The Production of an African hybrid city @AAG
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American Association of Geographer Annual Meeting: San Francisco 2016. 29 March - 2 April 2016
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The Production of an African hybrid city @AAG
- 1. THE PRODUCTION OF AN AFRICAN HYBRID CITY Marta Pucciarelli, Sara Vannini & Lorenzo Cantoni Università della Svizzera italiana AAG Annual Meeting - San Francisco - 1 April 2016
- 3. PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH THE DIGITAL BIRTH OF AN AFRICAN CITY 1. To explore the processes through which the digital city is produced (whose voices, which origin, spatial and temporal evolution) 2. To explore the (mis)alignment between digital and physical representation (activities, territory and sense) 3. To highlight if and how the digital city influencing the physical space
- 5. GOAL OF THIS PRESENTATION • to explore the mis(alignement) between the digital and the physical city’s landmarks and points of interests • to evaluate the influence of digital city over the physical one
- 6. 4529 socio- economic activites 513 online presence = 11,37% D I G I T A L LOCAL P H Y S I C A L 45 interviews 216 landmarks elicitation 149 accomodations 1090 reviews 9 things to do 63 reviews 130 questionnaires 274 landmarks reported DATA COLLECTION FOREIGNERS
- 7. ONLINE URBAN LANDMARKS 118 neighbourhood s 36 present online activities 2 neighbourhood s represent 50.3% of the whole online presence of the city
- 8. OFFLINE URBAN LANDMARKS • 118 neighbourhoods • 31 have been quoted as local landmarks
- 9. OFFLINE URBAN LANDMARKS • Higher representation of popular neighborhoods • Limited mobility of locals throughout the city • Nodes for of the city • Variety of activities and practices related to the landmarks
- 12. ONLINE TOURISTIC LANDMARKS • 118 neighbourhoods • 25 present touristic landmarks (hotel/things to do) • 13 neighborhoods have actually received reviews • 2 neighbourhoods show 73.4% of the whole foreigners activities
- 13. OFFLINE TOURISTIC LANDMARKS 118 neighbourhoods 19 have been visited and considered as landmarks thought the city
- 14. TOURSITIC LANDMARKS (ONLINE VS OFFLINE)
- 16. HOW THE DIGITAL IS INFLUENCING THE PHYSICAL? • The African hybrid city seems at its early stage of existence. Its digital presence is nowadays mainly addressed to (and influencing) an international public that travels to or lives in Douala, rather than locals, who might (not) access online information. • the hybrid city seems to be co-created mostly for and by the interactions that foreigners have with the digital city. • future research could analyze this phenomena longitudinally (in time) , to see how it develops
Editor's Notes
- This picture shows where information is produced, highlighting a stricking contrast between the globa north and the global south. Available information about developing countries is still limited and biased, generating uneven representations of the world [1,3,4,17]. The digital divide and the limited access to information influence also the representation of cities all over the world, along with the lack of available online content make it difficult to create and disseminate background knowledge about “invisible” places, and to break down false ideas, stereotypes and blurring images. Digital information is influencing our reality, not just the perception, but also our movements, the way we travel around the world, how we understand an we interact with the space, the way we know and receive news about the world. ICT4D scolars hav extensively discussed this digital divide. They have outlined causes and barriers that limits the digital inclusion of developing countries in the the information society. Those barriers incluse deficiencies in accessing : physical (technological infrastructure), digital (content and materials made available online), human (skills, especially literacy), and social (the social and institutional infrastructure that supports usage of ICTs). This view is clearly supported also by the studies and theories of mark graham related to conntectivies and the critical position by tim unwin, accoridng to which icts are increasing rather that levearagin the digital divide.
- to focus on the online visibility of an African city (Douala, Cameroun) to go in depth to the online presence evolution of developing countries To look at developing countries participation and voice in the online environment/context
- My resaerch is focused on a very specific case study. A Sub Saharan african city. The city of Douala. Douala is the largest city of Cameroun, it is considered the economic and commercial capital, is the city where all people from the country converge in search of work. Since the indipendence it is in continous orizontal expansion due to the presence of its harbour, which is at the same time one of the most important of the whle central africa. Douala is a vibrant city. I have been working there for 5 years, on differnet projects, and also from a cultrual and artistic perspective is a city which is offering many news insight and experience related to the creative urbanization processes. From a communication perspective I have been fascinated by understanding what actually access to information means in a city like douala, in an african city, In previous studies I have explored what access to information means in an african urban contexts, highlighting the predominance of orality over the written medium, but at the same time a a clear shift from the oral to the digital tradition of providing access to information without passing though the printed medium. I have highlighted as well the role of private institutions over the public sectors in producing information within and about the city, but then I decided to focus on how information has been produced over the time, how online available information is aligned or misaligned with the perception that locals and foreigners have of the city and how this available information is influencint the perception they have on Douala.
