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4 - Informal Settlements and Pro-poor Urban Planning in African Cities

The Luanda Socio-historical Narrative

from Part I - Understanding Sustainable Urban Planning in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2023

By
Seth Asare Okyere ,
Louis Kusi Frimpong ,
Stephen Kofi Diko ,
Stephen Leonard Mensah  and
Euridice Lurdes Jorge Pedrosa
Edited by
Patrick Brandful Cobbinah  and
Eric Gaisie
Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Eric Gaisie
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Summary

Informal settlements are projected to host future increases in Africa’s urban population growth. This has led to calls within African urban scholarship and practice for a capable and enabled urban planning response that promotes inclusive and sustainable principles in urban planning and management. Tracing the scholarship on Angola, this chapter reviews the literature on the consolidation of informal settlements in Luanda to shed insights into this intractable challenge of urban planning and its socio-political and historical dimensions to foreground the imperative to reimagine the urban planning regime. It highlights post-colonial planning ambivalence, a centralised, and project-oriented urban planning approach to the challenge of informal settlements. The chapter submits that reimagining urban planning in Luanda, and African cities in general, demands a forward-looking planning praxis that de-centres urban planning from state control and builds local institutional capacity to integrate social equity, local participation, empowerment and experimentation within a pro-poor urban planning framework.

Keywords

urban planninginformal settlementspro-poor planningurbanisationLuanda
Type
Chapter
Information
Reimagining Urban Planning in Africa , pp. 52 - 69
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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