1,720,956 research outputs found
Adapting to Urban Planning Contradictions in Community-Led Initiatives in Growing African Cities: A Case Study of Sinza D, Dar es Salaam
No full textThis study demonstrates how grassroots and extended planners navigate urban governance contradictions by turning conflict into opportunities for learning and collaboration. Using a contested green space project in Sinza D, Dar es Salaam, as a case, it applies Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), expansive learning, and the ChangeLab framework to trace how shifting roles, fractured alliances, and cycles of reflection produced four distinct learning trajectories. After more than a year of mobilisation, a four-month Extended ChangeLab was carried out through a series of structured activities, including resident consultations, negotiation meetings, reflection sessions, and a dissem- ination campaign. These engaged grassroots leaders, a community-established Green Space Committee (GSC), residents, and adjacent actors. Within a Participatory Action Research (PAR) design, the researcher combined facilitation with participant observation while systematically documenting interactions and artefacts such as minutes, maps, and letters. Findings show that documentation, initially fragmented and contested, became a shared artefact that fostered transparency, legitimacy, and accountability, while reshaping relationships and supporting collective decision- making. The study reconceptualises the ChangeLab as a mobile, embedded learning infrastructure suited to hybrid governance contexts where formal authority and informal practices intersect. It advances methodological and practical insights for strengthening participatory urban governance in rapidly growing African cities.VLIR-OU
Leveraging Participatory Mapping to Manage Urban Dynamics in Rapidly Urbanizing Dar es Salaam: A Case Study of Sinza D, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
No full textThis study explores the use of participatory mapping to address urbanisation challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the rapidly growing city of Dar es Salaam. Traditional urban planning often excludes community perspectives, leading to mismatches between formal plans and local realities. Through participatory mapping, including interviews and workshops, this research highlights unplanned housing expansion, green space depletion, and governance gaps. The findings demonstrate that participatory mapping integrates local knowledge with professional tools, fostering inclusivity and sustainable urban development. This study offers actionable insights for resolving land use conflicts and promoting inclusive urban governance in rapidly urbanising contexts.VLIRUO
Transformation of residual open spaces into a green community hub: a case study from Sinza D, Dar es Salaam
No full textRapid urbanisation and incremental housing in Dar es Salaam have depleted urban green spaces, leaving many public areas underutilised or privately appropriated. This study, conducted within the Institutional University Cooperation (IUC) between Ardhi University and Hasselt University, examines university-community collaboration (UCC) as a means of transforming such spaces into community-owned and managed green areas. Drawing on 1 year of participatory action research in Sinza D, the study traces how collaboration among researchers, grassroots leaders, and residents evolved through facilitation, reflection, and trust-building. The findings reveal that effective UCC nurtures grassroots leadership, embodied in extended planners, who are local actors mediating between community aspirations and institutional frameworks. These leaders gain legitimacy and adaptive capacity through co-designed and inclusive processes that transform facilitation into shared governance. The study challenges extractive research models and calls for more context-sensitive, enduring collaborations that strengthen local agency in rapidly urbanising African cities.Funding:
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This research was funded under the joint partnership between Hasselt University (Belgium) and Ardhi University (Tanzania) as part of the Institutional University Cooperation (IUC) programme, supported by VLIR-UOS, grant ID: TZ2022IUC042A104.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Institutional University Cooperation (IUC) programme funded by VLIR-UOS, through the partnership between Hasselt University (Belgium) and Ardhi University (Tanzania). Special thanks are 11 Frontiers in Sustainable Cities frontiersin.orgMajogoro et al. 10.3389/frsc.2025.1700035 extended to the grassroots leaders, members of the GSC, MGL, and residents of Sinza D for their trust, collaboration, and active participation throughout the research process. Their insights, actions, and reflections were central to the learning journey documented in this study
Participatory Retrofitting Through Extended Planners in Tanzanian Urban Areas
Full text linkThe global endeavour to develop inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements is paramount. Land use conflicts in urban areas persist as a critical issue among stakeholders in contemporary urban development discourse. This article examines the effectiveness of local mediation strategies in resolving land use conflicts within East African cities' rapidly expanding metropolitan areas. It focuses explicitly on community-based leaders, referred to as "extended planners," who foster sustainable communities through their involvement in conflict mediation. Unlike municipal authorities, whose responses can be slow, these grassroots leaders promptly engage in mediation efforts, demonstrating their critical role in urban land management. Through an ethnographic approach to data collection and analysis using the cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), this study highlights the significant influence that extended planners have on conflict resolution and the improvement of community welfare. The findings indicate that residents generally report land use conflicts to the Mtaa Government Office, where mediation sessions are conducted. The grassroots leaders, acting as the primary mediators, facilitate these sessions with the conflicting parties and relevant stakeholders, utilising traditional methods and established mediation protocols. The study underscores the diverse roles of different actors in the mediation process, with grassroots (Mtaa) leaders mainly overseeing it. It concludes with a call for empowering these leaders with essential knowledge in urban planning and conflict resolution skills to increase the mediation sessions' effectiveness
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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