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The study established the nexus between market-led urban redevelopment and involuntary displacement of street economy workers from public spaces. Taking Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique, as a case-study, it investigated how street economy workers are circumventing displacement from public spaces and building their ‘actual’ rights to the city in the process. The conceptual framework drew on the notion of the ‘encroachment of the ordinary’ by Asef Bayat to arrive at possible concepts of spatial analysis. These are main citymaking processes around which conflicts tend to emerge: flows-networks, spatial encroachment and the public-private interface. The framework was used to query the transformations in the main case study site of the Xikhelene Market-Transport hub. A mixmethod was used: a spatial analysis (2010-2019) compounded with the viewpoints and accounts of individuals directly implicated in those transformations. Key findings were: 1) Loss of public space is now a main spatial-political conflict in Maputo as it bears directly on the dispossession of a majority of street economy workers; 2) Loss of public space and vending bans correlate with the spread of condominiums along main arteries and advancing onto the popular neighbourhoods; 3) The city-making processes analysed play a role in how street economy workers are pushing back displacement: tactics include retreat-and-return in main arteries, re-establishing mobility, adaptable encroachment, and reactivation of publicprivate spaces for vending in retreat areas; 4) A main threat to the street economy in Maputo is the levelling of the housing fabric in popular neighbourhoods; 5) Street economy workers lay claims to public space as their ‘means of production’ backed by their social legitimacy as the main producers of Maputo’s transport-market hubs; 6) Such legitimation incorporates principles and statutory rights provided in the Mozambican Constitution and national laws on territorial distribution. Against

This desktop study paper suggests a ‘flows and livelihoods’ framework for comparative studies on ‘displaceability’ in the context of infrastructure and investment/projects in diverse post-colonial settings. It uses the ongoing upgrading of Mbudzi (Goats) interchange, in Harare, to discuss the utility of this framework in addressing diverse sustainability and human security questions irrespective of scale, scope and settings of the project. Thus, the paper contributes to integrated ways of understanding dynamics and sustainability of infrastructure investments. In the process, it also responds to Rydin’s (2021) call on the need for exemplars on how theory can be integrated into planning research. Ultimately, what it offers is a heuristic device for cross-sectional and time-series studies.

This article explores how street economy workers are resisting the condition of ‘displaceability’ imposed upon them via exclusionary market-led redevelopment and state-municipal practices in Maputo, Mozambique. In particular, it focuses on how street and market workers engage in forms of ‘street politics’ to build their rights to produce, to inhabit and to work in public spaces from which they are being excluded. Drawing on Yiftachel’s notion of ‘displaceability’ and adopting a spatial perspective, we describe and discuss the main exclusionary aspects of current market-led redevelopment in Maputo’s peri-central area, including municipal and state practices and the (non)use of planning laws. Against this background, we examine the circumventing tactics of street and market vendors. We construe these tactics in the terrain of social legitimacy – or actual rights, – as forms of challenging market-driven state practices of demolitions, resettlement, forced zoning, and social banishing of street economy workers.

This study investigates whether and how empowering urban low-income communities, through community renewable energy (RE) initiatives, can be a way to achieve a just RE transition that would address energy poverty in developing countries. Previous research has explored different ways of integrating RE into low-income housing to address energy poverty; however, the focus has largely been on developed countries and rural areas in developing countries. Less attention has been paid to residents of urban subsidised low-income housing (SLH) projects in the context of the developing world. This study addresses this gap by investigating the barriers and opportunities for achieving a just RE transition to address energy poverty in urban low-income housing in developing countries, by taking Egypt as a case study. The study builds on conceptualisations of (socio-technical) transition pathways of new innovations emerging in a niche space to develop a framework that explores the potential for the development of a community RE niche in developing countries. The study also outlines possible models of community RE initiatives in SLH projects that could be followed in Egypt. In the case-study of Egypt, the data were collected using a mixed methods design, including documentary research, household surveys, semi-structured interviews with national stakeholders and workshops within three case studies of new urban SLH projects. The findings suggest that Egypt is undergoing an RE transition led by large-scale technological niche development, while a civil society niche is yet to emerge within the energy domain. The findings show that socio-cultural and regulatory constraints, are the main barriers to the emergence of a community RE niche in Egypt. There is also evidence to show that residents of SLH projects suffer from energy poverty; however, residents are receptive to community RE initiatives. The study concludes that, in a developing context such as in Egypt, the government’s role nee

