Title: Investigating Citizen Participation in Infrastructural Transformations: Lamu, Kenya
Author/Institution: E. Gambino – PhD Dissertation, University of Edinburgh Publication Year: 2022
Infrastructures of Development and Dispossession
E. Gambino’s doctoral research explores how citizen participation unfolds within large-scale infrastructure projects in Kenya’s coastal region, focusing on Lamu—a UNESCO World Heritage site transformed by port, energy, and transport megaprojects. The dissertation situates participation within broader struggles over heritage, land, and belonging, arguing that infrastructure in Lamu functions simultaneously as a promise of progress and an instrument of exclusion. Gambino shows that while official rhetoric emphasizes inclusion and consultation, the realities of participation remain uneven, selective, and shaped by power asymmetries between the state, investors, and local communities. Ethnographic and Spatial Methodology Employing multi-scalar ethnography, Gambino integrates interviews, participatory mapping, and document analysis to trace how Lamu’s residents engage—or are excluded—from decision-making spaces around port expansion, coal-plant planning, and tourism infrastructure. The research captures how citizens mobilize alternative forums of voice: community hearings, environmental-impact reviews, and protest networks that challenge the formal limits of state-sanctioned participation. By following these grassroots practices, the dissertation reveals how participation itself becomes a terrain of political negotiation, where notions of citizenship, heritage, and development are constantly redefined.
Implications for Governance, Justice, and the Social License to Operate
Gambino concludes that participatory mechanisms in Lamu often legitimize state and corporate agendas rather than redistribute decision-making power. Yet, they also open spaces for local contestation and the re-articulation of rights. The study demonstrates that the social license to operate in infrastructure development cannot be reduced to formal compliance—it depends on how genuinely participation translates into shared authority and accountability. For policymakers, Gambino’s findings highlight the need to rethink participation not as a procedural checkbox but as an ongoing dialogue between governance, community agency, and spatial justice, especially in heritage-sensitive and ecologically fragile territories like Lamu.