Grounding infrastructure: community ownership of an international cooperation project in Kibera, Nairobi
Name
RPPE_A_2613119_O.pdf
Size
2.45 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
668fa67f4a3a138a2ca698ad1ce89166
Author(s)
Williams, Sarah
Carolini, Gabriella
Date Issued
February 6, 2026
Journal
Planning Perspectives
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Citation
Williams, S., & Carolini, G. Y. (2026). Grounding infrastructure: community ownership of an international cooperation project in Kibera, Nairobi. Planning Perspectives, 1–18.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
International infrastructure projects are deeply ensconced in debates about power, intentions, and imaginaries of progress that also stir debate about what it means to decolonize international relations and projects that nominally build improvements in low-income environments. Traditional prioritization of technical expertise, the criticality of contextual knowledge, and the dynamics of uneven partnerships involved are all central elements of these pronounced tensions in the practice of international infrastructure development. This paper instead describes an international infrastructure project that is centred on community stewardship and co-design. The infrastructure project Living Data Hubs (LDH), highlighted here, is a small-scale information and communication technology (ICT) and data management project in the informal settlement of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya. In its development, equal attention was afforded to technical, conceptual, and procedural knowledge production, ensuring that both universal and contextual elements of the ICT infrastructure and data management were explicitly discussed and valued. We argue that international partnerships like LDH that give space to technical, conceptual, and procedural capacity building alike can produce community stewarded infrastructure that is sustainable and puts forward a pathway for diminishing uneven power relations and enhancing community well-being.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2026.2613119
