From Community to Commodity: Contestations over Space in the Making of Somali Enclaves in Nairobi's Pumwani-Majengo

This paper explores how competing interests shape the appropriation and contestation of green spaces within informal settlements. Using Nairobi’s Pumwani-Majengo informal settlement as a case study, we employ the Urban Political Ecology (UPE) framework as a lens and adopt a mixed-methods approach—incorporating data from interviews, expert consultations, field observations, and archival and spatial analyses—to provide a comprehensive analysis of these dynamics. Our findings reveal that displacement in Pumwani-Majengo disrupts social, cultural, and economic networks. Residents respond by resigning, resisting, negotiating, or advocating. Greening and ungreening coincide, are often politicised, and selectively implemented, affecting vulnerable groups. Lastly, land transformation goes along with the formation of socioeconomic enclaves, which leads to the fragmentation of neighbourhoods into zones, favouring wealthier newcomers, while further marginalising low-income residents. These findings, we argue, challenge the conventional view of urban green spaces as public goods, exposing their co-option for elite-driven aesthetic and commercial purposes. In sum, we offer insights for future urban sustainability initiatives and environmental agendas in African cities, contributing to broader debates on urban green space development and contestation.