Right to Addis Abeba in the Age of Glitzy Facelift

Mar 16 , 2025
By Ahmed T. Abdulkadir

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Addis Abeba is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Gleaming high-rises, luxury apartment buildings, and sprawling infrastructure projects now symbolise the city’s rapid renewal. As construction crews move forward with the second phase of the corridor project, the commute for many residents, including my own, has become a daily cruising around excavators and dust clouds. Like the old saying goes, "It gets worse before it gets better."

My shoes bear the proof, requiring frequent visits to shoeshine boys.

At these shoeshine corners, I often find myself chatting with the young men diligently working on footwear. More often than not, these conversations consistently reveal an underlying anxiety. These young men anticipate the corridor project inevitably reaching their corners of the city, forcing them to relocate. Yet, again. Many have already experienced displacement from bustling hubs like Piassa and Bole areas, now attempting to establish themselves in less lucrative neighborhoods.

Indeed, the sparkling new streets such as on Africa Avenue (Bole Road) are impressively clean, reducing the demand for shoeshines. But, the disappearance of these boys from such prominent streets should not be about cleaner pavements. It is part of a broader trend. Informal vendors who once filled these streets selling stuff from clothes to electronics have also largely vanished. A stroll down African Avenue reveals a markedly different atmosphere from a few years ago. Tidy, posh, and devoid of the vibrant informal economy that once animated the area.

I begin to wonder whether these people have no place in the new urban vision or if the city's ambitious projects do not have room for them.

The "right to the city," a concept articulated by French sociologist Henri Lefebvre in 1968, offers a helpful lens through which to view this issue. Lefebvre proposed that cities should not merely be spaces for economic activities and construction. They are social goods created collectively by all who inhabit them. Urban residents, he argued, should have a say in shaping their environment.

Yet, Addis Abeba’s current urban renewal process increasingly favours those who can afford to remain, turning this right into a privilege reserved for the well-to-do.

Consider the La Gare project, celebrated as a sign of progress and modernity. It came at a huge human cost, demolishing older neighborhoods home to longstanding communities to make way for luxury housing and commercial developments. Those displaced received compensation, yet their sense of belonging and connection to their lifelong neighborhoods has been irretrievably lost. They have become strangers in a city they once knew intimately.

This phenomenon is repeated across the city, particularly in Piassa, where removing small businesses and historic neighborhoods has paved the way for stylish boutiques and cafes that primarily cater to affluent patrons. In the process, affordable eateries, though modest and sometimes dilapidated, have vanished. These small, informal establishments once served meals to countless workers. Likewise, vibrant local markets that were both economic hubs and essential community spaces have given way to sleek and sanitised commercial areas that feel distant from the daily realities of average residents.

Certainly, there are undeniable benefits to some of these changes. The new parks and walkways emerging across the city have quickly become popular public spaces. Hundreds of families flock to places like Adwa Park in Piassa on weekends, where dancing fountains and green landscapes offer pleasant settings for relaxation and recreation. Residents from all walks of life genuinely enjoy these parks.

However, cities cannot simply be treated as open-air museums or picturesque backdrops for photo opportunities. They should remain spaces for everyday life: complex, messy, and inclusive. While parks may be open to everyone, the upscale developments surrounding them are symbols of exclusivity, admired but rarely accessible to the broader public.

Moreover, the "right to the city" includes the right to participate meaningfully in urban planning decisions. In Addis Abeba, however, public engagement in such processes remains minimal. Major developments often appear as completed facts, leaving little room for genuine community input. Urban governance has increasingly become a dialogue between policymakers, developers, and investors rather than residents. As a result, neighborhoods transform—or vanish—without the voices of those most affected.

Addis Abeba’s experience is hardly unique. From Johannesburg to Istanbul, urban renewal projects worldwide spark heated debates about displacement, housing rights, and democratic participation. The common justification for such projects is modernisation, with developers and policymakers minimising or overlooking the social consequences.

Yet, exploring the city’s outskirts reveals neighborhoods untouched by urban renewal's promises—places brimming with informal traders, street vendors, shoeshines, and a bustling informal economy. Walking through these lively, noisy areas might evoke nostalgia for the calmness and cleanliness of the newly renewed streets, but it also highlights what is at stake. The right to the city extends beyond tidy, attractive public spaces. It means ensuring residents from every socioeconomic level can shape, use, and benefit from their urban environment.

Ultimately, a genuinely inclusive urban future for Addis Abeba demands adopting the right to the city as a central guiding principle. This approach means prioritising the voices and experiences of residents, informal workers, and small businesses in urban development decisions. It means recognising and mitigating displacement and social exclusion. Above all, it requires viewing the city not merely as a physical space to be redesigned but as a shared social resource where the right to belong does not depend solely on one's economic means.

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PUBLISHED ON Mar 16, 2025 [ VOL 25 , NO 1298]

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