approach in order to control these spaces. This involves destroying the structures, fining the traders and eventually leading discussions about relocation sites, which prove difficult as the regular customers, often day dwellers, have created social pathways around the everyday practice for eating. They come to the stall for the convenience of location, and essentially create food arteries of the streets. Kumasi and Bangkok have similar experiences as

P a g e | 21 authorities both have used eradication as the first method to deal with informal street food vendors. This theoretical framework attempts to explain how simply eradicating the stalls is short-sighted when understanding the food arteries that exist around the physical food stalls. Social pathways have been created around street vendors through being part of day dwellers everyday routines and practises. By closing down the space, through eradicating informal activity, essentially excludes day dwellers of their daily needs. Simply getting rid of a physical stall is much easier than getting rid of an everyday routine of the day dweller, as they will still want to eat food at the stalls and interact with other people in those spaces.

This short-sighted method is realised in Smart and Smart (2017) formalisation methods and they provide a second tool to formalise a neighbourhood through regulation. This involves either changing the law to make informality accepted or easier to manage, or cracking down on the existing law, like the military authority did in Bangkok. However, this method seems unrealistic if the government has limited capacity to monitor and process official licences and permits for all informal vendors, or even lacks the monopoly of power over its citizens. Instead in many cases, the informal market ends up being tolerated, allowing bribes and other elements of corruption to happen. This is what John Cross describes as ‘semi-formality’ (1998: 35). He explains that even though there are regulations in place, the government constantly negotiates these regulations and allows informality to operate under ‘extra-legal’ norms which evolves from relationships between the legal enforcers (like the city council) and the vendors in the informal sector. This puts the informal vendors at extreme vulnerability as the toleration they receive from the legal enforces could change with a change in attitudes of government and the state (ibid & Rodriguez-Torres, 2015). The second method of regulating the informal sector through semi-formality is suggested to already operate in many cases, like in Nairobi.

Both methods have the same ultimate goal of formalisation. It seems that there is a blur, a grey area, in Smart and Smart’s (2017) separation between eradication and regulation as the stalls are first eradicated in order to be regulated through special locations for market stalls. Through this closing down of space world class cities can be achieved; however, the following section will argue how a different formalisation trajectory can be created and be valid for African cities. By ‘re-imaging’ space using theorists like Massey (2005), de Haan (2005) and Yiftachel (2009), the chapter will explain how informal vendors and day dwellers are able to create a collective agency as part of their spatial strategies by appropriating the space they find themselves in on a daily basis.

3.3 Opening of Space

The closing down of space is the binary opposite of opening up space. To quote Malone (2002, in de Haan: 6) again “open spaces by contrast allow much more diversity and the unfolding of a variety of social activities and experience”. Formalisation processes try to close down space by eradicating or regulating informality, yet the opening of space gives room for space to be newly materialised by giving value to the social interactions that occur, like informal food vending.

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The idea of the opening of space needs to be deconstructed somewhat more in order to operationalise the term and use it to analyse the empirical data. This theoretical framework uses the sociological concept of space. This views space as a mixture of objects (like physical buildings, roads) and people (like the people using these objects). The key factor in this concept is that through people using the objects, space is created. For example, a neighbourhood has a set of physical buildings, parks and roads, but it becomes a neighbourhood once people use the buildings as homes. When buildings are used as homes, and roads as arteries to get from A to B, B being the home, it starts to create a neighbourhood. A neighbourhood is embedded with a great deal of spatial boundaries, rules, objects, and this is referred to as the ‘materiality form of space’ (for a further explanation, see de Haan, 2005: 14). What this means is that as a neighbourhood is developed through the building of new apartments, fences and streets, the space becomes divided into zones which has a direct impact on the visuals and behaviour of the people in that space. This is also called the spatial interaction of a neighbourhood. Put simply, understanding spatial interaction is to understand how humans behave in the environment they are in, and how the environment they are in affects human interaction; but also, how this affects how humans interact with one another in that environment. This means that the materiality form of space is embedded with the social form of space. For example, it is assumed that humans in a public park have different social interactions and behaviours than in a private garden. The material form of the space of the park or garden is embedded with learnt social rules and interactions of humans. However, these social rules and material functions are built on learnt assumptions. A child might act the same way in the park as they would in the private garden, but through social interaction they will learn the social order of each space they are in.

However, what happens when the intended function of the material space is treated differently through social interactions?

Bringing it back to the informal sector - when a pavement is used as a cooking site to sell food, rather than its sole function as a way for pedestrians to get from A to B, what does this mean for the materiality of the space? This is what de Haan (2005: 13) calls the‘material appropriation of space’. This means that the material function of space is never fixed as humans have the ability to appropriate the space for another function. With this understanding, this thesis will define the opening of space as the socio-material appropriation of space. To deepen this notion, Massey’s (2005) book for space (2005) argues that space is a product of multi-relations, “a sphere of the possibility of coexistence of multiplicity where trajectories are able to coexist; space is always under construction; never finished or never closed, as it is constructed through relations between each other” (2005: 8). If space is never closed, as Massey states, then it means space is either open, or in the process of closing or opening. So, as the interactions between people occur on certain spaces, through time the materiality of space is able to change. This time dimension is also key to the state of the closing or opening of the space. de Haan (2005: 14) also states however that there are of course limits to the extent of changes of the materiality of space, as human behaviour will more or less remain the correct function, and if an individual changes the function it will not make a great impact. Again, to put simply, if a one person in a public park started acting like would in their

P a g e | 23 private garden, it would not instantly change the functionality of the park space. de Haan (ibid) states that ‘collective action’ is needed to appropriate the materiality of space. There are some examples of this which have been observed. de Haan (2005) shows how a small neighbourhood in The Netherlands resisted developments on derelict sites through using these spaces to host their social community activities, like community walks, a goat meadow and more. This means that the residents had appropriated this space through collective action by holding activities together.

Not only does there need to be a collective force to change the materiality of space, not all spaces are able to be appropriated as easily. de Haan claims easily appropriated spaces have an ‘open script’ (2005: 16). These spaces are badly organised and have no significant previous material-social functions. For example, a derelict green open space could start to be used as a park. These two factors of an open script and collective action allows de Haan (2005) to argue that when space is appropriated, it is often done so by a group of people of who the function in the space was not initially intended for. This is significant as often those people’s needs are not taken seriously by government authorities as they clash with political objectives (ibid: 2), for example teenagers who use parks to socialise and drink alcohol do this as they have no other spaces allocated for this activity. He stresses that these people are not necessarily sub-cultures or minorities in society, they are part of the ordinary where the materiality of space does not fit with their desires. This is crucial for planning interventions, as the space can create social exclusion. In the context of a developing city, this is often the case where the urban poor are excluded out of certain areas where they are not seen as the formal function of the material-social space. The point to be taken from de Haan’s (2005) neighbourhood article is that changing materiality of spaces should not be seen as a failure of planning. It is in fact an exciting innovation through the mundane processes of ordinary everyday life for an excluded group of the urban space. A village in the Netherlands is of course a different context from post-colonial space in Nairobi which this thesis investigates. This thesis aims to show how informal food spaces are part of the ordinary formalisation process. From this section, it can be suggested that informal food spaces are appropriating the spaces they locate themselves on, and changing the function of a pavement to a function of informal food vending. By seeing the space the food stalls are in as appropriated, gives the informality far more legitimacy when in the context of a formalising neighbourhood. However, before going into the empirical chapters to see if the vendors are located on open scripted spaces, and have collective action; a re-imagination of formalisation is needed, and to do this, informality has to be re-imagined first.

3.4 Informality: Bringing it Back to the ‘Ordinary’

African urban studies have used the concept of informality in order to help deconstruct the African city. The phrase the ‘informal sector’ is often claimed to derive from the work of Keith Hart (1973) in Ghana on Accra’s informal economy. He saw the informal and formal sectors in a binary fashion – directly opposite each other. So, the informal is seen as an autonomous, unregulated, often illegal, small-scale, low technology arena for jobs (Myers, 2011) for the urban poor. Compared to the formal sector which was seen as registered, regulated, licenced, taxed and legal work. This binary shows an inability to express adequate perspectives of urban complexities, and particularly when it is

P a g e | 24 studied in urban planning, this approach sees spatial segregation and inequality, but very little is understood regarding the social relations involved in the inequality (Lutzoni, 2016: 9). Since the 1970s, the informality debate has dealt with many other theories attempting to explain what is happening or how to understand it (for a full list see Lutzoni, 2016). This thesis takes Nezer AlSayyad and Ananya Roy’s (2004) approach that informal-formal spaces cannot be seen as categorical binaries, as they in fact operate through complex relations with each other and use the following definition.

“if formality operates through the fixing of value, including the mapping of spatial value, then informality operates through the constant negotiability of value and the unmapping of space” (Roy & Alsayyad 2004).

This conceptualisation shifted informality from being seen as an activity that is ‘not yet regulated’, to an activity that is an everyday normality and functions in the urban setting (Keck in Waibel, 2012: chapter 3). This shifted informality out of being part of understanding the informal economy, but also to be applied to socio-political struggles that helped unravel the reality of the urban poor (ibid). Roy (2009: 84) further went on to explain that informality is deeply part of the government as vendors appropriate public space, and from time to time, are victims of sudden regulation. The imagined assumptions of informality assigns that when an observer sees informal activity they assume that there is no regulation yet in place. However, going back to Cross’(1998) notion of semi-formality, it shows that informal activity is regulated by political authorities, but the break in the assumption is that the space the activity is on is actually intended for another purpose. What I mean by this is that when you see informality, you think it is not regulated. But in fact, informality is semi-regulated, it is informal because it is appropriating the intended function of the space they are located on. A street food vendor is located on a pavement or a side of a road, not on a market stall in a shopping centre.

By breaking down these complex assumptions of the imagined space of informality, it places a criteria for investigation. The argument I made above needs to be tested by the case study. But before this is done, there is a last element that needs to be discussed to tie the theory together, and that is the customers of the informal food spaces. If as Ayeh et al (2011) argue that location is the top reason to get customers, it must be understood who these customers are, and the role they play within a formalising neighbourhood.

3.5 Day Dwellers

In the context of Nairobi, the post-colonial space means that informal street food was able to flourish after independence when Africans and Indians were no longer banned from certain zones and therefore spaces. This suggests that as people gained social mobility in the city, new material functions started forming in different spaces, like in formalising neighbourhoods. A key point in this thesis is that in the development trajectory of Nairobi’s 2030 vision, these ideas of space are not incorporated, so space is still seen as an area to planned, where the function still has to be assigned when formalising an area. As mentioned earlier, part of the formalising process is to create

P a g e | 25 this middle-class aesthetic, not only through the material environment but also through the service environment, by employing low-income workers.

The middle-class aesthetic includes the services provided by the commercialisation functions of the buildings in the neighbourhoods. They are service workers, for example maids, cleaners, gym instructors, taxi drivers, waiters, cooks, security guards, and gardeners are employed to service the needs of the residents in these neighbourhoods. These workers are often from the urban poor, who live in informal settlements in the city and commute to and from work. This thesis defines this group of people as ‘day dwellers’, who rely on the informal sector to provide them with their daily needs like food when in at work (Brown 2005) as they are out-priced by the food outlets built by the formal commercial shops and restaurants. More research needs to be undertaken regarding their relationship with the rise of informal street food in formalising neighbourhoods as it is apparent that day dwellers are not seen as part of the ‘formalisation’ process, as their needs are not met through the urban developments. Oren Yiftachel (2009, 2010) conceptualisation of ‘grey spaces’ can be used to understand why they are not part of the process. Whilst he looked at marginalised urban communities in the Israel/Palestine conflict he observed urban informalities which he coined as grey spaces. These spaces are positioned in-between the colour white which represent legality, approval and fixed; and the colour black which represent eviction, destruction, and death. By classifying space though this way, it provides urban designers and planners with tools and technologies to classify, manage and contain unequal societies. In this thesis, the white space can be seen as the middle-class formal spaces, and the black the informal food spaces, the urban informality in this case-study can be seen as the exclusion of ‘white’ spaces for the day dwellers. Vast amounts of service workers work in formalising neighbourhoods every day, but there are no formal developments built for them to eat or socialise in that area. Instead the day dwellers shift in and out the black and white colours generating a grey space amongst them, and possibly blurring spatial-social boundaries to change the materiality’s of the formalising space they are ordinary excluded from.

