Occupation of public spaces in Kinshasa. The Kinois and the transmutation of wet farmlands in the Malebo Pool in Kingabwa.

The occupation or appropriation of public space, often in violation of official standards, is generalizing in Congolese cities, particularly in Kinshasa where it manifests itself simultaneously through issues of and access to land, and as an environmental problem with regard to the ecosystems it affects, in short an urban planning problem. This can be regarded as one of the contemporary characteristics of urbanization in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The wetlands, from the north to the south, from the east to the west, and in particular those of the Malebo Pool in Kingabwa, spaces destined for agricultural activities for the provisioning of urbanites in terms of market gardening (“maraîchage”) and fishing products, are not left behind. This prompts us, by means of a thorough scientific analysis, to engage in a debate on the meaning of public spaces, and the gaps between official standards and daily practices. This study should also focus on the impact of the latter as well as its rationality in a modern city in this era of the march towards sustainable cities, where the preservation of the functions of certain spaces is a must.  The objective here is to understand the dynamic of land appropriation, the related systems of thought and its incidence in Kingabwa and Kinshasa, but also its rationality or its irrationality. This will not be possible without the help of multiple qualitative research techniques such as immersion, direct observation, unstructured interviews and semi-structured interviews, and so on. The research will concern itself on a theoretical level with the literature on the production of land concerning public spaces in urban environments, particularly the wetlands in Kinshasa and in various other places across Africa (e.g. by Filip De Boeck, An Ansoms, Inge Wagemakers, Michael Madison Walker and Jude Murison), the literature on urban sustainability and rationality by Max Weber and Julien Damon, and finally, the literature on the conceptualization of the public and the private by Hannah Arendt.