OLUTIMEHIN ADEGBEYE: Who belongs in a city?

Another TED Talk to share!

OluTimehin Adegbeye shares the story of her city, Lagos (Nigeria), and how the rights of its poorest people to BE in their own communities is being striped away.

Like so many cities across the world, Lagos leaders are implementing a 'restoration' (read: gentrification) process, in an effort to become the "next Dubai."

In Adegbeye's own words: "Last October, the Governor announced plans to demolish every single waterfront settlement in Lagos. There are more than 40 of these indigenous communities all over the city, with over 300,000 people living in them. Otodo Gbame, a hundred-year-old fishing village with a population about three-quarters that of Monaco and similar potential for beachfront luxury was one of the first to be targeted."

But the city of Lagos wasn't founded on rich oil elites -- it was founded preciously by those same indigenous fishing communities that are now scrambling to get out alive.

Land grabs throughout the entire African continent are being realized more and more as "a worrisome trend" per this UN blog -- but I (and countless scholars, I'm sure) see this trend as directly linked to Africa's colonial history. For how long has this geographic region of the world been seen as a catch-all continent for land and labor? Longer than "recent."  

Land grabs are exercised by both foreign investors (like South Korea) and city elites within the African countries themselves. I remember reading about the controversial topic of land grabs in Africa last year for 'Gender, Environment, and Development.' I am by no means an expert, but this is what I remember: Land grabs can sometimes provide economic and development opportunities, but more often than not pose problems for water and food security. Gender is rarely, if ever, considered. 

"Informal settlements are incorrectly named as the problem" for economic development, Adegbeye continues in her talk. "In fact, the real problems are the factors that create them, like the entrenchment of poverty, social exclusion and state failures. When our governments frame slums as threats in order to justify violent land grabs or forced evictions, they're counting on those of us who live in formal housing to tacitly and ignorantly agree with them. Rather, we must remind them that governments exist to serve not only those who build and live in luxury homes, but also those who clean and guard them. 

Our realities may differ, but our rights don't."

By denying the humanity of those who "live in slums" -- as if by choice, to purposefully 'de-beautify' a city's well-being -- we risk the lives and livelihoods of people who make up those cities.

Already, the indigenous communities in Lagos have faced relentless police and state violence, forced evictions, and sometimes death for refusing to leave their own homes. And the violence, says Adegbeye, continues to this day.

To me, this story is an example of spatial justice: "the intersection of space and social justice" per the Design Studio for Social Intervention (reading Sept. 7). 

The oppression faced by these indigenous communities of Lagos is directly tied to their occupation of space. To quote from the Design Studio reading: "any and every marginalized group has had space itself used as part of the terrain through which they experience injustice in their day to day lives."

This line from Adegbeye really got me: "poor people don't generally tend to just disappear because they've been stripped of everything they have."

So, where are these people of Lagos expected to go next?