3.6 Conclusion

This framework has laid the theoretical basis in order to research how to understand informal street food beyond the binaries of informal and formal. This thesis wants to investigate how the urban poor can be credibly seen as part of the ordinary formalising process in Nairobi. By investigating how food spaces emerge and sustain themselves in the formalising spaces, de Haan’s (2005) theory of spaces with an ‘open script’ and ‘collective action’ will be tested if it also applies in a developing city context. From this, the thesis wants to see if informal food spaces in this context can indeed be part of the ordinary formalising process. It will do this is by using Massey’s (2005) re-imagination of space and examine whether this can place value and significance on the informal food spaces they are currently appropriating in the formalising neighbourhood in Nairobi. The day-dwellers will be also tested to see if they create collective action to allow for the space to be appropriated. By framing the importance of informal food spaces in a spatial framework it will hopefully give the black and grey spaces some more value in their importance in not only feeding people, but also reducing inequality during the formalisation process.

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4. Research Design

The main aim of this research was to understand the rise of informal food stalls that operate in a middle-income neighbourhood in Nairobi. The research was designed in an anthropological sense in order to allow for the spontaneous aspect of human geography.

4.1 Research Questions

The research question of this paper is:

How are informal food spaces emerging and sustaining in formalising neighbourhoods in Nairobi, and to what extent can informality be reimagined to be part of the ‘ordinary’ formalising process?

As this research uses a case study to answer the main research question, the sub-questions provide a contextual understanding of the food spaces that exist in the neighbourhood itself.

In order to further explore this question, the following sub-questions were created: 1. What does a formalising neighbourhood in Nairobi look like, and how does it close space in the neighbourhood? 2. What does the location of informal food spaces tell us about the spatial strategies of the food vendors and does it impact their stall infrastructure? 3. Who and why are the people (day dwellers) making use of the informal food spaces in the area and how do they open up the neighbourhood? 4. What different social arrangements enable informal food spaces to emerge and sustain themselves in this neighbourhood?

The orange coloured words in the sub-questions are to highlight the concepts used within the research background and theory chapters, which will now be used in the following empirical chapters and is briefly explained how this will be done in the following paragraphs.

The neighbourhood changes will be understood through the chosen case study. Chapter 5 will walk the reader through the area and will provide an overview of the urban developments in the neighbourhood. This will look at the first sub-question and provide support to the main question which assumes neighbourhoods are formalising in Nairobi.

In order to understand how food spaces are emerging in this neighbourhood, a spatial approach has been adopted. I will first locate the food stalls in the neighbourhood. The sub-question forces me to link the spatial location and

P a g e | 27 distribution of these vendors to infer why they have emerged and sustained in this way, with the infrastructure they have used. Linking this spatial location to the workers and residents in the area, it will provide a better picture of how food spaces become open spaces and part of the formalising process.

The third sub-question looks at the day dwellers, who are the patrons of the food spaces. It explains how the customers are people who work yet do not live in the area and use the food spaces as places to eat lunch. It also explains how the food spaces provide further than food roles, but also creates spaces for the day dwellers to relax in the formalising neighbourhood. Through analysis this chapter will show how these food spaces ‘open’ up spaces in the neighbourhood.

The fourth sub-question investigates how the food spaces operate around strong informal social arrangements amongst the day dwellers and the food vendors. Through informal networks, vendors access to resources like water and storage.

4.2 Operationalization

By translating the theory from the previous chapter into measurable forms, the main data collected had to be reduced into variables using indicators as presented below. As explained in the theoretical chapter the notion of informality in African cities is symbiotic and cannot be simplified down to a formal/informal binary. Food spaces are however an avenue to understand the informal micro enterprises that operate in Nairobi’s neighbourhoods. They are informal in the eyes of the city council due to their ad-hoc, unplanned semi-permanence nature.

Thus, concepts can be broken down into the following dimensions: - Closing of Space o Formalisation: . Ordinary Representation  Neighbourhood changes through time o Physical buildings o Function of buildings  Middle class aesthetics

. Formalising Informal Food Vendors  Eradication or Regulation  Semi-informality Remaining ‘ordinary’ formalisation? (Massey, 2005) - Opening of Space o Rise of informal food spaces . Spatial strategies:  Open Scripts (de Haan, 2005) o Food arteries in relation to the locations o Stall infrastructure  Collective Agency (de Haan, 2005) o Day Dwellers: workers in the area . Grey spaces (Yiftachel, 2009, 2010) . Post-colonial legacy

How does this help emerge food stalls? How does this help sustain food stalls?

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4.2.1 Case Study Selection

For this research, I have used streets within ‘Groganville Estate’ as the case study area in order to investigate why informal food stalls thrive in this formal neighbourhood. The streets were chosen by walking through the neighbourhood and seeing where the food stalls were located in the area. This area was found by inductive methodology. The work by human geographers often receives little public attention (Murphy 2006: 1). This means, when conducting research in this discipline, a conscious effect of applying it to relevant debates and agendas is necessary. Murphy (2006: 1) also states that geographers need to use the discipline to start better understanding different parts of the world. So, the context of the thesis is in Nairobi, Kenya and attempts to understand how informality plays out through a radical geographical understanding. By joining theory to practical case study, this research aims to create tangible visions of how to create lively urban spaces which can be an example of how empirical research can enhance the human geographies breadth, and be important to public agendas.

With this in mind, bringing the research into the context is crucial. One way this can be done in geography is through collecting data in the ‘field’. Patel (2015) states that activities outside the classroom enable students to apply theory to practice. Doing the research in Nairobi, Kenya means that for myself as the researcher I was exposed to unfamiliar places, cultures and new people (Patel, 2015: 591). The societal relevance of the research will be most useful for planners, in understanding how to create solutions of informal space African cities face whilst developing. The planners that take this thesis to justify approaches for food spaces will inevitably work on creating a more equal urbanisation process, not just for a select few of the city.

After viewing an apartment in the area, I was intrigued as to how the visible food vendors and modern developments managed to exist and thrive in the same area. Case studies are an essential and an effective tool for either testing or construction of theory (Dooley, 2002), and in this case, by adding to knowledge about an African city. A case study method was needed in order to answer the research questions and the sub-questions but in order to answer the ‘how’ question more of a descriptive element needs to be explored (Dooley, 2002).

4.2.2 Data Collection

In order to understand how informal food spaces, emerge and sustain themselves in formalising neighbourhoods, a mixed-method approach was used. The fieldwork in Nairobi, Kenya took place between March-May 2017. The main data collection was through semi-structured interviews, observations and surveys. In addition, academic articles were used to provide background knowledge and describe the post-colonial context of Nairobi. Google Earth was also used as historical evidence of the changes in the neighbourhood, which can indicate formalisation. GPS points of the food spaces were also collected in order to display their spatial locations. Triangulation of data was the reason for this style of research methods (Bryman, 2012: 635). However, I will discuss the three main data collection sources in depth.

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These interviews were key to this research. The very first part of the data collection was observation of the area, noticing the formalisation and informal food spaces. This research then followed a sequential design, first 14 semi- structured interviews were completed with informal street food vendors. After that, 60 surveys were completed of the customers in the food stalls.

4.2.3 Observations

The first observations that were made were through walking through the neighbourhood. After walking through the streets of the neighbourhood and becoming more aware of the vast amounts of street food spaces that exist in small proximity I became increasingly interested in why this was the case in this area. After renting a room in the neighbourhood I was embedded in the area which meant that I could observe the food spaces from the time they set up, to when they closed up after lunch. Being part of the neighbourhood allowed me to get to know people who worked in the local kiosks for example the local vegetable seller and the jelly coconut seller. Since my mode of transport during the day was walking, I was able to observe on the ground. Field notes were taken, and photos, in order to document these observations.

4.2.4 Semi-Structured Interviews

Table 1 gives an insight of the people who were interviewed. Fourteen out of the 17 food stalls were interviewed. The 3 that were not interviewed were due to the stall owners being hesitant of answering questions due to the fear of their stall because of the illegality of the business. This was respected and we moved on. The participants are mostly the food stall owners; however, some we interviewed were the cooks at the stall. In order to understand how they emerge and sustain themselves in this neighbourhood questions were asked around these variables. The criteria of selecting the food stalls was based on their location through purpose sampling (Bryman, 2012: 418). They had to be within the case-study boundary, which was decided after I walked through the neighbourhood and saw where the food spaces were concentrated.

There were seventeen informal food spaces (cooked food) at the time of leaving the field, of which eleven were successfully interviewed. Four of these interviews were recorded and transcribed. The interviews ranged from 30 - 60 minutes long depending on the work load of the respondent. We had slightly more time to interview street vendors and would approach them either after they had finished cooking breakfast, around 8.30am or after the rush of lunch time, around 14:00. This meant that interviews could be done uninterrupted and a relaxed atmosphere could be created.

4.2.5 Surveys

Patrons were asked to complete a short-structured survey of which sixty were successfully completed. My research assistant and I had a specific time window in which to conduct the interviews as the respondents were often on a break from work. These interviews were often done during the hours of 10.00 - 14:00. When preparing the surveys, it

P a g e | 30 had a 7-minute limit as people were coming to eat breakfast or lunch on their break, whereby we did not want to take up too much of their time. This meant that the questions asked had to be in a structured survey and not too many questions could be asked because an introduction and gaining consent was also part of this time frame.

All the interviews were conducted in person, with a research assistant present during the patrons and stall owner interviews.

4.2.6 Visual Data

Photos were taken throughout the field work and used in the empirical chapters. The images are used in a qualitative sense in order to contextualise the neighbourhood that is used in the case study. The photos were taken by a photographer – Imiamour – who I had asked to take photos of visuals of the formalising neighbourhood, and the informal food spaces, and also where indicated photos were taken by myself. What was very important in this data collection especially when showing how the neighbourhood is formalising was to capture the juxtaposes of the grey spaces as indicated in the theory chapter. Even though visual data collection can be very effective method, there is not a strong standardised way to analyse visuals like photos (Pauwels, 2010). There also brings up the question of representativeness and authentic to be used for data collection. So, this thesis will use photos as a supplementary image in order to provide the reader with a visual context of the case study. Creating a map of satellite images was also part of the data collection.

4.2.7 Research Analysis

The data was recorded using paper and pen, and some interviews were recorded and transcribed as part of the data analysis. The analytical approach taken for this research is to use a mixed method approach which allows triangulation to occur. The semi-structured interview results were entered into an Excel document where themes and quotes were refined using a Word document. The number of surveys meant a specific qualitative software programme was not needed. Frequency distribution of surveys was achieved by entering them into Excel. Geo-codes were refined in Google Maps in order to produce a map of the case study.

4.3 Limitations and Ethical Considerations

4.3.1 Statement of Ethics

As I interviewed a selection of different individuals, to ensure their safety for sharing matters of personal content and physical locations, verbal consent was sought from each participant. They were informed about the context and confidentiality of the research and where applicable this included consent to being recorded.

Due to the nature of the research of informal food stalls a local gatekeeper was present throughout all the interviews in the food spaces. His role was to provide translation for the interviews, as many of the food stall owners and

P a g e | 31 patrons felt more comfortable speaking in Sheng or Ki-Swahili. As these food stalls in Kenya are classified as illegal, the gatekeeper also provided an entry point between myself and the respondent as he is known to the food vendors in the area due to his previous employment close by.

Participants were notified that they had an option to withdraw from participation at any time, without being obliged to provide an explanation for their motive. All but two interviews with food stall owners were successful, one due to news that a city council figure was in the area, and the other due to suspicion of the interview itself as they revealed they had recently had altercation with the authorities. In order to put no one at risk, my research assistant and I were careful not to overtly display interview paperwork, and when someone from authority status passed by we imminently stopped the interviews and left the premises. Overall, data collection was successful and people were keen to respond. With each food stall interview that took place, an item of beverage or food was purchased as a gesture of good will to support their business and them giving up their time.

In this thesis, all respondent’s names were changed. Patrons names were not asked, but the cooks names were. They were asked as I felt it was important to build a relationship up with the cooks, so walking through the neighbourhood you were able to refer to them by their name as a sign of respect and curtesy. Extra precaution has been taken to protect respondents’ anonymity in the thesis, as well as the locational inputs have been given slightly off coordinates in order to protect the individuals’ safety, with street names not included on the maps.

