11th Urban Space and Social Life: Theory and Practice Sustainable “Glocal” Space and Social Life

June 16 - 19, 2023

Zanzibar University | Zanzibar, Tanzania

Daudi Simon Chanila PhD Candidate, MSW, MPA, PGDLMA, BA, ADSW

Title:

Urban Environment and Juvenile Delinquency in Dar es salaam, Tanzania

Abstract:

Juvenile delinquency is a universal phenomenon in which youth engage in deviant types of behaviour. In this paper, an attempt is made to show how the urban environment contributes to juvenile delinquency in Dar es salaam, Tanzania, and it gives recommendations on how to alleviate the situation. Methodologically this study employed a desk review method, of which various documents related to the urban environment and juvenile delinquency were reviewed. The major findings were: there is a close correlation between urban arrangement and juvenile delinquency, denoted through income disparities in dwelling places where unauthorized activities meet with disapproval and sanctions from authorities; a limited sense of responsibility amongst parents; changing social relationships; abandoning traditional values; failure to accommodate huge populations which give rise to squatter and slum settlements; technological advancements ( mass media and internet); city planning that did not take into account playing grounds and recreation spaces for juveniles. This study concludes that the undue urban environment has impacted on the youth’s behaviour, plunging them into juvenile delinquency. The study recommends that the government and other actors should strive to minimize abject poverty and unemployment through loans to the actual deserving; cities be well arranged; they should set out playgrounds and recreation activities for juveniles; and should create awareness to parents on responsible parenthood.

Keywords: urban, environment, urban environment, juvenile, juvenile delinquency

Faris Ridzuan

Academic Tutor, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore; General Paper and IP English Teaching and Curriculum Specialist, illum.e

Title:

Diversity Fault Lines or Pluralism as Strength: Tracing Singapore’s Paradigm Shifts in Urban Planning and Spaces

Abstract:

Singapore has made huge developmental leaps in a short frame of time, partly due to its urban planning. The visionaries of the founders of independent Singapore created Singapore as a city in a garden, avoiding rampant ghettoisation, building water, electricity and other essential networks, and other essentials to shape Singapore’s structural planning and constant reinvention and improvement to allow the small nation state to shift from survival to thriving. Singapore is also known to have managed its racial/ethnic and religious diversity through urban planning. Singapore’s public housing model has the Ethnic Integration Policy, to reduce ethnic segregation and enclaves. Singapore has also been described by Pew Research Centre as the most religiously diverse nation in the world, and urban planning for religious places are deliberate. The paradigm is that race and religion are fault lines to be managed, lest the previous racial riots happen again. The Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore published research elucidating more fault lines such as xenophobia and LGBTQ plus issues, in a nation dependent on migrant labour and on international markets, and in the context of rising polarised politics along sexuality, culminating in the contestations around the repeal of a law that criminalised homosexual behaviour amongst men. Through an analysis of civil society organisations that champion dialogues both in person and online that facilitate dialogues on diversity, the geographical presence of minoritised groups in advocacy spaces regulated by the government such as Pink Dot which champions the socioaspirational space and grievances of sexual minorities, I argue that the shift from the dominant paradigm in planning Singapore as a diverse city through management of fault lines, are being challenged to view diversity as positive engagement with differences and similarities through dialogue and the promotion of pluralism more as a source of strength rather than a potential liability, and explain the structural, discursive and systemic shifts that enable these contestations to survive, and how it may thrive in the hegemonic contestations of urban planning of diversity.

Keywords: diversity; urban planning: Singapore; pluralism