- More specifically it focuses on the online presence of douala urban and toursitic landmarks as perceived by locals and foreigners, both online and 'off-line', and it compares the two groups' conceptualizations with what appears online, in the digital world.
- the data collection process includes an online research and data from collected during a fieldwork in douala cunducted in december 2013. 1. Digital+Local: Online URBAN landmarks Concentrazione attività che dispongono di sito internet in un quartiere Source: douala zoom (written by locals) OK Target: locals The data collection process considers all Douala’s socio-economic activities which are officially listed in the municipality register. The only formal, printed and publicly available register that classifies socio-economical activities into categories is Douala Zoom. Douala Zoom (2010-2011) is a sort of yellow pages directory, which provides details of every socio-economic activity, including its name, telephone number, address, email,, and position on the neighbourhoods’ map. Douala Zoom is redacted in the two official languages of Cameroon, French and English, even if most of the analysed website used French as primary language. The online presence of Douala’s activities was checked from May 2014 to July 2014 by typing keywords such as the name of the activity, the neighbourhood and the city (e.g.: Sodepa, Bonendale, Douala) in the Google search engine on three different national localizations of it in order to very potential difference in Google rank results: Cameroon (google.cm), France (google.fr), and Italy (google.it). It has been assumed that, if available, the website of an activity would appear on the first page of Google results. Also Facebook pages and groups have been registered as relevant online presences. 2. Digital+Foreigners: Online TOURISTIC landmarks (hotel+things to do based on the number of reviews they have) Source: trip advisor (written by foreigners) OK Target: tourists 3. Physical + Local: URBAN landmarks (most important things to fix while moving throughout douala) Source: Locals (chief of neighbourhoods, political and institutional authorities) Target: Locals 4. Physical + Foreigners: TOURISTIC landmarks (points of interests/their landmarks throughout the city) Source: foreigners (tourists and expatriates) Target: tourists
- This map shows the online presence of formal activities. only 36 out 53 neighbourhoods – 30.5% of the total number of neighbourhoods (118)– show an online presence. From this map emerges clearly a digital divide between costal and richer areas of the city and inner poor neighbourhoods. The darker areas correspond to the most prestigious neighbourhoods of Douala, where most of the socio-economic activities are concentrated. The two neighbourhoods represented in very dark green and dark green (Akwa and Bonanjo) are the commercial and administrative centers of the city neighbourhoods. they register the highest online presence, which corresponds to 50.3% of the whole online presence of the city of Douala . In bright green we find 6 neighbourhoods characterized by less than 100 to 30 online activities: 3 of them are very prestigious are all residential areas, two of them (the peripherical Bonaberi after the river, and Bassa on the east side of the city) are industrial hubs, while the last one is the less prestigious residencial area, but considered the hearth of douala social life. The neighbourhoods in light green are characterized by a range of 4 to 20 online activities. They are very popular settlements, characterized by simple architecture and a lack of basic public services such as water, electricity and sewers, except for Maképé (at the north of the map) and the areas of the airport (Aereoport) and of the harbor (Zone Portuaire). However, the most important arterial roads of the city pass across these neighbourhoods. Finally in yellow, 18 neighbourhoods feature from one to three online activities, which just include the categories Banks and insurances, Industrial production and distribution, and Education. They are informal settlement, The invisible neighbourhoods of the city are shown in pure white (Fig. 2), with no business having an online presence. These neighbourhoods can be considered as no-zones, characterized by a lack of public services and infrastructures.
- As we can seen the digitial douala rpresented on the previous map shows more neighbourhoods compared to the areas of the city which are considered important from locals. Costal neighbourhood cannot pass unnoticed as they offer the most important services. They are the most important urban lanmark for locals as it is there that administrative activites and most of commercial business are located. However this maps present relevant differences between the map of online urban landmarks.
