No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi

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Nairobi, known as the Green City in the Sun, has taken shape through anti-urban ideologies that insist that the city cannot be home for most residents. Based on decades of experience in rapidly changing Nairobi, No Place Like Home in a New City traverses rivers, cemeteries, parks, railways, housing estates, roads, and dancehalls to explore how policies of anti-urbanism manifest across time and space, shaping how people live in Nairobi. With deeply personal insights, Bettina Ng’weno highlights how people contest anti-urbanism through their insistence on building life in the city, even in the current dynamic of ubiquitous demolition and reconstruction. Through quotidian practices and creative resistance, they imagine alternatives to displacement, create belonging, and build new urban futures.

Bettina Ng’weno is Associate Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis and author of Turf Wars, Citizenship and Territory in the Contemporary State. She was born in Nairobi.