The 24-Hour Risk City: A Framework for Thinking About Building Infrastructures of Climate Repair in Nairobi and Karachi

Extreme heat, altered precipitation patterns, and flooding events, exacerbated by climate change, are changing the nature of 24-hour risk cycles faced by low-income neighbourhoods and informal settlements in the urban global South. In cities such as Karachi (Pakistan) and Nairobi (Kenya), climatic changes interact with existing forms of urban violence, generating new and complex landscapes of visible and invisible risks for residents. In this IDS Working Paper, we set out a framework for understanding the dynamic and varied risks that are affecting cities in East Africa and South Asia. We are interested in the complex microgeographies of risk, as they unfold across time, space, and social identity, and their interplay between multiple scales as they cascade and compound vulnerabilities for low-income groups. For example, large-scale infrastructure planning aimed at ameliorating infrastructural degradation within the city may exacerbate harm and risk at the local level, especially for those living in insecure and underserved areas. In this rapidly transforming landscape of risks, how is the wellbeing of vulnerable populations ensured in the everyday context?

In turn, infrastructures of climate repair involve maintenance practices in cities comprising complex interactions between humans, non-humans, and technologies for the purpose of making life tenable. This research project examines these in three low-income and informal settlements of Karachi, and in informal settlements affected by three major transport infrastructures in Nairobi. Through these foci, we explore everyday life on ‘standby’, the nature of ‘small’ agencies as speculative strategy and kinship networks as vital to embodying adaptive techniques. Evoking Tronto’s (2020) ethics of ‘caring for’ rather than ‘caring about’ and Simone’s (2004) conception of bodies as infrastructure, our investigation enables us to explore climate repair and adaptation at the bodily, communal, and city-wide scales. We focus on gendered labour performed in the service of maintaining wellbeing while holding onto the promise of the city.