The movement of people to cities has been a significant trend in the recent history of Africa; in the year 2000, the urban population in Africa superseded the rural. African cities are nonetheless underrepresented and misunderstood in historical scholarship. The predominant narrative of the city and urban life, particularly in the post-colonial context, has been one of impoverishment, social disjuncture, and state failure. My dissertation challenges this metanarrative, highlighting how non-elite Kenyan actors, through their struggles for public parks, playgrounds, and other spaces of leisure, had a stake in urban life and contributed to the production of the city. This dissertation highlights the role of recreation as a governing and community interest that shaped the development of urban policy and land use in Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya’s two largest cities. Through allocation of land for clubs, the state affirmed its authority as an arbitrator of multiple interests and constituencies. During the 1940s and 1950s, the state, viewing African boredom as a cause of social delinquency, promoted the development of new spaces of leisure—social halls, playing fields, and public gardens. Rather than reaffirming the state’s position as the paternalistic guardian of African interests, these spaces were sites of social and cultural negotiation between urban Kenyans and colonial welfare officers. By independence, Kenyans recognized playgrounds, parks, and other recreational amenities as fundamental requisites of city life, connecting them with ideas of propriety, legitimacy, and dignity. My dissertation chronicles the struggles of urban Kenyans for recreational spaces in the midst of competing demands for urban space, extension of state authority, and the social effects of privatization and neoliberalism. My dissertation makes at least three contributions to historical literature. First, it calls attention to the capacity of non-elite actors to shape the physical production of urban environments, challenging the presumed dominance of ruling-class interests and capital. While Africans’ perspectives on land use and environmental practice have been prominent themes in African historiography, it is less understood how Africans contributed to the built environments of cities. I highlight how non-elite Africans’ concerns, interests, and activities shaped the work of urban planners and contributed to the changing physical landscape of the city. Secondly, my work shows how recreation shaped state policy, calling attention to alternative governing concerns of African states, beyond control of capital and resources. Finally, this work calls attention to previously underexplored relationships between matters of leisure and cultural production and the history of built environments in Africa. Rather than distinguishing cultural concerns of sports, dances, and cinema from material struggles over land and housing, my dissertation integrates these issues, highlighting how Africans’ pursuit of leisure shaped—and was shaped by—competing claims for land.
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