Meanings of Self-Building: Incrementality, Emplacement, and Erasure in Dar es Salaam's Traditional Swahili Neighborhoods

Abstract: Self-building is the prevalent mode of urban production in rapidly urbanizing African cities. National and international policy frameworks, as well as popular discourse, still portray self-building as an informal and temporary fix for insufficient state investment - as the exception, rather than the rule. Meanwhile, emerging literature about the Global South draws from an analysis of processes, practices, spatialities, and lived experiences of urbanization and dwelling. This literature seeks to unveil how ordinary processes such as self-building unfold in different localities and realities, challenging the reluctance of government and private actors in recognizing self-building as a long-term mode of urban production. This article contributes to this literature through an ethnographic analysis of the oldest and most common modality of self-built houses in Tanzania - the Swahili house - and its unfolding in two traditional, centrally-located neighborhoods of Dar es Salaam. It emphas

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Urban Planning ; 7 (2022) 1 ; 305-320

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2022
• Creator: Izar, Priscila

Further information

• DOI: 10.17645/up.v7i1.4849
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023090410334618100723
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 14.08.2025, 10:57 AM CEST