Urban Modernization through the Minibus Window in Yopougon (Abidjan): The Impacts of New Infrastructure on Urban Life

This article investigates the impacts of initiating a new infrastructural order on urban lives associated with artisanal transport in Abidjan. It aims to understand the implications of restructuring a network of actors and locations that collectively form more than just an economic sector or urban service, but a milieu of anchorage and circulation for precarious urban lives. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of milieu, the article examines a governmental technique of intervening in a specific space to influence existing circulations (of norms, people, and objects). This approach raises two key research questions: Under what conditions does an institutional norm compete with, influence, or render invisible existing norms within a milieu? What impacts are felt at a distance, what balances are disrupted, what is left aside, and at what scales, when a new infrastructural order infiltrates an existing milieu? To address these questions, we conducted a qualitative field survey in April 2023, focusing on a small gbaka (minibus) line in the popular commune of Yopougon. Since January 2022, AMUGA has been experimenting with implementing minute stops on this line to address perceived disorderly practices in anticipation of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Yopougon-Bingerville. The ongoing changes make this line a unique case study of governance attempts from a distance as a new infrastructural order integrates into an existing environment.