Plan and manage Cities with informality

By Davison Muchadenyika

While it is evident that the majority of urban livelihood sources have turned informal, it baffles the mind to witness municipal police chasing away vendors day and night. No one wants to be a vendor, but the macro-economic environment forces one to.

When growing up, no one envisaged to make a livelihood in the street. We all aspired good things. We all aspired well paid and ‘nice’ jobs. We all had big dreams about our careers.

Evident features of our cities are men and women selling all sorts of commodities. Tomatoes, vegetables, CDs, maize cobs, onions and many others are providing major livelihood sources for hundreds of young people, women and man. These people are bread winners just like all of us.

Their children expect food on the table three times a day. They are expected to send children to school. Above all, they are all human beings striving to make ends meet. While others are in swivel chairs, checking their emails as part of their jobs, these people’s ‘offices’ and warehouses are on the streets.

In the name of development control, municipal police are running fierce and dangerous battles with vendors. City fathers argue that streets are not designated zones for vending according to council bye-laws, regulations and planning law. In fact laws and regulations are used to dissuade an economic reality – the informality of the economy.

Accepting informality

Conventional planning thought dictates that any development in cities that does not conform to planning laws and regulations is illegal and unwarranted. This requires rethinking as it is no longer in conformance with planning reality – ubiquitous informality. City fathers must accept the reality of the day – informality is part of the new urban morphology.

Accepting a situation is an important step in developing long lasting solutions. In fact we cannot continue to manage cities using bye-laws and planning regulations crafted during a formal and functioning economy. The national and city economy have all changed overtime. Big manufacturing firms have since disappeared. This had a knock on effect on city council revenues.

Today, cities are faced with new entrepreneurs – vendors. Though the scale is not big, it is an indication of economic induced changes; changes that local authorities must embrace. Vendors bring convenience to urbanites. One does not need to visit Mbare Musika for green vegetables. In addition, the prices of vendors are affordable as compared to big supermarkets. So it is not the vendors only benefitting, most urbanites are benefiting.

Innovation

City fathers must develop ways of incorporating vendors into the city economy. Planning laws and regulations must be changed to embrace informality. The informal sector must be tapped in so that local authorities also benefit monetary wise. For instance, there is economic and planning wisdom in designating ‘green streets’ where vendors are allowed to sell their wares for 2 or 3 hours a day. The timing of these ‘green streets’ can be after 4 pm every day.

This kind of innovation has two advantages; that are, cities get licensing fees and cities will no longer require an army of municipal police thus reducing council expenditure. The driver of innovation in cities is imagination of the future. Our imaginations are critical in shaping and planning cities.

Forward planning

There is no doubt that the urbanisation of poverty in African cities is a reality in progression. Urban poverty is a phenomenon that cities must plan with and learn to live with. Urban planning solutions must understand the urgency of responding to urban poverty as there are little signs of prosperity in most cities across the African continent.

The State of African Cities 2014 Report advances that “the overarching challenge for Africa in the decades to come is massive population growth in a context of wide-spread poverty that, in combination, generate complex and interrelated threats to the human habitat”.

This holds true for Zimbabwean cities taking into consideration urban population explosion since the 1982 census. One way to address urbanization ills in cities is through developing home grown urban planning solutions grounded in the reality and ubiquitous of urban poverty and informality.

Zimbabwe’s record of having sophisticated and high standards of urban planning need to be renounced. This record has been kept at the expense of the advancement of our cities and people. The purpose of planning is for the people; a fact that we need to revert to.

Davison Muchadenyika is a Harare based development planner and can be contacted at [email protected].