4.3.2 Statement of positionality

The researcher's positionality is an important consideration when detailing strategies to enter the field. As I do not speak the local languages of Kenya I used a Ki-Swahili-speaking research assistant to conduct the interviews. We then spent time after the interview translating and expanding on the notes taken. This however meant that as things were translated, the emphasis and meaning may be less defined or slightly altered. This is hard to avoid in these circumstances however this was taken into account when analysing the data collected. I overcame this by creating a good working relationship with my assistant, briefing him on the research aims and avenues I would want to explore in the interviews.

4.3.3 Limitations of Research

The biggest limitation to this research was the language barrier. It required a lot of time to de-brief after each semi- structured interview from the translator, and this was through his words and interpretation. This was however a foreseen limitation, and research aims considered this beforehand.

The second limitation will be potential skewing of results of informal food spaces. These spaces will be constantly changing, with stalls leaving and new stalls coming. In the time of the field work of two months, one food space left the area, and one food space set up in the area. However, overall these spaces are semi-permanent but it is important to be aware that the maps are a snap shot in the time of the data collected.

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5. The Formalising Neighbourhood

5.1 Introduction

This chapter is a walk through the neighbourhood of Groganville Estate. It takes the reader from the Westlands bus station and explains the observations of the neighbourhood particularly the ‘white’ spaces; so the formal buildings, roads, commercial offices and restaurants. The chapter aims the reader to feel like they have walked through the case-study area and observed how the ‘white spaces become ‘greyed’ through the day dwellers using ‘black’ spaces of informal activity.

As the theory chapter outlined, African cities are increasingly formalising, particularly in middle-income neighbourhoods. How this is happening is something to be researched, so this chapter will walk the reader through the initial observations of the streets in the case study. Typically, as cities develop the sprawl from the Central Business District engulfs neighbouring areas which results in in-sufficient integration and planning for the urban poor (Ayeh et al, 2011). In Nairobi, Westlands is an example of this. New high-rise office blocks have been built, as well as developments of large shopping centres like Westgate and Sarit Centre, high-rise hotels, casino’s, nightclubs and fusion restaurants. These developments require a workforce including construction workers, gardeners, security guards, taxi drivers, cleaners and maids. The urban poor serve middle-upper income areas of the city, which results in a demand for accessible affordable food for low-income workers. This chapter provides the reader with a physical template of the neighbourhood in order to understand how this part of Nairobi is changing. By starting with an aerial view of the case study, showing the visual physical changes over the last fourteen years, it then moves on to demarcate the roads that were walked along and observed, to aid the reader through the streets from ground levels. The chapter works to answer how neighbourhoods are urbanizing, and answer the sub-question “how are formal neighbourhoods urbanising and changing in Nairobi?”

A multi-perspective approach has been used by looking at the case study on different scales. From a birds-eye view map looking for the physical changes over time, to on the ground observations, and using photos as evidence of the neighbourhood. This was a conscious effort in order to bring myself as the researcher, the research itself and the reader to observe the different ways the neighbourhood can be represented. This also was an effort to encourage spatial thinking (Solem et al 2008) to characterize the research within human geography discipline.

5.2 Changes: Residential to Commercial

Before understanding why urbanising neighbourhoods matters, it is important to understand what has changed. Unfortunately, with rapidly changing cities it is hard to attain clear data, especially for formal, upper class neighbourhoods in African cities. In the last census completed in Nairobi was 2009, planning policies available to the

P a g e | 33 public are still only in their ‘master’ plan form and archival documents often date back from colonial times, with a few post-independence documents, mostly focusing on the greater plan for the city or the Central Business District. This ‘leapfrog’ style of development in Nairobi has required more anthropological approaches to data collection. Therefore, demarcating a case study area to assess the developments and activities in a middle-income neighbourhood leads to a micro understanding of the neighbourhood and is applicable to greater understandings of the urban processes in Nairobi.

5.2.1 Changes Through Satellite Images

A neighbourhood can change in many ways. One obvious way being the physical changes. This estate was already built with physical infrastructure by the colonial state, which is explained in chapter 2. However, since then there is a lack of access to official public documents or general material on this neighbourhood which has meant that using satellite images from Google Earth can give an elementary overview. The first satellite image available for Nairobi was taken in 2002. This means the changes can be tracked over a fourteen-year time span.

Image 5: Google Earth Image of Groganville Estate taken on 11/03/2002 Source: Google Earth 2017

The first image is an aerial view of the area in 2002. This image represents a built up, developed urban environment (look at http://www.satellite-sightseer.com/id/11552 to view what an informal settlement looks like from satellite image in Nairobi). The highway on the north of the image is the most noticeable sign of development, the linear tarmacked road surrounds the neighbourhood in question. South of the highway more tarmacked roads flow into the neighbourhood to service the houses which occupy the space. The details of the houses are not visible, but they have tiled roofs and are designed in a square fashion to align with property rights and public space owned by the city

P a g e | 34 council. Tress line the streets, and patches of clear green land exist. There is a sense of formality and order for the people making use of the area.

Image 6: Google Earth Image of Groganville Estate taken on 13/01/2017 Source: Google Earth 2017

This image is the same scale as image 1 and shows the same coordinates, but has been taken fourteen years later. As you can see the main skeleton of the area is roughly the same. The highway and roads still exist. What is noticeable is the overall increase of built structures. The view of tiled roofs has increased as the amount of tree tops have decreased.

The coloured circles on image 2 represent the visible changes in the image when comparing it to the 2002 image. The red circles on image 2 represent the new high-rise buildings. The pink circles mark the cleared green areas in the neighbourhood. It is important to take into account the different time of the year the photos were taken, but image 2 shows a less luscious green neighbourhood compared to in 2002. Lastly, the yellow circle shows the clearing of land for construction activities – this spot is where the new development of Tune Hotel has been built. The open space behind the Tune Hotel where in 2002 grass could be observed, has now changed to dusty soil. These changes shown in these two photos support the notion that this urban environment is changing from residential homesteads to a commercial area. More office blocks are being built, green spaces are diminishing and more rental apartments are being built. This suggests that the area of land used as public space does not seem to be drastically reduced and is in fact the dimensions of buildings which are changing.

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From these satellite images, it is clear to see that the neighbourhood is formalising to build the area to fit part of the 2030 vision. The office buildings and hotels suggest that the area is becoming more commercialised which will bring more service employment needs into the area. This suggests the space could become more closed due to the formalisation and clear functions of the new buildings. However, this still does not give much detail about the socio- materiality’s of the space as no human interaction can be seen from these images, this means bringing it down to ground level is needed.

5.3 Walk through the Neighbourhood

Changes in the general street level bring change to the on the ground, every day, makeup of the neighbourhood. In order to get an understanding of this, a walk through the streets is first appropriate - to get a feel for the neighbourhood. Zooming in on the street view level, further layers can be explored. The streets discussed are selected orange in the image below.

Image 7: Case-Study Streets Source: Google Earth 2017, edited on Photoshop. (Orange: streets observed, Yellow: Highway)

The orange lines represent the street boundaries in the case-study. The yellow lines represent the highway and main access points for people entering this area. This area is known to be part of Groganville Estate, part of Westlands division. This covers 6.5 square kilometres. The area was observed on foot as the day dwellers experience when moving in-between the shades of grey spaces.

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5.3.1 On the Ground

This section is an explanation of the streets in the neighbourhood, where “ground truthing" has been applied. The ground truth refers to information gathered on site. Ground truth allows image data to be related to real features and materials on the ground in order to create more than a physical template. From the satellite image of 2017, the categories that feature in the following section for ground observation are: the height of buildings indicate the formalising neighbourhood, the function of buildings to indicate the level of commercialising, the availability of green public spaces and the flow of traffic and pedestrians in relation to the road infrastructure and the time of these flows. This is to assess the extent of the formalisation in the neighbourhood, and how it fits into the 2030 world city by attaining certain middle-class aesthetics. This requires bring the observations to the ground level, to observe the socio-materiality’s of space.

5.3.1.i On Foot

Traveling 6km west from Nairobi’s Central Business District (CBD) you reach Westlands. Alighting from the matatu (taxi buses) at Westlands stage you are faced with an impressive car dealership displaying shining cars, accompanied with the ‘Urban Eatery’, a new ‘hip’ restaurant. Most employees, apart from the taxi drivers enter the orange roads on foot. Residents mostly enter by car. The Nivas supermarket is located opposite, where life bustles and it feels as if you are still in the CBD. Walking away from the frontier of Westlands, the pavement diminishes as you try to avoid the traffic from Waiyaki Way. This highway performs as the artery that connects and divides the city. It is the direct divider of Westlands and the direct south lying urbanizing residential areas like Muthangari, and more specifically Gronganville Estate. To get to these areas, Rhapta Road junction is the main access point with intersecting roads like David Oseli and Church Road functioning as through roads and residential streets.

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Pedestrians dot themselves in and out of the traffic, with the honk of the car horn, the urban bird song. The skeleton of a high-rise building development on the left of the junction is less distracting than the more-than- life-size billboard. Images of sports stars on digital TV, with words like ‘dance show’, ‘romance’, ‘thriller’ are a distraction to the holes in the pavements and disfigured beggars on the street. The open streams in the gutters are flowing; following this water flow it takes you closer to Rhapta Road. Walking past the tall Masaai man selling leather wallets and belts on the road side, walking past the boda boda (motorbike taxis) drivers who are shading from themselves from the sun under the trees – waiting if there is a customer who needs to avoid Nairobi traffic or cannot face the walk along Rhapta Road, they take a bike as no matatus are allowed past the main roads. Walking further up Rhapta Road, just before the bend separating from Lantana Road, a bright yellow fruit stand with an umbrella is selling fresh fruit, with the option to buy a big mixed fruit salad for KSHs. 100. Passing the temptation, the road curves round, following the stream, and you are faced with the new development of Tune Hotel, a budget hotel, of at least $100 USD a night. Taxis are a constant flow through the strict private security of hotel, checking for explosives in the engines and using mirrors to check under the car.

Tourists and business folk surround the hotel; Europeans, Africans, Indians. The re- shifting makeup of the colonial past. This area, part of the Westlands district, was zoned off by the British colonialists for the Europeans. The post-independent developments meant that business minded Indians moved into the area and built their homesteads. The hotel hosts a cosmopolitan ethnic make-up of guests, but the area is still divided by income and class. The hotel towers over the neighbourhood and features Rhapta Roads roof top bar, attracting and entertaining guests and locals with great views of the neighbourhood.

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Fences line the shape of the sporadic pavement, flowing from paved to sand, depending on the building behind it. Considering 30-45% of trips in Nairobi are made on foot this adhoc pavement aids zigzagging pedestrians. The fences create a distinct public and private space, with pockets of privately-run condos with every gate operated by security guards. It becomes visually clear that residents of Rhapta road are not often seen walking in the streets, apart from the occasional jogger. One resident I spoke to, a British expat who has a driver provided by his work, told me he does not walk anywhere in the city. He advised me to be careful when on foot. Behind the gates, residents step into their cars and drive onto Rhapta Road to get to their destination, irrespective of distance. Walking past Vineyard, the club that is alive on Sunday nights, you move deeper into Rhapta Road. Luxury apartments with beautifully kept patches of grass, or bushes, in between the fence and road, possibly to prevent informal activity. Walking past the local corner kiosk on David Osieli Road, selling vegetables, bread, eggs, credit, soda and Mpesa (mobile banking). For the pedestrian, this is a spot to say hello, stop and chat if the time permits. Eyes on the road.

Walk the street in the early morning rush hour between 7am – 9am, you will greet the day-dwellers rush hour. Workers in the area; cleaners, gardeners, construction workers, security guards, jelly coconut seller, food- sellers, office workers walk from Waiyaki Way bus stages, using the connecting roads of Church Road, Sports Road, David Osieli Road, Mvuli Road to get to work. Around midday you will see more tailored greys, office workers holding a meeting over lunch at Tune Hotel, Corner Affair, Vineyard, often making the short walk from their office. You will also see taxi drivers, security guards, construction workers walking to cook shops on the side of the road to eat their lunch. The street quietens after lunch, the sun is its strongest at 3pm, and two hours later you will be faced with another rush hour. Through the gates you see children home from school, riding their bikes, playing hockey, running back barefoot

P a g e | 39 from the swimming pool. Protected by the gates. There seems to be two realities existing in the area. On the one hand, there is that of the residents’ defined by safe housing which is close to services and shops in Westlands, and on the other hand that of the ‘day workers’ who move in and out daily in the neighbourhood to do their work, but the functions of these spaces are price- exclusive and therefore unequal.

