Urban Planning and Everyday Urbanisation

Nadine Appelhans Urban Planning and Everyday Urbanisation Urban Studies Nadine Appelhans (PhD) completed her doctoral studies at HafenCity University in Hamburg and is now a post-doctoral researcher at TU Dortmund University. Nadine Appelhans Urban Planning and Everyday Urbanisation A Case Study on Bahir Dar, Ethiopia Diese Arbeit wurde 2015 als Dissertationsschrift an der HafenCity Universität Hamburg vorgelegt. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-3-8394-3715-5. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Na- tionalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoD- erivatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To create an adaptation, translation, or derivative of the original work and for commercial use, further permission is required and can be obtained by contacting rights@ transcript-verlag.de Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. © 2017 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or re- trieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: Nadine Appelhans, Bahir Dar, 2010. Copyright: Nadine Appelhans Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3715-1 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3715-5 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839437155 Contents Abstract | 9 Acknowledgement | 11 Glossary | 12 1. Introduction | 15 1.1. Objective | 16 1.2. The Research Process | 18 1.3. Structure of the Thesis | 19 2. Urbanisation in African Cities | 23 2.1. Concepts from Urban Studies | 27 2.2. Informing Urban Policy on Urbanisation | 31 2.2.1. Beyond the Formal-Informal Dichotomy | 36 2.2.2. Undoing the Modern-Traditional Division | 39 2.2.3. Establishing Rural-Urban Linkages | 41 2.2.4. Re-Framing Local-Cosmopolitan Constellations | 43 2.3. Assembling Narratives of Urbanisation in African Cities | 45 3. Accounts of Ethiopian Urbanisation | 49 3.1. 1880-1936: Early Towns | 54 3.2. 1936-1941: Italian Facist Settlement Plans | 55 3.3. 1941-1974: Imperial Modernism | 58 3.4. 1974-1994: Towns under Socialism | 61 3.5. 1994-present: The Federalist Urban Network | 65 3.6. Missing Accounts of Urbanism | 68 4. Research Design | 73 4.1. Applying a Case Study Methodology | 73 4.2. The Case Study Site | 76 4.3. Research Questions | 78 4.4. Data Collection | 80 4.5. Analytical Framework | 84 5. Urban Planning in Bahir Dar | 87 5.1. Traditional Land-Administration and Settling Practices | 87 5.2. Italian Legacy | 91 5.3. The Modernist Layout | 94 5.4. Introducing the Kebele Administration | 99 5.5. Contemporary Planning | 101 5.5.1 The BDIDP | 104 5.5.2 Urban Development Practice | 111 5.6. Ruptures, Continuities and Parallels in Bahir Dar‘s Urban Planning | 118 6. Everyday Urbanisation in Bahir Dar | 127 6.1. The Sub-Cases | 131 6.1.1. Inner City Area | 133 6.1.2. Textile Settlement | 140 6.1.3. Informalised Village | 143 6.1.4. University Campus | 147 6.2. Ordinary Practices of Making the City | 154 7. The Relation of Planning and Everyday Urbanisation | 161 7.1. Constellations in the Neighbourhoods | 162 7.1.1. Historical Diversity | 163 7.1.2. Housing Area | 169 7.1.3. Urban Village | 171 7.1.4. Academic Compound| 173 7.2. Spheres of Negotiation | 175 7.2.1. Negotiations of Legal Status | 176 7.2.2. Disputed Modernity | 182 7.2.3. Understandings of Urbanity | 186 7.2.4. Questions of Citizenship | 193 8. Towards a Situated Agenda | 197 8.1. Bahir Dar‘s Idiom of Urbanisation | 197 8.2. Implications for Urban Development | 202 8.3. Inclusive Planning | 209 9. Furthering Synergetic Constellations | 209 9.1. Mixed-Use Zoning | 211 9.2. Arrival Structures and Temporary Housing | 213 9.3. Incremental Building Zones | 215 9.4. Networks of Innovation | 218 Table of Resident Interviews | 221 List of Expert Interviews | 222 References | 223 Abstract Since the beginning of the 20th century, Ethiopia’s cities have been growing in size, expansion and number. While master plans were drafted since the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, construction and settlement processes have largely re- mained incremental and based on everyday practice. The discipline of urban studies is only in an early phase of gaining insights into the contingent nature of the social, economic and cultural implications of urbanisation in the country’s cities, but has to assume a widening spectrum of urban practices within and among the towns. However, since 2005 Ethiopian politics has started drafting an urban policy to introduce new standards of