This study investigates the extent to which post-conflict livelihoods change may contribute to conflict recurrence and a threat to human security. Post-conflict livelihoods studies (e.g. Jacobson 2002, 2005; Karf 2003; Werker 2007; Porter et al. 2008; Amirthalingam and Lakshman 2009, 2010) have for too long focused on refugee and internally displaced person camp settings. Justino (2009; 2011a; 2012) however, argues that these are inadequate in providing sustainable post-conflict peace not only because of the restricted focus on refugees but failure to address the fundamental livelihoods changes and the specific implications. This study examines the nature of livelihoods changes in a post-conflict transition non-camp context. It draws on Justino to adapt then use the sustainable livelihoods framework for the analysis of post-conflict livelihoods changes as a possible precursor for conflict recurrence in a non-camp setting. The study utilises a case study design, Buni Yadi, North-east Nigeria for an empirical investigation of a post-conflict scenario. It employs a mixed methods approach combining quantitative surveys, observations and in-depth discussions with men and women whose livelihoods have been disrupted following the Boko Haram insurgency to analyse post-conflict predicaments. The outcomes of the empirical investigation suggest heterogeneity in the livelihoods changes. Although they are mainly negative, evidence of positive resilience for the youths and women groups is observed. The study also found that post-conflict vulnerabilities are similar for camp and non-camp contexts in that the livelihoods experiences in the non-camp are mostly the extension of the camp conditions. However, while the livelihoods vulnerabilities in the camp contexts relate to legal, administrative, movement and economic restrictions, the existence of these challenges for the non-camp setting are insignificant. Instead, it is chronic post-conflict livelihoods deficiencies that are crit

Contributing to the resurgent debate on urban informality in the global south, Kamete (2013) charged that urban planners in Southern Africa have a fetish about informality that is fuelled by an obsession with modernity. In these and other writings, Zimbabwe’s 2005 Operation Murambatsvina (OM) is used as a prototype planning malfeasance. Using the concept of fetish and fetishism, this paper argues that a fixation on and fetish about planning and planners has led some planning scholars to churn out misplaced or misleading understandings of OM regarding the role of planning the operation. Inevitably, recommendations for planning reform from such scholarship are largely inefficacious. It is time planning scholars looked seriously beyond planning for both analytical tools and space for political activism.

Zimbabwe’s 2012 census report suggests that notable de-urbanisation occurred between 2002 and 2012. Some external commentators have cited urban–rural migration and the Fast Track Land Reform Programme – jambanja – initiated in 2000 as the principal drivers of this phenomenon. During field research in the second half of 2016, I found that ordinary citizens and key informants – in politics, government and civil society – expressed bewilderment at suggestions that the country is de-urbanising. While the populations of the large cities appear to be growing slowly, if at all, unadjusted boundaries mean that the demographic growth associated with urban sprawl has not been captured. In-depth analysis also reveals rapid population growth in peri-urban areas that should be designated as urban, and in small and intermediate urban settlements. Overestimation of the urban populations, and the rate at which urbanisation levels are increasing in African countries, is a consistent feature of international organisation reports.1 But for Zimbabwe, underestimation seems to have occurred. While the rate of urbanisation may have slowed, the extent of the slowdown appears exaggerated and it is likely to be reversed when boundary changes are made. It is not inconceivable that Zimbabwe could still be majority urban by 2050.

This article explores how street economy workers are resisting the condition of ‘displaceability’ imposed upon them via exclusionary market-led redevelopment and state-municipal practices in Maputo, Mozambique. In particular, it focuses on how street and market workers engage in forms of ‘street politics’ to build their rights to produce, to inhabit and to work in public spaces from which they are being excluded. Drawing on Yiftachel’s notion of ‘displaceability’ and adopting a spatial perspective, we describe and discuss the main exclusionary aspects of current market-led redevelopment in Maputo’s peri-central area, including municipal and state practices and the (non)use of planning laws. Against this background, we examine the circumventing tactics of street and market vendors. We construe these tactics in the terrain of social legitimacy – or actual rights, – as forms of challenging market-driven state practices of demolitions, resettlement, forced zoning, and social banishing of street economy workers.

The role of local authorities in promoting decent work is little understood and has been absent from both policy and practice (GIAN, 2005). The purpose of this interdisciplinary study was to identify and describe the existing and potential roles of Bulawayo City in fostering decent work in the construction sector, urban development and related services through policy making, strategic planning and project activities. The study outcomes will contribute to the shared knowledge among local authorities and other stakeholders at the local and international levels. Bulawayo is Zimbabwe’s second largest urban settlement with a 2002 population close to 700 000 i.e. 6% of the national population or 20% of the urban population (CSO, 2002:21), a budget of Z$619 million in 1993/94 (Ndubiwa and Hamilton, 1994), Z$2.5 billion in 2000 and Z$797 billion in 20051. The research team collected national and local level secondary data on decent work variables with a view to compile decent work indicators to help compare Bulawayo City against national and global conditions. Such data was sought from the Central Statistical Office (CSO), the National Social Security Authority (NSSA), employer and worker organisations, construction firms, research institutions and Bulawayo City itself. Key informants in all these institutions were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire and grey literature related to decent work was identified and collected where feasible. While Zimbabwe is not ‘statistics poor’, statistics collected from the institutions cited above are not in formats suitable to answer descent work questions. The political-economic crisis in the country and in particular the government’s frosty relations with the UK, the EU the USA and the white Commonwealth (GoZ, 2005: 25c), have compounded conditions of insecurity for most institutions and individuals; making even the release to outsiders of routine administrative information for research purposes a sensitive affair. Increasi