Abstract
This chapter reviews the key historical and political points of the urbanization process in sub-Saharan Africa, including the difficult ‘modernization’ process, promoted first by colonial policies and later by development aid. The distinct characteristics of sub-Saharan cities are then presented, specifically their hybrid rural–urban features, their ‘informal’ development modality, and their relationship with environmental transformation. The second part of the chapter introduces the case of Dar es Salaam as representative of the cities of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as part of the evidence obtained from the questionnaires or extracted from the literature. The city is analyzed with reference to the evolution of peri-urban areas and the challenges in contemporary planning are discussed, as well as some of the constraints on policies and planning approaches adopted in Dar es Salaam and sub-Saharan Africa generally.
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Notes
- 1.
One of the last of this kind of raid was described by Aili Mari Tripp with reference to the 1983 Nguvu Kazi (power labour) campaign in Dar es Salaam. The state tried to define a large number of the city’s inhabitants as “unproductive” (including shoe shiners and women who could not officially be classified as married). This vision has never been accepted as “legitimate” by the population, rather it is considered “intended purely to relegate even more economic activities to the realm of the illegal until, as was typical, the authorities got tired and abandoned the campaign” (Freund 2007: 149).
- 2.
Informal development implicates the absence of infrastructure and services, and pushes people to search for alternative and diversified options for resource provisioning.
- 3.
“Conventional urban planning has favoured a centrifugal view inadequate for addressing the characteristics of the interface’s ‘patchwork’ structure” (Allen 2003: 137).
- 4.
One example of this approach is defined in the literature as the ‘urban bio-region’ (Atkinson 1992).
- 5.
The ‘informal sector’ formula was introduced into urban studies by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the 1970s. According to the ILO, the formal sector consists of large-scale enterprises that have a certain amount of capital at their disposal, while the informal sector is composed of autonomous workers and primarily provides livelihoods to the new inhabitants of the city. One of the most widely used classifications derives from the ILO report on Kenya, where the informal sector is characterized by easy access to local resources, family owned businesses, small-scale activities, unregulated competencies acquired outside the formal education system, and competing markets (ILO 1972). The ILO studies have highlighted the poverty of these activities, and their importance to the informal sector in terms of job and income creation (Sethuraman 1981, in Hansen/Vaa 2002: 10).
- 6.
To reword a term coined by Brenner (2004), these too are ‘state spaces’ (Roy 2009: 826).
- 7.
Changes in rainfall patterns, for example, may represent an advantage in some cases, because it allows for an increase in the number of possible cultivation cycles over the course of a year, and facilitates agriculture in urban areas with temporary modalities.
- 8.
Source: National Bureau of Statistics, TZ, at: http://www.nbs.go.tz/.
- 9.
The Kariakoo neighbourhood, despite having been transformed in recent years by the introduction of tall buildings, is still today a place of exchange with and between Africans. The city centre (Mijini), on the other hand, is where the financial and commercial institutions owned by non-Africans and government officials are located (Brennan et al. 2007: 4).
- 10.
In Swahili, Ujamaa means ‘extended family’. According to this principle, which was at the basis of Nyerere’s socialist policies, a person becomes what they are through other people and the community.
- 11.
A majority of the state-owned buses have been substituted with small minivans (daladala), which are privately managed.
- 12.
Morogoro Road, Bagamoyo Road and Pugu Road are the three managers of transportation towards the north and the west of the city, where the majority of urban growth is occurring. Growth has been limited to the south of the Dar es Salaam port in the Temeke municipality, which is not well connected to the rest of the city.
- 13.
See Land Act 1999 and subsequent legislation.
- 14.
Various strategies are being implemented in order to contain speculation. One strategy includes the planting of drought resistant plants; another entails the construction of small, temporary houses, sometimes consisting of a single room; a final strategy consists of reaching agreements with neighbours in order to protect plots and defend them against the possibility of occupation (Lupala 2002a).
- 15.
In Tanzania, all land belongs to the President, and formal access is regulated by the granting of leasehold titles (33, 66 or 99 years), and customary titles in rural areas.
- 16.
The levels of education are divided as follows: Primary Education (STD I–VII); ordinary level of secondary education (Form I to Form IV); advanced level of secondary education (Form V to Form VI); and university education (Bachelor or Masters degree).
- 17.
Three monthly family income brackets have been identified: from 20 to 150 dollars; from 150 to 300 dollars; and from 450 to 600 USD dollars.
- 18.
For example, several households that live in the Makongo area have been settled there for more than 20 years, benefitting from government incentives to occupy areas that are still in their natural state and to promote environmental upkeep and management in those areas.
- 19.
It bears mentioning that Kawe is located in proximity to two main city roads: Bagamoyo Road and Old Bagamoyo Road, which are fundamental for both internal transportation and for extra-urban and interregional movement.
- 20.
A formalization program for economic activities and the use and occupation of land is also present in Tanzania (MKURABITA), which is oriented to defining the areas to formalize, informing and educating citizens and city leaders in order to promote the process, defining regularization schemes that must be approved by governing authorities, and surveying and registering lots for the concession of occupation certificates. This process is not favoured by those who continue to buy, sell, and use land in an informal way (see Chap. 5).
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Ricci, L. (2016). Interpreting the Sub-Saharan City: Approaches for Urban Development. In: Reinterpreting Sub-Saharan Cities through the Concept of Adaptive Capacity. SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27126-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27126-2_3
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