The gendered postconflict city: Possibilities for more livable urban transformations in Gulu, northern Uganda
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Date
2022-08-10
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Urban Affairs
Abstract
Scholars acknowledge that postconflict urbanism is undertheorized and
underdeveloped for practical governance or sustainable urban management,
especially in sub-Saharan Africa, which has unfortunately experienced significant
conflict in the post-independence period. We argue that postconflict
redevelopment theory and practice under appreciates liminal spaces and the
precarious existence of postconflict people, especially postconflict women.
We examine the extant literature on Gulu, Uganda, to develop theory and
urban management concepts around the notion of the gendered postconflict
city as a unique urban identity and re-center the analysis on the everyday
experiences, agency, and city building practices of women. We posit three
realities for understanding the gendered postconflict city: (1) the postconflict
gendered city is a liminal space beyond the notions of contingency and
fluidity often assigned to African cities, (2) it is a place of deep and abiding
trauma, and (3) it is a place of invisibility and precarity for women who selforganize
to reduce precarity. We make a series of recommendations for
postconflict urban management based on these realities that include recognizing
liminality in postconflict planning and setting aside the impulse to
prioritize the global competitiveness of postconflict cities above all else.
These have important implications for NGO and national development practices.