Planning instruments and practices in adjacent areas to the city centre: Maputo's case study

The urban population’s increase is at pace with the rapid urbanisation of developing countries and the global neoliberal hegemony, a combination that reflects itself in the peri-urban expansion, densification, and the rise of social and spatial inequalities (Davis, 2006).

In Maputo, planning instruments and practices seem unable to counter the existent duality between the urbanised city centre and the peri-urban areas, semi-urbanised, where most people live. By the end of the 1980s,  the opening up to the market economy is accompanied by the State’s withdrawal, along with the privatisation of urban services, the appearance of an urban land market (albeit land was nationalized in early independence years) and the adoption of urban management frameworks of neoliberal inclination (Raposo, 2007). The city centre is valued and progressively rehabilitated, causing adjacent areas to be under intense real estate pressure, thus driving the urban poor away from the centre, either due to market pressure, either by choice.

In order to unpack the operative planning instruments and practices used in these adjacent areas, two paradigmatic interventions will be approached as case studies: Maxaquene and Polana Caniço. The aim is to analyse the role of the producers of space – herein understood as a product of the social and capital realms, in line with Lefebvre (1974) and Harvey (2001) – and to understand in what measure do these interventions reveal a more significant socio-spatial (in)justice.

References:

Davis, Mike (2006) – Planet of Slums. London, New York: Verso.

Lefebvre, Henri (1974) – La production de l’espace. Paris: Éditions Anthropos.

Harvey, David (2001) – Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. New York: Routledge.

Raposo, Isabel (2007) – "Instrumentos e práticas de planeamento e gestão dos bairros peri-urbanos de Luanda e Maputo". In Oppenheimer, Jochen and Raposo, Isabel (coords.) - Subúrbios Luanda e Maputo. Lisboa: Edições Colibri, p.219-246.