Photo: Machinga Complex, Dar es Salaam (own picture)
Author: Valerie Dagenbach
To keep up with the conditions of the ongoing urbanization process, concepts concerning urban rights and well-being like ‘citizenship’ need to be redefined (DelSesto 2015: 2). The historical idea of citizenship – called conventional citizenship – conveys a passive understanding of citizenship because people receive their citizenship status by having a certain legal status which is documented (ibid.: 2). It is a clearly defined concept that decides who is legally regarded as inclusive or exclusive in a certain political setting and associated rights (Schillinger 2018: 18). Urban citizenship can be understood as a process of inclusion that recreates the urban by producing new social and spatial structures and constituting a new inclusive public. The newly created space reflects the needs and lived realities of the urban inhabitants (DelSesto 2015: 3). Moreover, besides affiliation, which is connected to the status of citizenship, urban citizenship is about certain participation.
Dar es Salaam is Tanzania’s biggest city and counts as one of the fastest-growing cities on the African continent. The increasing urbanization leads to inequalities within the cities like Dar es Salaam. Because urban citizenship is about access and affiliation the concept can be projected onto different dimensions of urban life: mobility, informality, and public space.
Read more: Urban Citizenship