Trading Places by Napier, Mark

ISBN: 9781920489991

African Minds, 01 January 2013

Paperback, 144 pages

Trading Places is about urban land markets in African
cities. It explores how local practice, land governance and markets
interact to shape the ways that people at society's margins access land
to build their livelihoods.

The authors argue that the problem is not with markets per se,
but in the unequal ways in which market access is structured. They make
the case for more equal access to urban land markets, not only for
ethical reasons, but because it makes economic sense for growing cities
and towns.

If we are to have any chance of understanding and intervening in
predominantly poor and very unequal African cities, we need to see land
and markets differently. New migrants to the city and communities living
in slums are as much a part of the real estate market as anyone else;
they're just not registered or officially recognised.

Trading Places highlights the land practices of those
living on the city's margins, and explores the nature and character of
their participation in the urban land market.

It details how the urban poor access, hold and trade land in the
city, and how local practices shape the city, and reconfigures how we
understand land markets in rapidly urbanising contexts. Rather than
developing new policies which aim to supply land and housing formally
but with little effect on the scale of the need, it advocates an
alternative approach which recognises the local practices that already
exist in land access and management. In this way, the agency of the poor
is strengthened, and households and communities are better able to
integrate into urban economies.