MOBILE URBANITY. Translocal Traders and City in Southern Africa

Piscitelli P. (2018), MOBILE URBANITY. Translocal Traders and City in Southern Africa, Planum Publisher, Roma-Milano | ISBN 9788899237141

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As many translocal and cross-border traders, mukheristas cover thousands of miles every week to supply urban markets, thus feeding themselves, their families and the cities they connect.
After an intensive field work travelling with mukheristas between Maputo (Mozambique) and Johannesburg (South Africa), the author shows the role of complex hybrid practices of trans-local mobility in shaping cities and territories in sub-saharan Africa.
A "research on the road" to reflect on the political relevance of informal mobile practices in troubled urban societies, but also on new theoretical concepts and empirical research approaches.
In a world where change is extremely rapid and new issues emerge unremittingly, 'Mobile urbanity' opens up new ways of thinking the spatial dimensions and the agency embraced in human mobility.

"In a world where change is so rapid and new issues emerge unremittingly, this book contributes to make things even more complex. The research resulting from the in-depth investigation realized along and on the 'in-between' space that the mukheristas travel from Maputo to Johannesburg and to Maputo back again to sell the goods bought in Johannesburg, adds to the multiple facets of the urban space in Africa.
(...)
The entrepreneurial mukheristas who make their living and even prosper by travelling between Maputo and Johannesburg are one specific feature of urbanization in Africa (exactly, the 'mobile urbanity' proposed by the author).
As the book stresses urban mobility 'opens up new ways of thinking the spatial dimensions and the agency embraced in human mobility'. Recognizing the centrality of informality and the complex hybrid practices of trans-local mobility in shaping cities and territories in Africa, though, should not conceal the deep causes of inequality and the 'networked individualism' that lie behind them. In this sense, the book has the great value of opening more questions than giving responses".
[From FOREWORD by Marcello Balbo]

INDEX

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD by Marcello Balbo
• INTRODUCTION: AN EXPERIMENTAL JOURNEY TO NAVIGATE COMPLEXITY THINKING THE MOBILITY - INFORMALITY - URBANITY NEXUS
1. Intersecting Epistemologies on Contemporary Urbanism
2. City-on-the-move
3. Informal, Mobile Urban Modes from Below

• UNDERSTANDING THE SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN CONTEXT
1. The African Urban Transition
2. Linking Mobility, Informality and Urbanization in Africa
3. Translocal Traders between South-Africa and Mozambique

• FOLLOWING MOBILE LIVES-IN-BETWEEN
1. Travelling with Antonia, mukherista between cities
2. The mukhero practice: revelations from the underworld
3. Assembling the 'city of mukheristas' across localities and scales

• LEARNING THE CITY FROM TRANSLOCAL TRADERS
1. Learning from the mukhero practice
2. The Mobile Urbanity of mukheristas
3. Transactional planning for transactional spaces

• LIST OF FIGURES
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
• REFERENCES 

About the Author
Paola Piscitelli holds a PhD in Regional Planning and Public Policies from the University Institute of Architecture of Venice (IUAV).
She has conducted ethnographic research on transnational migration, mobility and urban transformation in Europe and Africa. Curator of research projects for the "Observatory on City and Urban Transformations" of the Feltrinelli Foundation in Milan and adjunct professor of Urban Design for Development at the School of Architecture, Urban Planning and Construction Engineering of the Polytechnic of Milan, she is support committee's member of N-Aerus - Network Association of European Researchers on Urbanization in the South.
Her publications include: Città, sostantivo plurale (with Ilaria Giuliani, Feltrinelli Foundation, 2018), "Feltrinelli Camp. Research and Practices for Urban Futures" (Feltrinelli Foundation, Utopias 66), "8 Research Paths For The City", Feltrinelli Camp 2018 (Feltrinelli Foundation, Utopie 72) and "Changing cities. Temi, competenze, alleanze per le città di domani" (Feltrinelli Foundation, Utopie 66).