The effects of urban growth in Addis Ababa
Hone Mandefro Belaye is a PhD candidate in social and cultural anaylsis in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He is examining developments in housing policy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The city is experiencing a rapid physical transformation as large-scale commercial, residential and infrastructure projects have proliferated there in the last two decades.
“The Ethiopian government’s Integrated Housing Development Program has been clearing slums and building high-rise condominiums in their place, totalling around 300,000 individual units in Addis Ababa alone,” he explains.
Belaye’s work explores how this construction boom and the changes that come with it are affecting neighbourhood relations and peoples’ living spaces.
Using a unique concept called “neighbouring,” he intends to determine how lifestyles — particularly neighbour relations — have been altered by the introduction of taller condominiums into areas that were largely made up of one-storey buildings.
He will be collecting qualitative data on-site in Addis Ababa through interviews, participant observation and focus group discussions.
With important demographic, economic and architectural changes currently under way in Ethiopia, how the country plans the future of its neighbourhoods is a pressing issue.
“Housing is a big topic right now in Ethiopia. More than 80 per cent of houses in Addis Ababa are substandard, and the government is trying to create jobs by supporting the construction of vertical condominium buildings. This will have all kinds of consequences on how we live and relate to each other in the future.”
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