- Two popular neighbourhoods clearly emerged respect the online representation of douala “Deido” has been quoted the same times (32 times) of the Akwa neighbourhood. “New Bell” has been quoted more times than the administrative center of “Bonanjo” 2. In yellow you can seen the landmarks which have been quoted from 1 to 3 times by locals. This can be related to the fact that the mobility of locals still remains between the neighbourhoods where they actually live. Often people interviewed considers their neighbourhood as the center of the city and they difficulty go out from there made exception to accomplish very administrative issues. 3. There are highlight two very important nodes of the city (the most important nodes for mobility), from which one anyone has to pass when go out from their districts: Rondpoint Deido Carrefour Ndokoti 4. Landmarks elicited by locals depict differnet kind of activites/practices of the city strictly related to the landmarks (which ar enot included in the digital douala map): Local/informal Markets (30): The importance of the city river in the imaginary of locals: Wouri’s landmarks (24) Schools (15): Football (4): Bakeries Cimiteries Churches
- Similarity can be found when it comes to: Commercial areas (Akwa) Industrial areas (bonaberi and bassa)
- limited convergence between urban landmarks and visible neighbourhoods. 1. The digitial douala shows more neighbourhoods compared to the areas of the city which are considered important from locals. 2. This indicate that many business activies are located there and shows an online presence. However those activates may not be of interest for locals (as they do not access to them) in particular in areas related to the airports (or in bonanjo, many online activites are represented by international embassies), or the recent urbanized areas at the north of the city, where just the upper class of the society lives (they are residential well-furnished areas).
- It is not surprizing that the map representing visitors points of interests include just few neighbourhoods of the city, which are of course the most prestigious and furnished of basic services. A total of 25 neighbourhoods are quoted on tripadvisors. However just 13 of them have been actually visited and reviewed by foreigners. The map shows the neighbourhoods represented on trip advisor which indicate a precise geogrpahical position (at least the address of the hotel, which have been further checked on google map). Sometimes hotels decleared to be located on a wide neighbourhood without indication about where the activities is actiually located. The color of the neighbourhoos represent the number of reviewes which have beeen writted about the hotel of the point of interested located inside the neighbourhood. Two neighbourhoods count alone 529+203 reviews (73,4%) Analisi: I quartieri visitati principalmente dagli stranieri sono quelli costieri e quelli adiacenti all’aeroporto (i due piu a est). Interessante che i quartieri vicino all’aeroporto dispongono di un solo hotel, ma sono stati recensiti piu volte. Dunque il loro peso è maggiore rispetto ad altri quartieri nonstante dispongano di un solo landmark di interesse. I quartieri a nord sono quartieri che si sono urbanizzati di recente e che dunque dispongono di strade asfaltate e accesso a servizi di base (fognature, acqua, eletrricità)
- We have asked 130 touristi in Douala to indicate which are they main landmarks throughout the city. We have marked tham according to the frequency they have been quoted and grouped them for neighbourhood. Foreigners movements expands out the digital douala shown by trip advisors indications. Here the neighbourhoods visualized are more compared to the previous map
- However foreigners access just to few areas of the city and even less information about them Gli stanieri accedono solo ad una porzione minima di informazioni sulla città Ne sono sicuramente influenzati. Pochissimo di loro (in giallo = meno di 3) ma è positivo che non pare si limitino a visitare solo i posti “raccomandati” ma vanno oltre. Seppure solo pochi di loro tentano di espandersi oltre. Cio è dovuto principalmente a motivi di sicurezza. La città è violenta, i motivi elencati, per quanto riguarda i quariteri che prefirscono evitare Sono: Insecuritydangerous 39 advise against/bad stories 6 proximity and pesipurant night club/prostitution 2 banditism/vandalism/crminality 30 circulation 7 to much people (lack of social control) 3 insalubrity 7 noises 1 no light around 3 urban disorder/incivism 3
- the touristic points of interest can be easily overlaid with the visible Douala. With few exceptions, the foreigners’ paths in Douala can be projected on the digital representation of the city. The information produced and addressed to foreigneirs is clearly influencing their movement throught the city. Foreigners are those who mostly access the internet and use it to get inform about the city. However they use just specific communication tools.
- The information produced and addressed to foreigneirs is clearly influencing their movement throught the city. Foreigners are those who mostly access the internet and use it to get inform about the city. However they use just specific communication tools. The African hybrid in city seems at its early stage of existence. Its digital presence is nowadays mainly addressed to (and influencing) an international public that travels to or lives Douala, rather than locals, who might (not) access online information. the hybrid city seems to be co-created mostly for and by the interactions that foreigners have with the digital city. future research could analyze this phenomena longitudinally (in time) , to see how it develops