The further you walk down Rhapta Road, the more apartments you encounter, with security guards sitting outside the fence. Maybe looking out for entertainment on the road or waiting for their shift to finish so they can make the commute back home.

As you walk the road, smiles are exchanged with guards. Coming towards Church Road, you get closer to the clean edges of the new high-rise office building, more than ten floors high, still empty, with occasional painters hanging on harnesses at the top of the building. This make you think, when this building is full of office workers, what will happen to the road? The number of people in the area will increase, the traffic will increase, but what about the people who work in the area, for whom this neighbourhood is not built for, and will urban spaces collide?

A snapshot in time. Contextual. Changing areas.

5.3.1.ii Local Resident

In order to understand more about these changes a local restaurant owner that has been in the area for over ten years described the changes over this time period. She explained that the area was a mostly high-income Asian population and people living in this area wanted to move to more high-end residential neighbourhoods such as Karen and Gigri. This area was initially an up-market residential area, with many home-steads and large two-storey houses built. As the demand for office space in the area increased due to offices wanting to move out of the CBD and into more accessible areas the home owners saw this as an opportunity to either sell their house and land to property developers, or contract a multi-storey luxury to be built. The family-run restaurant even built their own office spaces

P a g e | 40 on their premises to rent to businesses five years ago. The restaurant owner went onto explain how the government has little control over these changes as there is no strong residential association and therefore few rules on what can be built in the area. Unlike other residential areas, there are stronger regulations on the buildings in the neighbourhood. For the restaurant, these changes have been good as it has increased the amount of passing traffic, with people who do not want to face the traffic to get into the ‘top half’ of Westlands.

However, the area is no longer seen as an up-market residential area, it is more commercial. These include office blocks, hotels, restaurants and luxury rental apartments which require low-income workers. The restaurant owner noticed a rise of informal food vendors around four years ago and says it is due to the changes towards more commercial functions in the area. The restaurant experienced a break-in at its premises a month ago and claim it was from the associated ‘folk’ that hang out at the street vendor that is built onto their fence, “the kiosk gave the robbers a leverage to jump over the fence and avoid the electric wire on top of the fence”. The informal street food has risen due to the increase in demand for low-income workers, and has opened up the neighbourhood to more working-class people. The restaurant owner would like the city council to provide a formal space for them to eat and socialise similar to what the council has done in other parts of the city. By doing this the formal developments would not be put at risk as it will close the space and not allow for the appropriation of space.

5.4 Conclusion

There is a sense of two realities in the area that derive from this area. The formal and informal. The formal being defined by the people who reside in the area, and the informal defined by the people who are there for work. The conclusion that the neighbourhood has changed from a high-end residential neighbourhood to a commercial area can be seen in image 1 and 2 with the developments of the new high-rise office buildings and hotels. The built environment is changing the use and functionality of space.

Changes in the physical environment, from a top down view, display the evidence of the historical developments of the area. The neighbourhood has been a development from colonial urban planning, as a residential neighbourhood, resulting in little governmental regulations in regards to urban renewal. Thus, this area is a formal space, with an existing ‘development’ culture and presence. It is accurate to say that it is moving from residential to commercial use. This means there are far more service workers, as people want safe housing so guards are employed. Residents are often tourists, expats, diaspora, short term renters so taxi drivers are in demand. Residents want to live in an aesthetically pleasing environment; not just behind the gates but also along the roadside, so gardeners are hired. Cleaners are in demand for the apartments working 6 days a week, gym staff, personal trainers, laundry services, newspaper sellers, carpenters, water delivery drivers, construction workers. The list goes on. But what is evident, is the more commercial this area becomes, the greater the service sector grows. How do the workers fit into this space? When you look around the area, what you notice are the make-shift food stalls, with plastic or wooden chairs, vendors cooking over a charcoal fire and workers (day dwellers) from the area coming to take a seat and eat their breakfast or lunch. This is the informality in the formal sphere, and it the regularity of the occurrence makes it seem

P a g e | 41 like an ordinary part of the formalising process. However, the following chapter shows how informal food spaces form spatial food arteries in the neighbourhood through the opening up of space.

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6. Informal Food Spaces

6.1 Introduction

First impressions indicate that formal realities in the neighbourhood are shifting, that spaces are becoming closed by the building of spaces of strict functions. This chapter will look further into the informal activity of the streets which reveals the street food vendors. As the formal developments become increasingly commercial, the informal street food vendors emerge in the area due to a demand for cooked food spaces. Understanding how informal street food emerges and sustains itself in this area can be observed initially by mapping the informal food vendors against the formal restaurants to see if any spatial patterns emerge.

This chapter will locate the formal and informal food spaces in the streets outlined in the case study area. It will then consider the significance of these locations in context to the changing neighbourhood. The mapping of the food outlets provides some spatial observations of tactics used by a street vendor in order to emerge and sustain itself in the neighbourhood. This chapter is helps to answer part of the second sub-question: ‘What does the location of informal food spaces tell us about the spatial strategies of the food vendors and does it impact their stall infrastructure?’

6.2 Street Food Vendor Location

Mapping the food outlets in the case study area, enables the researcher to identify any spatial and locational mechanisms informal street food vendors use to emerge and sustain their business in this area. It also opens up a contextual understanding of the on the ground activities of the area. The map has been updated with the locations of the formal food outlets to see if there is a spatial relationship between them and the informal outlets.

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Map 2: Map Representing Formal and Informal Food Spaces in Groganville Estate, Nairobi Source: Data points and map created on Google Maps

Formal Food Spaces

Informal Food Spaces

(See Table 2 for the key of the map)

The white dots on the map represent six formal food developments. These are family restaurants, bars, nightclubs and hotel restaurants and rooftops. These points are located on Rhapta Road, and around the Westlands junction. It is important to note that these points were documented in the months of the research and the map should be taken as a snap shot over the time span of March and April 2017. The map shows how the formal developments are situated on Rhapta Road, which is used as the main road to enter the area from the Westlands junction. They are situated in a horizontal line. They are located on the main road in the case study, a route bringing a driver from one side to another. This suggests that the formal centre, the hub, of the area is situated on this main road, allowing easy vehicle access for residents and visitors to the area. The informal food locations show that there is a different underlying spatial strategy

The small round black dots on the map represent the informal food vendors’ locations. There are seventeen vendors in this case-study. Unlike the formal food outlets, none of the informal vendors are located on the main Rhapta Road.

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They are situated on the arteries of the road, the connected roads between the main highway and Rhapta Road. The roads are food arteries. Vendors locate themselves at a junction point, where two roads meet. They are on the public space, occupying the land between the formal development infrastructure and pavement. None are located on Rhapta road itself whereas Church Road has food spaces located on the road itself, this could be due to the space available off the road. Informal food spaces are located on the intersecting roads coming from the highway – Church road, David Osieli Road, Mvuli Road, they are located on junctions, crossroads and side roads. The two largest vendors 2 & 15 are located near the highway, which provides greater foot fall and entry points to the neighbourhood. The smaller kiosks are huddled together, 3,4,5,6 are located next to each other on Sports Road. The amount of food vendors suggests there is de Haan’s (2005) need for collective action for the materiality of space to change. The fact there are 17 food vendors in the formalising neighbourhood suggests this is an ordinary part some people’s daily life in the area.

6.3 Spatial Implications – Writing the Script

Using de Haan’s (2005) idea that spaces that get appropriated have two conditions. One being that they are an “open script” space, and the second is that they must have collective action. This section will see if vendors locate on spaces which are open scripts, these spaces are badly organised. By observing map 2, it is seen that the informal street vendors are located on the junctions of the intersecting roads of the case study. To represent this in a simple diagram, the blue lines represent the location strategy of the informal vendors against the main street of the orange line.

Figure 1: Car and Foot Flows Blue line: foot-flow Orange line: car-flow

Rhapta Road holds the hub of activity in the case study area, where informal activity almost can be said to intersect the adjacent roads. The informal food vendors being off the main road implies that a sustaining tactic is to be located on the calmer roads, out of the heavy traffic flow. It could be implied that in order to be successful street food has to be located in the busiest areas. However, what the case study shows is that the intersections on the blue lines in the diagram are more important in terms of location. Being in close proximity but not on the main road gives street vendors the ability to provide ample seating and space for their stall; yet, be far enough away to give the vendors more access to derelict public space. Or as de Haan (2005) calls it, an ‘open scripts’where the spaces are badly

P a g e | 45 managed and planned. This suggests there is an element of formalisation where the more formal a neighbourhood becomes the more the vendors are attracted to the pockets of unplanned spaces, but avoid main roads as these often have more materiality due to the busy car flow.

It can also be observed that vendor locations have been positioned where the number of pedestrian’s foot flow is the greatest. The local transport drops people off on the Waiyaki Way, so walking down one of the intersecting roads is quicker. This means the mental map of the vendors will be based on these roads, rather than the dominant Rhapta Road which is populated with cars and traffic.

This finding is important to raise as the currently council policy for informal street vendors is to build city council kiosks in one line next to each other. So, they are removed out of one area and if lucky, are given access to a kiosk. These are in one straight line next to each other. More research would be needed to be done to ascertain whether this creates an effect for vendors, but what can be understood from this case study is that the blue print for informal street vending is to occupy street interchanges, corners of roads, T-junctions.

6.4 Conclusion

It can be concluded that by looking at the spatial outlay of the informal street food vendors there is an underlying pattern to location tactics. Vendors choose to be on street intersections off the main road which is Rhapta Road for two reasons, the vendors choose to be slightly hidden from the busiest traffic areas to make use of the open script spaces. The junction areas have questionable uses of space, often spaces in between the road and a fence, where the spaces materiality is essentially designed as part of a middle-class aesthetic of a clean, purposeful, spacious planning. To understand more about the spaces the vendors locate themselves on and the infrastructure they build, the next chapter will use observations, visual images and semi-structured interviews to examine.

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7. Informal Food Space: Emergence and Sustaining in the Space

7.1 Introduction

Out of the 17 street vendors that were situated in the Groganville Estate in April 2017, 14 vendors completed a semi- structured interview. Numbers 8,14,17 were not interviewed and therefore blacked out however correspond to the food spaces on map 1. Out of these 14 stalls, all but one was run by women. The one male that was interviewed was the owner of the stall, yet was not there cooking on a daily basis. The other street stalls that did not complete an interview were from observation all women. As referred to in the theory chapter, the industry is dominated heavily by women who due to their societal roles, learn to cook from a young age. And by doing so have the skill set to prepare large quantities of traditional food. The following table (table 1) is an overview of the vendors who were interviewed and provides key information. Due to the sensitivity of street vending, names cannot be mentioned or photos of the vendors could not be taken.

This chapter is aims to provide a clearer context of the food vendors, their size, longevity and strategies of how they emerged and made sure they could stay on the space. And answer the 4th sub-question of “What different social arrangements enable informal food spaces to emerge and sustain themselves in this neighbourhood?”

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7.2 The Informal Food Spaces

This table corresponds with map 2, and indicates their size, longevity, where they get water access and store their equipment.

Table 2: Informal Food Space Categorisation Source: Author collected from interviews

How long Water Store Number Serves N customers: Size Kiosk? Owner? been there? Access? Equipment?

1 year 6 Security 1 70 M City Council Female Kiosk months Guard

2 150 L Coco-Cola Male 1 year Owner Kiosk Security 3 20 S No Female Security Guard 7 months Guard Security 4 40 M No Female 7 months Security Guard Guard Security 5 20 S No Female Security Guard 7 years Guard Security 6 20 S No Female Security Guard 1 year Guard 2 years, 8 months. The business on Security 7 50 M No Female Neighbours the site has Guard been there since 1992

8 NA Na Female ? ?

Security 9 40 M Own Female Kiosk 1 year Guard

10 25 S City Council Female 3 years Owner Kiosk

Security 11 45 M Own Female 10 years Kiosk Guard Security 12 35 S Own Female 17 years Kiosk Guard

13 35 S Own Female 10 years Church Church

14

15 150 L No Female 5 years Owner Brings Kiosk

16

Security Neighbouring 17 50 M No Female 1 year Guard Kiosk

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Vendors arrived on site before 6am to start preparing the beans, and products for breakfast like chai, chapatti and mandazi. All stalls provided freshly prepared, cooked meals, selling ugali, rice or chapatti as the stable carbohydrate with meat or beans as the protein. Sides of greens either cabbage or kale like greens were also available. Also available was the table condiment ‘kachumbari’ – a Kenya salsa made from incredibly finely chopped tomatoes, onions, chili and coriander, and not for the faint hearted. Meal portions were substantial and ugali is available for second helpings. Food is served on mostly lightweight plates, made from plastic, metal cutlery is available but not in high demand as ugali is the most popular dish and eaten with hands. Plastic cups are provided for water and tea, which are all washed up on site causing little waste (unlike many other ‘fast’ food establishments). Vendors often finished serving lunch latest at 3pm, and took around two hours to clean up and prepare vegetables for the next day, before heading home. This is the standard set up for the street vendor, however they are of course not homogenous enterprises and vary immensely through the characteristics of the owner and the size of the establishment. The vendors mostly called their establishment a ‘hotel’, which in Kenya means a setting where food can be eaten.

