Resumen de Driving Forces of Citizen Participation in Urban Development Practice in Harare, Zimbabwe
Abraham R. Matamanda, Queen L. Chinozvina
Citizen participation enhances urban development by contributing to the attainment of inclusive, sustainable and resilience cities. However, citizen participation is not a given because cities are arenas of conflict where different stakeholders claim their right to the city citizen participation is not a given in cities. We argue that citizen participation is constructed and influenced by multiple factors that benefit the elites while disadvantaging the poor. Three case studies (informal settlers in Hopley Farm Settlement, street vendors at Coca Cola vending site and civil society group at Monavale Vlei) in Harare, Zimbabwe were used to determine the drivers of citizen participation in urban development. Data were collected through primary and secondary data sources that include questionnaires, interviews with selected city officials and document analysis. NVivo 12 Pro enabled the thematic and content analysis of the secondary data and the interviews while Kobo data collector was used to aid the data collection and analysis from the questionnaires. The findings reveal that the legislation provide for limited ‘citizen’ participation in urban development, especially for the poor due to the construction of citizenship. Moreover, politicians also manipulate the participation process through clientism and at times democratic channels were not considered while the lack of civic culture to participate among the citizens has also been noted. We conclude that the citizens’ ability and motive to participate tends to be limited, and at times based on classism as evident from the case of Monavale Vlei.
