On the police as infrastructure and managers in the African city

Using the example of Nairobi, this article calls for planning practitioners in, and scholars of, African urban spaces to reflect on the role of the police as infrastructure and managers in cities on the continent. While this function is recognized, to a great extent, in other regions of the globe, I argue that both formal urban practice and scholarship on African cities have not duly accounted for how the police are involved in city processes in ways that far exceed their mandate to ‘serve and protect.’ Such recognitions, I contend, will allow for an urban governance that is not only cognizant of and shaped by the experiences of the majority, but also one that seeks to limit the increasingly normalized and problematic urban functions of the police.