development in the cities. Recently “Integrated Development Plans” (IDPs) have been introduced as planning instruments and form the policy base for resettlements and large scale restructuring in many of the Ethiopian cities. The topic of the research presented here is the investigation of the relation of these statutory planning practices with the local everyday urbanisation. Therefore, Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara National Regional State and located on the mouth of the Blue Nile on Lake Tana, was chosen a case study location. The study is comprised of a theoretical review on urbanisation in Africa and two empirical parts. The first empirical part is a review of the historical urban development of Bahir Dar to the planning policies currently in place. The second empirical part is an evaluation of primary data on everyday urbanisation collected from the four sub-case sites in Bahir Dar. Fieldwork was conducted in a number of site visits over a period of four years from 2009 to 2013. In a multi-tool approach data on urbanisation practice was collected through documentation, review of policies and archival records, key-informant interviews, semi- structured interviews with residents and cross-section mapping. Four sub-cases in contrasting neighbourhoods founded in different time periods were studied to gain insights into the implications and mutual influences of current statutory planning and everyday rationales of the urbanising city and vice versa: The inner city, the textile area, an informal village and the Bahir Dar University main campus. The dissertation aims to specify the insights on urbanisation rationales of residents in the four sub-case site neighbourhoods and how they relate to state- 10 Urban Planning and Everyday Urbanisation driven development policy. The inner-city houses a wide diversity of dwellers and serves as an arrival point, while current development plans seek to re-shape this area into a commercial zone. The residential area erected by workers of the textile mill has turned into an established middle-income neighbourhood with formal house ownership. An informal settlement now inhabited by the fourth generation of settlers accommodates livelihoods based on urban agriculture and city based job-opportunities and is facing eviction to make way for a commercial centre. The university’s expansion is part of a priority programme, which provides students with fully serviced campus life but little exposure to Bahir Dar city. Based on the empirical findings, the thesis concludes that informal, traditional and incremental urbanisation strategies continue to make up large parts of the urban fabric and provide housing for population groups that do not have access to formal housing provision. However, contrasting the IDP projects with evidence from the sub-cases reveals that these particular everyday urbanisation practices have not found sufficient consideration in urban development strategies and lack the negotiation power with state authority that economically better equipped projects display. This furthers tendencies of socio-economic segregation. To counter these tendencies, ideas for policy revision placing urbanisation at its centre and towards contextualised planning and inclusion are, hence, concep- tualised. In order to support inclusiveness for low-income practices of urbanisation, this thesis suggests implementing pilot projects aiming for synergies between statutory and everyday urbanisation. The city centre is designated to experiment with “mixed- use zoning”, the textile settlement is proposed as a site for “arrival structures and temporary housing”, the informal village can be declared an “incremental building zone” and the university can reconnect to Bahir Dar city via public programmes termed “networks of innovation”. Thereby the proposals are intentioned to look for possibilities of cooperation between stakeholders to benefit the residents while attracting projects improving living conditions and urban fa- cilities in Bahir Dar. Acknowledgement Over time, the work on this thesis was accompanied by many, who have contrib- uted to the completion of this research in their own way. I would like to express my appreciation for their trust and patience and thank my family and friends for being there. As special mentions, I wish to thank all the interviewees for giving me their personal insights and the people of Bahir Dar who introduced me to how they live.

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