From the vendors we spoke to, the lowest number of customers one vendor fed was 20 people a day. Most served around 35-50 customers a day, with the larger ones reaching 70 and even 150 plus a day. The two largest ‘hotels’ were located as you can see from the previous chapter nearest the main road close to public transport links, near large office blocks and a hospital.

7.3 Emerging Vendors

There is a lot of variation in the number of years the vendors have been in the area. The longest being there for 15 years several between 1 to 10 years whilst the newest vendor has been there for six months. The vendors told us to bear in mind that those who have recently started in the area may have taken over from another who had been forced out of business by the council no longer being able to pay the fines. The research was done in a snap-shot time frame of two months and the informal food sector is constantly shifting, making it hard to generalize on the conditions determining of vendors and the length of time they stay in the area. Firstly, it is fair to say that over 50% of the vendors had been there less than 5 years and secondly the fluctuation in food vendor numbers in this case study area is dependent on their location and length of stay. The vendors’ sense of ‘area’ is also very small and is related to how far a customer would walk for lunch, consequently they see their competition as a vendor who is in visible walking distance. The vendors who have been there the longest stated that the number of vendors has increased in the last five years, which they claim has also increased harassment levels from the city council.

New vendors claimed that they came to the area as there were high demands for affordable food from low-income workers and there was very little supply They also choose to cook and sell food on the side of the road due to the lack of personal economic employment opportunities.

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The three main reasons for starting up in this area are therefore the low supply of affordable food leading to lack of competition, existing relationships, and most importantly the location containing a large number of potential lunch customers.

7.3.1 Location

This is the strongest expressed reason of setting up a food stand, and also doing well in the area. The location is not permanent, but yet it remains vital to be close to large groups of low-income workers looking for an affordable, home-style cooked lunch.

“I saw this is on a junction and it will be viewed easily and I decided to locate it here - it is also under a tree, slightly raised from the road”

Once construction workers (the number is increasing) finish building the new development, a handful of new customers come. From the security guards, gardeners and taxi drivers. The more successful vendors stated that their foot flow was down to either being to many private-condos that employed many male workers, or, have good parking access for the many taxi drivers who pass through the neighbourhood for work.

7.3.2 Lack of Stiff Competition

Another reason for vendors to start a business in this area was lack of general competition. Not only is the area not yet saturated by street vendors, there is also a lack of formal food options for low-income workers. Walking to Westlands to buy food would cost too much time in tight lunch breaks, and there are no supermarkets or affordable hotels in Groganville Estate. The informal street food therefore has filled a gap in the urban planning in order to provide a service for the workers in the area.

7.3.3 Existing Relationships

Another reason were the relationships that existed with people already involved in the neighbourhood. These could be relationship with customers, other vendors or staff who work for them.

“I was once employed at another hotel, down the road and when I left, I had some customers ask where I had left to and I knew that they would follow me to my new place. Also, I felt that setting up my own business would bring more income for me as opposed to being an employee. This is where there is a lot of human, cars, buses and motorbike traffic.”

This network of people and relationships essentially is supported through word of mouth and promotes the location of the area for people to start a business.

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7.4 Sustaining Vendors

Vendors face difficulties when operating their business, however, like enterprises their business sense keeps them afloat. ‘Sweet food’, cleanliness and dealing with harassment were the three main factors vendors stated that kept them successful.

7.4.1‘Sweet’ Food

The street vendors that were interviewed sold a range of products. Mostly Kenyan staples like ugali, Sukuma (Kenyan greens), rice, chapatti, beans, githeri (maize stew), beef, cabbage, avocado, chai (tea) and mandazi (sweet buns). Larger vendors also sold chicken, fruit salad, ‘chapatti rolex’ (fried egg rolled in a chapatti), donuts, matoke (starchy banana), matumbo (tripe stew), samosa and porridge. All stalls had access to kiosks to provide customers with sodas like Cola or Sprite, or Brookside milk. It is clear that food sold was a standard cuisine and did not play a great deal in the emergence or sustainability of a vendor. However, new vendors often started out with a 'mini' menu, expanding on the food variety as customer flow increases to minimise initial cost and food waste. However, all vendors tried to adapt to new food trends (often snacks) and demands like doughnuts and samosas.

“I introduced doughnuts, samosas and pilau [rice]; when I began preparing doughnuts, there was an influx of customers.”

The main meals provided at lunch time remained stable Kenyan dishes. Even though the setup of the stalls and food were similar, vendors prided themselves that they had the best food. This, the food vendors described as ‘sweet food’.

“The clients tell us that our food is sweet; we use cooking oil as opposed to cooking fat.”

The quality of the food was not just in the taste of the food, but also in the preparation. One vendor told us that she cooks with no spices, another said she attracts taxi drivers from Westlands as she is a trained chef and that shows in her cooking. A common selling point which vendors promoted was the oil that they used. (After the stigma from the research about petrol being used as cooking oil refer to in the theory the vendors adapted and promote the oil that they use (Soloman et al, 2017). This confidence in vendors was noticeable in the way they interacted with their customers. It seemed, the prouder the vendor spoke of their food, the larger in size the stall was. What was observed in the semi-structured interviews with the vendors was that their interaction and customer service was crucial to their business strategy.

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7.4.2 Cleanliness

“Given that there are many kiosks and options, there isn’t a big reason other than luck or the customer’s convenience. However, there are factors such as the cleanliness and preparation method (ingredients used or avoided, such as spices, where in my case I don’t use spices) of the food which will help keep some regulars.”

With the little infrastructure vendors have, dealing adequately with the dust and mud was important to provide the best service. Vendors are often seen sweeping the seating area, street and removing overgrowth of shrubs. As the patron chapter shows in later chapter 9, most of the customers found cleanliness an important part of choosing the vendor. The smaller vendors like image 20, stated to pride themselves in their sanitation efforts compared to larger vendors in image 19 who did not mention issues around cleanliness.

Image 19: Larger vendor staff preparing meat Image 20: Smaller vendor staff preparing chapatti Source: Authors Own Source: Authors Own

In relation to the emergence and sustaining factors for the informal food stalls, cleanliness is not a direct reason to be removed by the authorities as there is little ‘graying’ of sanitation levels between formal and informal food spaces. But it is a factor where they may lose clientele if they are not perceived as sanitary, as day dwellers perceive different levels of hygiene. This also may impact the socio-materiality of the space, as if the space is seen as dirty by day-dwellers it removes an element of collective agency if they are not as popular.

7.5 Conclusion

It is clear from this chapter that vendors operate common but differentiated tactics in order to emerge and sustain their business. Location seems the strongest motivation for emerging in the area, and creating a good repertoire with customers is the strongest reason to sustain in the area. Customers can eat and ‘chill’, a multi-functional use of the space.

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8. Infrastructure of the Spaces: Writing the Script

Informal street food occurs in the Groganville neighbourhood, with seventeen vendors recorded in the case study parameters. The vendors are of course not homogenous in their tactics however, re-occurring themes and categories exist which need to be observed. This aids the second half of the second sub-question of ‘ what does the location of informal food spaces tell us about the spatial strategies of the food vendors and does it impact their stall infrastructure?

This chapter looks at the infrastructure of the food spaces. By presenting photos of the stalls, a visual analysis will be made to see the reoccurring strategies of how the vendors sustain in the neighbourhood. The chapter will delve deeper into at the food space seating, stalls, how they cook, and the water networks they have created.

8.1 Vendor Infrastructure

The structure of the vendors’ stalls is a technique to emerge and sustain in this area. This has been researched through observation, taking photos and interviews with the vendors.

The following photos were taken of the street food vendors in the case study. Not all vendors are shown but the differences between the stalls have been highlighted. The photos represent infrastructural techniques to assist emergence and sustainability of the space. A table follows which describes the photos and interprets how it answers sub-question three.

8.1.1 Seating and Storage

Street food vendors called their enterprises 'hotels'. The spaces that the vendors occupy are on sides of the road, on a small patch of grass, in between two trees, on an old parking spot or a space between the gutter. Depending on the space, structures look different. However, the main priority is to provide some sort of shelter from the sun and rain for the customers (and cooks). Enough seating is another priority, one vendor recently paid someone to build a new reclaimed wooden platform over the small gutter/stream behind her stall for ample seating (see 16-1).

The medium and large sized vendors (table 1) provided customers with plastic chairs. Most vendors had access to a zinc kiosk, often a Safaricom or Coca-Cola sponsored (sometimes self-built), either it was their own kiosk, or it belonged to another vendor’s. The photo above shows the city council kiosk. Jane, the owner of this enterprise, pays the council KSHs. 10,000 a year for the city council kiosk. The kiosk lacks multi-functionality with no access to water, cleaning facilities or seating for customers. This means customers sit outside. For this, Jane pays the city council a fine of KSHs. 200 on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. No sites had toilets. One vendor said she has over the years made friends with the neighbours who let her use their facilities.

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Equipment was stored in these kiosks, or with the nearest security guard overnight, in the church next door or even with the neighbours. Lack of access to water for cleaning was a common problem, as a researcher and someone where informal food settings are not my 'normal' cooking environment these photos represent some more issues they face. However, the more dominating problems were mostly customer focused as explained above. Most vendors wanted customers to fit inside their shelter, or to provide seating for their customers.

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8.1.2 Stalls

Image 16: Collection of images of Informal Food Spaces infrastructure Source: Photos taken by Imiamour & Louisa Ellerker, 2017.

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Table 2: Description and Analysis of Informal Food Spaces from Images 16 a-h.

Photo Description: Analysis: Number: 16-a Informal vendor The site shown in the photo is one of four next to each other. Here you can see the seating area has been built over a small stream/gutter using mixed pieces of wood. The benches provide seating areas for the customers with a plastic sheet to cover from the rain. The blue parasol is also there as a cover over the cooked food in the large steel pans. Large stones, re-claimed pallets and breeze blocks are also used to create a table, raising the food off of the mud floor. In the photo, you can also see cars parked, this is an important locational tactic for many vendors to allow taxi drivers to easily park their vehicle when eating. Drive-by cars also feature at these stalls as cars are able to slow down on the road and ask the vendors to bring them ‘take-away’ food.

16-b City Council This street vendor rents a multi-use kiosk from the city council. Here they prepare the more labour-intensive food like samosas and chapattis. kiosk Not every food vendor makes their own chapattis, some bulk buy pre-made chapattis from other vendors. To the left of the kiosk is the seating area for the customers, where they have plastic chairs and tables. Next to the kiosk is also a fruit stand which another vendor runs. This ad-hoc seating area leads to informal activity so they are harassed by the city council.

