No Place Like Home in a New City

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Nairobi, named after the cool water that flows through it, started as a railway stop and became known as the Green City in the Sun. Yet, the city has taken shape through a set of anti-urban ideologies and practices that insist that some people cannot, should not, and must not be permanent urban residents and that the city is not their home.

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 despite it, even in the current dynamic of ubiquitous demolition and reconstruction. Through quotidian practices and creative resistance, long-term residents imagine alternatives to displacement, create belonging, and build new urban futures.