Camp Urbanisation
The exhibition featured satellite images to show the growth of the four cities over the last 15 years and the development of particular areas where displaced people have settled. All four cities have grown rapidly. For example, the images above show changes in settlement in the north-western outskirts of Mogadishu (between 2012 and 2018). The images below show the development of the State House area in Hargeisa, which has evolved from a camp for returnee refugees in the early 2000s to the built-up ‘slum’ visible today. In general, newcomers to cities often settle in camps established at the city’s outskirts or put up shelters in empty plots or ruined buildings in the city. Inner-city squats attract other in-migrants but also other urban poor who increasingly struggle to manage rising rents. Cities are growing rapidly with respect to both density and size.
Establishing camps at the outskirts of the city, displaced people contribute to spatial expansion and sprawling sub-urbanisation. By clearing bushes and making land habitable, and by contributing to the expansion of urban services and infrastructures (however rudimentary) displaced people add value to the land they settle on. Some camps have developed vibrant local economies. Rising land and real-estate prices, however, make the new settlers vulnerable to evictions by land owners, and the state, who attempt to further develop these plots.
Evictions are particularly prevalent in Mogadishu, where economic growth and reconstruction has led to spiking land and real estate prices. This is also apparent in Baidoa, and even in Bosaaso despite resettlement initiatives. In Hargeisa, although some resettlement schemes have moved people to new villages on the outskirts of the city, some of the largest settlements of the previously displaced and new urban poor (like State House) are still located close to downtown. Interviewees there hope to benefit from further resettlement plans, but details of anticipated schemes have not yet been published by the government.
![Photo: Asha, Mogadishu. Hawa, Mogadshu: "Before [the displaced settled] the land was just bush, but we cleared it. Everyone from the town now wants his land back. Initially the land was not a place you could stay on, it was us who made it valuable. The house owners now have neighbors like us, but others will follow [and build here too] like this person from the town did. I don’t know their clans, but it all depends on the money they have [not with the clan].The mosques also came recently, like the new houses. People who bought the land cheaply a long time ago now build on one side a mosque and a madrasa where kids learn the Holy Qur’an, and then on the other side their house. Everyone is using the mosque. For me the development is a good thing, but when the displaced are told to move from the place from where they were staying because of the value of the land, it is also painful. It is hard to move to another place when you don’t have the resources to migrate, and we feel bad. When you are told to migrate, they also tell you to settle on another land where the owner is yet to arrive. As an IDP, you can now settle there or you can go and move to another area."](https://securityonthemove.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Asha-Mogadishu.jpg)
The regulation of property is central for the ways in which cities are growing. Property regimes determine practices of inclusion and exclusion, and claims to property are often articulated violently, especially so in Mogadishu. Many displaced who try to settle in cities face cycles of evictions or other forms of displacement. Enforced mobility, therefore, remains the often only option of a rising number of poor to manage their survival.