16-c Inside informal The integration of the small trees from the property it borders and the applied wood represent the creative nature of how vendors set up the street vendor structure. Vendors are faced with semi-permanence as they are always at risk of the structure being demolished so little investment is put into the materials. 16-d Tomato plant The vendor said she has started growing some of her own vegetables next to her kiosk to help bring down costs. She uses the green space as protection from the road. She is worried people will walk over the plants, yet she keeps the spot looking like its overgrown shrubs/weeds as the council will otherwise remove the plants. This is an example of the vendor sustaining in this neighbourhood by creating a diverse materiality of space. 16-e Informal street This vendor has used the wall from a formal development to provide infrastructural support for the zinc roof in which a bush has grown over. vendor The self-built kiosk provides further infrastructure where the vendor cooks and keeps the food. Seating is also built onto the wall, providing seating back support. The vendor is shielded from the main road through this design. The water jerry cans are also visible in the photo, which are delivered every morning by a security guard from a nearby apartment. This vendor said that her stall used to have far more seating and shelter, however this was removed by the authorities, which lost her business. This food space uses the existing materiality’s of the space, as a wall for a built development, and a support for the growing vegetation. 16-f Informal street This photo shows the proximity of vendors next to each other. The round wooden wire-cable units are used as tables for the customers, vendor which allow for parasols to fit in the hole in the middle of the table. Seating is created by stacking rocks and placing wood on top of them. The vendors claimed that they have located themselves next to each other because it is good business as they know that this is a ‘spot’ where people will go for food, as customers have choice of food because they all cook something different. They are using collective action to define the materiality of space, which could make them more significant in determining the function of space. Their infrastructure of each stall merges into one and they look similar. They also said they locate themselves next to each other as a sense of security against the authorities. The oldest vendor has been there for over ten years so has developed coping strategies against the authorities, which the newer vendors can learn from, like knowing when to flee. Even though they do worry about competition from each other, the vendors said the other two factors were more beneficial. 16-g Informal street The street vendor cleans pots and crockery used on site. With no running water this process is arduous and requires skill to clean utensils vendor cleaning with minimal water usage. This vendor is located next to formal kiosks, in which black and white posts have been put into the ground to deter vendors to build against existing infrastructure. The vendor has used the tree as a canopy from the sun, and uses the space created by the boulders to wash up and cook. This is an example of the prior functions of the space was to deter people to use that space, bollards are placed however they do not create a space that is hard to appropriate. Instead it created a tool for the vendor to make washing up easier. 16-h Formal street This is the formal food vending kiosk in the case-study. The city-council kiosk does not have running water, or cooking unit so jikos (charcoal stoves) are still used vendor and washing up still occurs in the same method as photo 7. The seating area is made from plastic tables and chairs with a built plastic shelter. This seating area is rented space from the council, so a permit is also needed. The photo shows the water cans in front of the counter as the owner of the kiosk brings water every in the jerry-cans from their own house in their car. Only the city council kiosks are formal and not removed by the authorities. The risk for vendors to have their structures and equipment removed is a big worry in terms of their sustaining tactics. However, what was found was their customer base was not as large as the other vendors, even though the materiality of the space was an ‘official’ and ‘formalised’ food space.

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8.1.3 Cooking

Another part of the infrastructure is the way vendors cook. Street food vendors cook on small stoves (called jikos) which use charcoal. This can be seen in photos below. Jikos are used by every vendor, the larger the vendor the more jikos they will own. Vendors use limited equipment. This allows them to occupy minimal space, have less washing up and save costs on charcoal. Wind effects the charcoal, if there is too much it burns out quicker which is why as shown in the section above, shelter to cover the food is desired.

Images 17 a-d: Cooking and Preparation on informal food street stalls.

17-a 17-b

17-c 17-d

Image 17-a shows the vendor preparing greens to be cooked as a side dish. The vendor cuts the greens firstly very finely to reduce cooking time, and straight into the bowl to reduce preparation space. Image 17-c shows a vendor making ugali in a metal pan. She is using a piece of cardboard as heat protection against her knee to hold the pan still. These photos show the level of skill and ingenuity involved in the process of preparing food for a large amount of people with limited infrastructure. Often the literature discusses food vending being dominated by women due to the social role and therefore taught cooking skills. However, the women are adaptive to cooking large quantities of food in informal infrastructures. The skills aid the vendors’ ability to sustain business in an area, and it should not be taken for granted that every woman has the ability to simply cook for fifty people using two pans and one jiko.

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Image 17-b shows chapattis being made on a jiko. Not every stall makes chapattis as they require a skilled extra member of staff and this extra labour. A vendor can diversify from the other vendors by deciding to make chapattis. Those who do not make them have to buy them, often from informal settlement areas as they are cheaper there (KSHs. 10 whereas in Grongaville Estate KSHs. 20-30– KSHs. 100is equivalent to 1USD). Image 17-d shows an image of the largest food vendor in the whole case study. This can be seen by the amount of jikos they have, which means they are able to sell a greater variety of food.

8.1.4 Water Networks

No vendors have access to their own water pipe. This is one of the main problems encountered and is solved through informal social arrangements. Depending on the location of the vendor, most interviewed accessed water from a security guard in the nearest private condo to the stall. One vendor explained this in more detail, saying that when she emerged in the spot she went to the closest apartment and asked the guard on night duty if he could deliver her four 20 litre jerry cans every day in return for a chai and chapatti, or around 30 Kenyan Shillings (KSHs.) per jerry can. The security guard then, at night, fills these cans with water from the tap in the private-condo grounds. This is often done in secret, without the permission of the condo-owner so at 4am (when most people are sleeping) the guard will walk the cans to the food stall. It was also not possible in this research to find out more from the security guards, due to the sensitivity of the act. Also, one vendor told me that the security guard company used by most condos have started rotating security guards, so they often change. There are more women employed than before, who are often too scared to supply the water to the vendors at risk of getting caught. This affects the security of the vendor receiving the water through these social arrangements and therefore sustainability. The vendors need water in order to operate. Table 2 records how vendors get the water.

Image 18: Jerry cans seen on David Osieli Road, at 4am

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8.2 Conclusion

It can be clearly observed that there are some unanimous, but also independent tactics that vendors use in order to help sustain their business. Firstly, the infrastructural techniques that all vendors use revolves around semi- permanence with structures aiming to provide shelter for the food and seating for the customers. They are what Ayeh et al (2011: 26) describes as ‘sedentary vendors’. They work in fixed locations using public space such as pavements, building onto existing walls from formal infrastructures, trees as shelter and use re-claimed materials. These spaces they locate on can be seen as de Haan’s (2005) ‘open script’ space. These spaces have no predefined materiality, like the break in pavement or road; or the space did have materiality like pavement or green area for a tree, but this space did not have any sociality occurring. This means the script for the space could be claimed by the informal food vendors to provide affordable food for day dwellers, which creates a socialisation of the material space.

The key tactic which makes these informal food spaces appropriate the grey space (Yiftachel, 2009) so well is the infrastructure that vendors build. The vendors cook on the site, which means the materiality of cooking occurs in a space of a formalising neighbourhood. The space for vendors becomes an extended outdoor kitchen, where they everyday go through the process of preparing meals, serving meals and washing up with other staff members. This process is heavily social activity, and the fact the vendors are turning the space into their kitchen means that the materiality of that space is a lot bigger than the side of the road. Another factor is the seating they build on the space. This means that customers do not only buy the food, they also take time to sit in that space and eat their food. This means at breakfast and lunch time, these spaces become restaurant for the customers. Tables and chairs, even shade is provided, where water is provided and food is served on crockery. The socio-materiality of the informal food space is not just created by the food vendors who cook in the space, but it is also created by the customers that use the space to eat. The function of the space is for the function to eat. However, there lies a multi-functionality of uses in the space, where vendors cook, and patrons eat. This is threatening the closing of space a formalising neighbourhood aspires to in order achieve its middle-class aesthetics.

The other element of de Haan’s (2005) appropriation of space is the collective action of those who do it. The level of vendors in the area, 17 spaces, suggests that this is powerful to appropriate the space. However, it is important to check if the customers, day dwellers, hold collective agency in order hold force to open the closing space.

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9. Day Dwellers: Opening of Space

9.1 Introduction

This chapter looks at the customers of the food stalls. This paper calls the people who make use of the informal food spaces ‘day-dwellers as it implies more context than customers. The chapters above have suggested patrons to be part of the lower-income work force in the neighbourhood, and that there is a strong social differentiation in the residents and work force in the area. So, to ensure triangulation, patrons have been interviewed in order to provide supporting evidence for this demographic. The chapter aims to answer sub-question 3 of: who and why are the people (day dwellers) making use of the informal food spaces in the area and how do they open up the neighbourhood?

The vendors claimed that their main clientele were the low-income workers who were employed by the recent developments in the area. The demand for street food from the clientele is a large reason why they vendors manage to set up and sustain their business in the area. With this information, it was important for the research to collect data relating to the clientele and also why they ate at the street food vendors’. There are clear social differentiations within the neighbourhood defined by salary. Workers who find employment within the area are on a low income. They fulfil roles of the middle-class services, which the residents of the area who live in the luxury apartments and stay in the hotels desire and expect. The workers do not live in the area and commute to and from work.

The chapter will first look at who the day dwellers are, through traditional data indexes of demographics like age, occupation, sex. but then the second half will discuss their motivations of going to the stall, and how they aid to appropriate and open up the socio-materiality’s of informal food spaces in a formalising neighbourhood.

9.2 Customer profiles: who are the day dwellers?

Out of the 63 interviews that were completed with the customers, the interviews found that 94% of the people we interviewed were male, which is an accurate representation of the gender imbalance eating at the vendors. Every woman we saw at the food stall was interviewed, and this were only 4 women. Female customers are low. A street vendor was asked why she thought this was the case, to which she replied that the ladies who are employed as maids often cook in the place of work, they have small stoves and cook together. However, men’s jobs tend to be on the periphery of a building, like security guards, where the security company moves them from apartment to apartment, so street food is the easiest option. Also, female office workers come to purchase street food occasionally. The vendor told me that they often ask for healthy options, no chapatti, just the veg or egg. Therefore, stalls are diversifying with fresh fruit as people are becoming more aware of their waist lines, especially women that work in offices and have more sedentary lifestyles.

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The age range containing the most patrons was 20-35 years, equating to 44% of the people interviewed. The second age range equating to 23% was 36-45 years old, and 15% of respondents between 16-25 years old. These results are unsurprising considering the vendors are of working age. The results suggest that men between the ages of 20-45 are most in need of informal street food.

The survey found that only 7% (4 people) of patrons lived in the area and 90% of patrons worked in the area. There is therefore a strong relationship between people who work in the area, but do not live in the area. This shows that the street food vendors supply lunch to the work force who commute to the area for work.

The professions of patrons were also asked. As the pie chart below shows the most common profession is that of taxi driver making up 37% (23 people) of the total patrons. These range from standard taxi drivers, motorbike taxis, to corporate and private drivers. Private drivers who were waiting to pick up their clients from the area, came to eat at the vendors. Office workers make up the second largest group of 23%, which covered professions like auditors, IT support, tax accountant and sales. These were followed closely by construction workers of 18%. The construction workers were not only builders, but also more skilled labourers like plumbers and electricians. Even though the area hosts many construction workers building the new developments, the sites often hire in two cooks to make lunch on the construction site, which reduces the amount of construction workers using the street vendors.

Vendors were also asked to describe their employment contract. 39% (24) of patrons reported to be in full time employment, 40% (25 people) were self-employed, of which 11 of these respondents were also taxi Profession of Patron drivers. This shows that there was no great majority of the type of employment contracts, yet the majority of people were in full-time or self- Taxi Driver employment. The result that 8% of the patrons were Constuction security guards was significantly lower than Gardnerner anticipated. The security guards are visible on the Retail periphery as the low-income workers of the public Office worker spaces in the area. The observation chapter observed Other their presence in the neighbourhood, and their aid to Security providing vendors with water from which it was expected that more customers would be security

Figure 2: Profession of Day Dwellers guards. This could just be a result of random sampling, or they could be aware of standing out as they wear a security uniform so they’re more visible. It could also be, as one vendor mentioned, the prices for the guards are too high (and that is why they provide vendors with water to get a free meal), and come to her stall as she claimed to have the cheapest options. More research should be done to understand why this was the case.

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Moving on to the frequency of use by the patrons, 71% of patrons interviewed visited the street vendors daily (in this case working days Monday through to Saturday). Other patrons visited the food stall two to three times a week (16%). 48% of patrons ate breakfast and lunch at the food stalls, and 44% ate just lunch, 8% said they ate breakfast, lunch and a snack. As the majority of workers commuted back home after working hours, street vendors did not supply dinner in the area as there was no demand, just like on Sundays. This shows that the street vendors provided lunch for almost all of the workers that we interviewed. This shows that the majority of male workers in the area rely on the food vendors for nutrition and a meal during at lunch time.

9.3 Motivation of going to the food stalls

To know why people were going to the street stalls was also researched. Reasons for visiting the vendor were also asked. The location (39%) was the highest recorded reason, closely followed by the price (32%). Service (26%) also was an important reason of people going to street vendors. These results re-enforce the motivations claimed by the street vendors that they open business in the neighbourhood.

Figure 3: Day Dwellers Reasons for Visiting the Kiosk

Reason For Visiting this Kiosk

Price

Location

Service

Amount of Variety

All patrons found the street vendors ‘very important’ or ‘quite important’ with reasons that it is “near to work”, “they are there when you need them” and “she feeds me”. One patron said that

"this is for lower classes who are on a lower-class income".

