Onditi, Francis2024-08-272024-08-272022-08-22Onditi, F. (2022). Developing “Social Pendulum Theory of Access” to Explain the (Un)changing Urban Geography. In: Baikady, R., Sajid, S., Nadesan, V., Przeperski, J., Islam, M.R., Gao, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_106-1Print ISBN 978-3-030-87624-1 Online ISBN 978-3-030-87624-1https://repository.ru.ac.ke/handle/123456789/564The aim of this chapter is to provide some insights drawn from our experiences theorizing about the access mechanisms in urban slum spaces and, in doing so, to shed some light on the current state of access in the context of a rapidly changing urban demographics. In the last four decades (1989–2019), Nairobi has experienced change from simple settlements of urbanites to a complex galaxy of people competing for ever-shrinking space and the diminishing resources. This change has induced evolution of new coping strategies among residents, including micro-migratory activities along the swing-like patterns in search of livelihoods and identity. This swing-like movements are antithetical to the existing access mechanisms, which tend to rely on fixed residential regime (in situ). In this changing phenomenon, access can no longer be narrowly defined as the “right to benefit from things” or merely “bundle of powers”; rather, it should be framed to accentuate the pendulum-like swings. Hence, our proposed theory of access is based on this pendulumic analogy.enBook chapter