1st Edition

Contested Airport Land Social-Spatial Transformation and Environmental Injustice in Asia and Africa

176 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

176 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

176 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Contested Airport Land draws attention to the accelerating airport development in the Global South. Empirical studies provide nuanced analysis of socioeconomic, administrative, and political dynamics on the land beyond the airport grounds, such as the project area of greenfield development, the airport city, or land resources reserved for future airport expansion. The authors in this book... Read more

List of figures

List of contributors

Foreword by Rose Bridger

Chapter 1: Contested airport lands in the Global South

Sneha Sharma, Irit Ittner, Isaac Khambule, Sara Mingorría, and Hanna Geschewski

Chapter 2: ‘By now, it feels more like a rumour ’: Navigating the suspended presents and the economy of anticipation for Nepal´s Second International Airport

Hanna Geschewki

Chapter 3: The rise of infrastructure-induced Human–Elephant Conflict in Sri Lanka: A case study of Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport

Menusha Gunasekara and Dishani Senaratne

Chapter 4: A critical review of airport land contestations in India

Sneha Sharma

Chapter 5: Aerotropolis at what cost, to whom? An analysis of the social and economic impacts of the Yogyakarta International Airport, Indonesia

Ellen Putri Edita

Chapter 6: The popular appropriation of the airport reserve in Abidjan, Côte d´Ivoire, and strategies to resist displacement

Irit Ittner

Chapter 7: The Durban Aerotropolis. Emerging and underlying territorial contestations in South Africa

Isaac Khambule 

Chapter 8: Competing aspirations and contestations at the Isiolo International Airport, Kenya

Evelyne Atieno Owino and Clifford Collins Omondi Okwany

Index

Biography

Irit Ittner is working as a senior researcher in the Programme Environmental Governance at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability in Bonn. Her research interests include unplanned urbanisation, land tenure, social navigation, and processes of transformation in coastal West African and European cities. Irit published on the airport land in Abidjan in Afrika Focus (2021), Urban Forum (2022), and Afrique Contemporaine (2023).

Sneha Sharma works as a junior project manager at the ICON Institut in Cologne after having conducted research at the University of Bonn (2015–2022). Her lived experiences growing up in the busy streets of Kolkata, India, shaped her interest in urban sociology and ethnographic methods. Sneha published Waste(d) collectors: Politics of urban exclusion in India (2022). Her work on spatial transformation, affordable housing, and urban renewal in the airport villages of Mumbai were published in Geoforum (2023).

Isaac Khambule is a professor of political economy at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He was previously an associate professor of political economy at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, where he taught decision-making in public institutions and worked as a senior lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Isaac´s research interest is in the relationship between the state, institutions, and development, with a particular focus on the role of the state in economic development and the entrepreneurial state.

Hanna Geschewski is a doctoral researcher in Human Geography at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) and the University of Bergen in Norway. Her research focuses on the socio-ecological dimensions of displacement and resettlement in South Asia, with a particular interest in human-land relations. Her work on the unfinished airport project in Nijgadh, Nepal, co-authored with M. Islar, was published in the Journal of Political Ecology (2022).