When asked what the patrons would do for food if the street vendors would not be there they at first, were confused by the question as responded quickly to say they would go to the next food vendor, when it was clear to them the

P a g e | 62 question asked that if there no street food vendors what so ever 39% said they would have to bring food with them to work, a ‘packed’ lunch. 29% said they would be forced to go to other places for food in Westlands, 27% of patrons said they would ‘starve’ / ‘go hungry’. The difficulty respondents had in understanding that the food vendors would not be there, showed that the vendors were an intrinsic part of their daily routine, their daily food arteries of the space, and normalization of informality in the area. The extremeness of ‘starve’ as an answer shows that they rely on the food services for their dietary intake, and the answer should not be taken lightly.

Table 3: Food Choice of Day Dwellers

Respondents Respondents were asked what food they chose to eat for lunch, even would though the street vendors sell similar Kenyan cuisine, the type of food is choose to also a factor for patrons. From all of the respondents, of which beans came Food Type: eat: out the most popular with 47%. No food had an overall majority, but the beans 47% combination of beans and chapatti is often the cheapest dish. chapatti 40% ugali 39% This is a useful finding in understanding the day-dweller as beans and meat 35% chapatti are the most common food. These two foods are the cheapest rice 27% option. Easting a plate of beans with a chapatti will cost just over half of other 27% 1USD. This suggests that the day dwellers choose the cheapest options gitueri 16% when buying lunch, and are part of the urban poor of Nairobi, who are part of the unequal developments of the 2030 visions of the city.

9.4 Spaces of leisure

48% of respondents recognized that the street vendors biggest obstacle to sustaining their business in the neighbourhood was the harassment of the city council. 32% thought infrastructure like access to water, shelter from the sun, rain, sanitation services. The patrons are aware of the struggles the vendors face in the light of serving them food, which could impact the loyalty to the vendor and build the relationship they have. It shows that people who make use of these services are aware that it is not the ideal situation for either parities, due to harassment risks for the vendors and sanitation risks for the consumers. However, by building the relationship an element of trust becomes established and it forms a network of people in the neighbourhood.

If there were other reasons to visit the kiosk was also a ‘place to chill’, 35% of survey respondents said they came for that they were ‘allowed to chill and socialize’, and that “it's a chilling area”. Food plays a role in feeding the patrons, but also providing a space for workers in the area to come and relax. The formal built developments have not provided the working classes of this area any formal spaces to socialize, eat and rest. A few also mentioned they enjoyed that “there are ladies around who cook” and “to talk politics”. Four respondents said they came also to network for business. This relates to what some cooks said that their customer service plays a large part in providing

P a g e | 63 food and a social atmosphere where people are free to relax. This shows it is not just a vending opportunity to sell food, it is not like mobile street food seller who covers large amounts of terrain to walk to the customers. The customers come to the vendor. The seating is important to the vendors to get customers to eat lunch, but also for the vendor to provide that space for them. A humble space where people are eating but the service of hospitality is also provided.

9.5 Conclusion

This empirical chapter has triangulated the data found from the observations and information collected from the interviews with the vendors and observations. The clientele of the vendors are indeed low-income workers of the neighbourhood, mostly taxi-drivers, construction workers and office workers. Patrons are almost all male, mostly between the ages 26-35 and do not live in the area. There is not a majority in the type food eaten, however, price is a factor determining which food is purchased as meat is more expensive than beans. Patrons also claimed that the food vendors also provided a space for them to relax

The threat of informal food spaces to be eradicated and/or regulated is around the corner. As the research background chapter mentioned, the outbreak of cholera is scapegoating food vendors in the city as the problem of the political failure to ensure safe water. This fits into Cross’ (1998) idea of semi-formality. To see if this occurs in this case study, street vendors were asked about this in semi-structured interviews and explained in the following chapter.

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10. The Ordinary Space

10.1 Introduction

The previous chapters have proven how de Haan’s (2005) ideas around collective action and open script spaces also can occur in informal food spaces especially due to the strong vendor - day dweller relationship. However, what is very real and cannot be ignored in the findings is the fear of harassment by the food vendors due to the regulation problem that I discussed in the theory chapter using Smart and Smart (2005) formalisation tactics, and Cross (1998) semi-formality. This chapter outlines the food vendors experience of semi-formality and semi-permanence, and considers what this means for the socio-materiality appropriation of the space.

10.2 Dealing with Harassment

The most discussed theme in the interviews was the experience the vendor has with the city council.

“The city council officers come around to seek bribes and in some cases, arrest and harangue you in court. For example, you could get arrested for dumping (polythene bags) on the road.”

The only street vendor that claimed they do not get harassed by the city council was the City Council kiosk (a permit which costs 14,500 per year, with medical insurance) who owned a permit, public health licence, City Council kiosk and rented the seating space they used outside. The rest of the street vendors all reported accounts of paying bribes, faced with being arrested, and removal of the street vendors belongings. When asked if the street vendors would like to get a permit they responded with answers that it is too expensive as you will still be harassed as you don't have a permanent structure, as well as it is hard to get this structure as the government needs to give it to you.

The amount of money that was payed for daily hawker licences was KSHs. 50 (0.48 USD). However, all vendors had to pay substantially more on top of the receipt. One vendor displayed her tickets on the kiosk she owned, and one of them is displayed in the photo below. You can see that this receipt was for a KSHs. 50 payment, on 3rd April 2017. The rest of the ticket is illegible for the unknown eye. This is the authorized hawker fee a vendor has to pay, and they do not see this payment as bribes or harassment. It is more the un-receipted fluctuating, un-accountable payments which they have to pay that they feel vulnerable to.

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Image 21: Receipt Source: Authors Own Photo, taken with permission from the vendor

In this case, part of sustaining as a street food vendor is to be a good negotiator to settle a good fee with the city council. This could fall under the idea that once the vendor builds up a good relationship with the city council, they also create an approbation of the closing space, but opening it up for semi-formality.

However, what became apparent was that there were two types of harassment they faced from the city council. Firstly, there are city council figures who come three times a week, collecting permit money (as shown above) and often demanding extra undocumented payments from KSHs. 100 up to KSHs. 500 (approximately KSHs. 100 is 1USD). Some weeks two of these regulators will pass by on the same day at different times, and the vendor will have to pay twice.

Jane, the vendor who pays rent for the city council kiosk but operates most of her business outside the kiosk on city council land explains:

“There still is an extortion of sorts. I pay a rent of KSHs. 10,000 [around 100 USD] per month for this shop. KSHs 200 thrice every week (Monday, Tuesday and Friday or whichever dates you agree on). Most roadside food vendors opt to not have shops built for them because of their limited holding capacity and the regulations that come with the city council owned building such as having to cook and serve food within the limited space of the shop. Also, we were denied an operating license – the city council says that outdoor, rather road-side food vendors cannot be given licenses.”

If vendors are unable to pay these city council regulators, the vendors stated that they threaten to call the 'van guys', where the will be threatened to be arrested, their cooking equipment to be disposed of. These ‘van-guys ‘are the second form of city council harassment. They come to the area around every four months with a city council van (with a booth for people who are arrested to sit in) and start pulling the informal structures down like the benches and

P a g e | 66 rain/sun covers, taking the equipment away and arresting the street vendor. One vendor was asked if she was ever harassed:

“A lot! Just a few days ago they were here and they carried some of our things – charcoal burners, chairs etc. At the moment, they are the greatest problem we are facing.”

Some vendors said that they are warned roughly when these authorities will be coming, in order to scare them from coming back the next day. These are the authorities whom the vendors are fearful of, as they risk losing their belongings and structures, and being arrested. The food vendors said that when this authority is in the area, they flee. Either they receive a phone call from other street vendors in the area that they have seen a city council van or they see it in the distance. During one interview a van was seen in the distance. The owner of the street stall told a member of staff who was making chapattis to jump and hide in the bush as she didn’t want them both to get arrested. It turned out not to be the city council, but the sphere in the air shifted from pleasant interaction, people enjoying their lunch, customers laughing into a fearful silence where the next step of fleeing was anticipated. The vendor said that if it turns out to be that van, she would just run, not even take her food or equipment but just flee and risk losing everything. Vendors that have been there for a longer period have faced being arrested and taken to city hall. For one vendor, this happened in the 15 years of being there said that she is now able to bribe her way out of the van through payments and knowing what to say. She claimed that she was more worried about them taking her equipment as you have to go to City Hall to ask for it back and pay fixed administration costs. Even though this has happened to her, she has always returned back to the same road where she sold food in the first place.

What was clear from interviewing the street vendors was that there is no clear consensus on how to attain a permit for selling food on the road side. There was also a clear account of harassments from city authorities, yet bribes and daily licences were inconsistent with times, days and amounts differing from vendor to vendor. What has become apparent is not only are the street vendors informal, the way the city council deals with them is also informal. This harassment is a short-term solution for the city council, as vendors continually return. One vendor described herself as a ‘permanent hawker’, as she will never leave that location and her kiosk. However, street food vendors did express that they want to work in a more secure setting with support from the government. Allowing more accessible permits and with better infrastructure like a kiosk to make cooking easier. When asked why they don’t think this happened it was made clear that they feel like the neighbourhood does not want them in this space, and that the authorities can make money from them.

“I have a permit from the health department. However, to get a permit to sell by the road is difficult. So, you would have to get an adjacent property to acquire a business permit which would then transferred to you.”

“Stop with the harassment for one and also improve the design of the buildings they create for food vendors – to be more spacious like the food stalls out in the Moi Avenue. Also, there are residents here who make reports, accusing us of being the people who lead to blocking of roads due to the traffic coming through these areas.”

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“This is a temporary structure so sometimes it could be destroyed, especially the local county government and sometimes the residents here; because they wouldn’t want to see such structures here (in this estate).”

Around half of the vendors didn't see a future in their street food stand as they felt the harassment would get too oppressive and push them out, especially during the elections of 2017. They felt they had a lack of political representation which would further contribute to the stalls being destroyed and they would have no one to fight their cause.

“We’ll most likely have been chased away. However, with better treatment from the city council (officers), the business will flourish.”

This was often said by the smaller, newer vendors. The larger or more experienced vendors said that they wanted to move to a more permanent residence, like a restaurant in Westlands and the street food stall was a starting point. They felt that the fact that they sell food on land owned by the city council made them extremely vulnerable and they felt that this was their main problem.

“We are likely to get our structures demolished because we are here out of the goodwill of the local county government. The pieces of land we are on are the government’s.”

Their operating on public space owned by the government was to each vendor seen as a problem. The question in the interview ‘apart from feeding people, how do you think you are adding to this area and society?’ triggered the most silences in each vendor. Only two vendors answered it by saying they contributed more than food by offering credit (mpesa) to customers who could not pay the meal until they got paid, employed staff, and created a livelihood for themselves and therefore their family. The other vendors did not claim that they had a further role.

10.3 Conclusion

The semi-formality of informal food spaces means the space is never complete, it is never closed. So semi- permanence is not something which is a great issue when valuing the socio-materiality of the informal food space. Ayeh et al (2011) also show that food vendors return to their location, they retrace the day dwellers food arteries, and go back to the prime location of the highest foot flows seeking food they can afford as they are outpriced by the formal, exclusionary restaurants and food stores. The food spaces are therefore not seen as informal due to lack of regulation, they are seen as informal as the function of the space they are on is not intended for that materiality of space.

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11. Discussion and Conclusion

11.1 Discussion

This thesis has attempted to explain a complex phenomenon of informality and formality through concepts of the use of space. The thesis has attempted to deconstruct using this theory, is how can the informal food spaces be given integrity about the space they are appropriating, and how this can be part of an African city development trajectory.

The first lens to deconstruct this was through looking at the post-colonial legacy. The fact that informal street food became popular after independence suggests this is part of the ‘African city’. From the ‘background to the research’ chapter, it was clear that informal street food was not a phenomenon in Nairobi until after independence in 1964. This was possibly due to the high levels of regulation and law enforcement by the British, which fell as the independence party came into power. However, this thesis has also shown that the removal of racial zoning could also be a reason for the rise of street food. By preventing people from creating a space is a technique of control as it prevents groups of people appropriating that space. During the colonial rule when racial zoning was in place, African and Indian people were unable to freely move around the city. They were also unable to choose where to live and were limited to where they could work. The ‘white’ zones were off limits for the majority of Africans and Indians.

This being said, further theory around ‘space’ was needed to understand this event, but also the growth of the informal food spaces in formalising neighbourhoods. de Haan’s (2005) ideas on the appropriation of space was able to support my argument, that as the urban poor were excluded from the physical space during colonialism, they were unable to create socio-materiality in order to appropriate it, and make it harder to regulate by authorities. Now, since these zones are no longer racial zones, but essentially economic zones, day dwellers have become part of this formalisation process as the low-income workers are part of the service sector that formalising neighbourhoods aspire to.

How is space useful to understand this? It would be easy to make the argument that informal food trade actually started because of political change and informal activities in these areas were no longer eradicated but instead regulation was used as a tool to allow corruption by the new government. Of course, this is valid, but it is a one- dimensional way of understanding what is actually happening in this space. Informal food spaces start appropriating the space, which, makes it harder to eradicate as there lies socio-materiality in that area, so vendors and customers will come back along their food arteries even after eradication. Colonial zoning meant that the ‘European’ areas did not allow the other to move freely in these areas, so a large enough socio-materiality was not formed. Chapter 9 found that the neighbourhood formalisation did not provide any formal affordable food options for them, so the vendors found a gap in the market to start a business and sell these workers breakfast and lunch. As more day

P a g e | 69 dwellers were needed in the area, more ‘open script’ spaces (de Haan, 2005) were appropriated that created informal food spaces. This means, going back to Roy and Alsayyad’s (2004) definition of informality, that informality is constantly negotiating the value, and un-mapping of space can be interpreted in the way that informal food spaces are taking a space that has been semi-fixed to fit as part of the middle-class vision through the closing down of this space. This space has become fixed. And the informal food spaces find the gaps in these fixtures, for example on junctions and on street corners and open up that space again by negotiating the value, and un-mapping that space. This suggests that as this occurs hand in hand with the formalisation process in Nairobi, informal food spaces should be seen as part of the ordinary formalisation process.

There needs to be an understanding in policy that informal street vendors are also an integral part of the formalisation process; not only do vendors feed the day dwellers who work in the area and provide them a place to rest on their breaks, they also operate on ‘open script’ pieces of land. They are not locating themselves directly in the middle of the highway or next to the new Tune Hotel. There are spatial strategies to their locations, and these should be taken seriously by developers and planners. Their locations are often in the corners, and junctions of the neighbourhood, creating food arteries of the day dwellers foot flows. This creates a collective agency of the space as there are a lot of day dwellers and a lot of informal food spaces in the case study. These spaces provide open, livelier and safer streets that the formalisation process often tries to close through eradication. The reality of this process however is unequal and puts vendors and day dwellers at risk. Their semi-permanence, ‘grey’ (Yiftichels, 2009) existence is a stressful and expensive weekly occurrence for the food vendors. They are living in a constant state of semi-formality, where they are needed as part of the formalisation process to feed the day dwellers, yet they are illegal, so can be taken advantage of. Their internalisation of this illegality means that they are often unaware of how integral they are to the formalisation process. The vendors that have been there longer, had overcome this fear by creating socio-relations with the city authorities, but as elections occur, these people may change too, making the appropriation of the space more difficult.

Another discussion point is, if formalisation of space is the process of closing down the space, as I have explained in this thesis, and street vendors are opening up the not fully yet closed spaces, could this suggest that once street vendors have appropriated the space they are in, even if it is semi-regulated where they at times have to flee, could this space they occupy also be part of the closing down of space? If street vendors are closing space, are they also not part of the formalisation process in the African city?

However, the common problem of radical theories of space is that even though they provide a powerful way to explain a social phenomenon, they lack political significance as they are often embedded with different political values than the elite. One example of what I mean is that informal food vendors are appropriating space to feed day dwellers, who are integral to formalisation. Yet the city authorities are profit driven, and aspire to a middle-class urban vision. As researchers how can we come up with a theory that overrides the social importance of profit? In Nairobi, one way this can be seen to have done is through matatus, the informal transport busses, which have

P a g e | 70 creative artwork, bright lights and loud music with has given their informality integrity. Could this happen with informal food spaces too?

Overall, these are important questions to ask, especially as this thesis advocates the importance of informal food spaces, and hope that 5 years down the line there is not another master’s student researching ‘the day that Nairobi banned all informal street food’. I hope this thesis can aid a change in the importance and integrity of space in a formalising neighbourhood in the African city.

11.2 Further Research

This purpose of this thesis was not to develop an intervention plan on how to protect the street vendors, as from the 1990s, the FAO and other research groups have been designing street vending documents that essentially regurgitate the same message that the urban poor need to be ‘protected’. What these policies often miss are the deeper contextual understanding of the food vendors, and their integral part of the ‘ordinary’ formalisation process. Ayeh et al (2011) and Ahmed et al (2016) have started to move the research in this direction, and this thesis adds that a neighbourhood consists of a set of social relations that are impacted by the physical buildings, and vice-versa. By seeing the food vendors as informal, it removes them from the neighbourhood set of relations and they are seen as a separate space. This thesis has attempted to look beyond the binary of formal-informal, open-closed, black-white and ordinary- abnormal, in order to show that even if the function of a space in a neighbourhood was for a pavement or grass area, or nothing was yet intended, the space is able to be appropriated by people who need a space for the daily functions of the life, like eating and taking a rest.

There are two areas of further research I would recommend from this study. The first, understanding the idea of semi-permanence somewhat more would require an interval research period. It would be useful to have a before and after informal food map to see if and when vendors move, for what reasons and what happens to the space after they leave, and come back. This would strengthen the findings and argument of this thesis around the difficulty of regulating an appropriation of space. Another area of research would be researching the spatial strategies behind the Nairobi council street food kiosks. This is an intervention that the council has developed to provide a ‘formal’ space for vendors. The kiosks get placed into one straight line on a busy main road, completely opposite to the spatial strategies the vendors in Groganville Estate have used. Seeing if this has any impacts on business, as the foot flow and food arteries are not incorporated in the spatial strategies, would make this thesis’ findings more powerful in the sense of putting importance on ‘space’.

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11.3 Conclusion

This research concludes that informal food spaces are integral to the formalisation process in Nairobi. The first part of the research was interested in finding out how informal food vendors emerged and sustained in a formalising neighbourhood. Firstly, the findings found that informal street food vendors were attracted to emerge in the formalising area due to the increase in demand from day-dwellers, who are integral to providing the formalising services, yet were part of urban an urban informality where there daily, routine needs like eating were not provided for in the ordinary formalisation process. It also found that vendors used spatial strategies when locating in this neighbourhood. By using de Haan’s “open scripted” space, the street vendors found spaces in the formalising neighbourhood which were badly organised and was not yet fully ‘closed’. Every informal food space in the study was located on such a site and located on junctions and intersecting roads. These spaces were still open which meant the socio-materiality of the space could be appropriated by informal street vendors. The research also found that informal street vendors were able to sustain themselves in the neighbourhood through their social networks that were formed in the neighbourhood. Street vendors used connections with security guards to access water and store their equipment at night. They also provided a restaurant like atmosphere in the food space, where seating was available and shade from the sun. This meant day-dwellers socialised in the space, and made it more than just a space to eat. Another form of networks was creating a relationship with the city authorities who were semi-regulating them to enable their semi-permanence status as more permanent. Another sustaining tactic was through de Haan’s (2005) notion of ‘collective action’ which flourished in two ways. The first collective action that occurred to appropriate the space was through keeping a good business with the day-dwellers, vendors were keen to provide good customer service, did their best for sanitation levels and kept their prices down. The day-dwellers that were interviewed mostly all worked in that neighbourhood and did not live in the area. The 17 vendors in the small neighbourhood, combined with the sheer number of day-dwellers that eat from the vendors suggests that there is a strong collective action to appropriate these spaces.

The second part of the research was to investigate to what extent informality can be reimagined to be part of the ‘ordinary’ formalising process. In other words, this is asking, can the city of Nairobi create a different, reimagined type of development, where informality is seen as part of the development trajectory. Firstly, this research has shown that informal street vending in Nairobi is still a fairly young phenomenon which bourgeoned since the 1960s. Since the 1960s the city has also been economically growing, and building the neighbourhoods to a middle-class aesthetic. From this, it suggests that informal food vending has a direct relationship to growth of the city and therefore should be seen as the ‘ordinary’ formalisation process in Nairobi, and even African cities. However, the extent of this also needs to be questioned, as political agendas and foreign investors image a certain formalisation trajectory. To imagine the formalisation process requires certain assumptions of the functions of space, in this normative trajectory, neighbourhoods are to have clean roads, housing developments and public spaces like parks. These assumptions require spaces to be closed, so the ‘script to be written’ and very hard to change. However, as this research has shown, neighbourhoods like Groganville attract forms of informality in the ‘grey’ spaces, where the space is closing

P a g e | 72 but not yet closed. By dropping these normative assumptions, a space can be re-imagined, and rather than seen as a closing space, the informal food vendors see these spaces as an opening, one in which they can appropriate for their needs and the day-dwellers needs as they are excluded by the neighbourhood. Street vendors are re-imagining formalisation through this process, and appropriating themselves into the ordinary formalisation process.

This appropriation of space makes it much harder for planners, researchers and others to re-imagine the formalisation process in this context without the inclusion of the informal food spaces. They are semi-regulated, so there lies the question of how informal they actually are. The function of the space has changed, and therefore that makes them seem informal, and therefore not part of the formalisation process. However, once Nairobi start re-imagining what formalisation means to its own context, will the current 2030 visions seem far from ordinary plans to creating a ‘world-class’ city, when it excludes the majority of its urban population.

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13. Appendix

Appendix 1: Patrons Survey Consumer Survey

We are carrying out an evaluation of some of the customers who use the food kiosk services. Date:……………………………Time:………………………Location:…………………......

1. How often do you come here? (please tick one)

less than once a month  once a month  once every two weeks  once a week  two or three times a week  daily 

2. Do you come to the food kiosk for? (please tick all that apply)

Meal 2a. 2b. What do you take when you are here? Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

Snack

3. Why do you come to this food kiosk, and not go to the others? …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………

4. Do you live in this area? Yes  No 

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5. Are you: full-time employed  part-time employed  self-employed  not in paid employment  student  student and working  retired  other 

6. If applicable, do you work in this area?

Yes  No  Other 

7. If applicable, what is your job? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………..

8. If the food kiosks were not here, where would you eat? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………..

9. How important is it for this area to have these food kiosks?

very important  quite important  not very important  not at all important 

10. Apart from the food, what are the other reasons for coming here? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 11. What do you think is the biggest obstacle for the kiosks? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 12. How do you think they cope with this obstacle? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………

13. Are you:

under 16 

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16-25  26-35  36-45  46-55  56-65  over 65 

Thank you very much for taking the time to complete this questionnaire.

If you have any other comments, please add them below:

Appendix 2: Food Seller Interview Guide

Food Seller Interview Guide Suggested methodology: Semi-structured Interview Type of respondent: Food Seller (fixer and translator will be needed) aim for all food vendors in the area in order to create typology. Ideally would like to speak to most involved with the business side. Potential questions: I) Introduction a. Name b. Age c. Working Position (cook, waitress, owner)

II) Food Stall: a. What kind of foods do you sell? b. Do you cook it on site or transport it? c. How many meals do you sell a day? d. How much tea do you sell? e. Food Stand type? (typology tbc after observation) f. How long have you been doing the job? g. How many people work here? h. What are your opening hours? i. Why did you decide to locate your business’ here?

Stall Changes a. Have you noticed any changes in the food outlets recently, last couple years, even longer? b. Are there more or fewer food outlets? Has the food changed? Cliental changed? c. Who would you say use these outlets the most? Where are they most prevalent? d. Do you feel pressure from official bodies? Do you think they want you to leave?

Structure a. The structures of most of these food spaces are informal, not permanent, and do not adhere to ‘food safety’ – do you have any thoughts around to tackle this? b. Do you have to pack everything up in the evening? How do you ensure security? c. Are you aware of any initiatives tackling this? d. Would you like to become more of a formal structure? Or even a reasturant?

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Policy a) Are you aware of any policy concerning the food outlets? (If yes, ask further) b) Are the government involved? Do you have to buy a permit to sell food? c) How do people in the government field respond to food outlets? d) What is the future vision of the food outlets? e) Do you think the lack of discussion around these food stalls signifies something more?

Personal City a) Do you eat at other informal food stands (Vibanda vya chakula)? If yes…. b) How often do you go there? What time do you go? d) Do you ever go there with friends? e) How would you describe your experiences when there? Have you had any bad experiences? f) What factors play into account when choosing to eat/drink at one?

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