Informal Settlements and Pro-poor Urban Planning in African Cities: The Luanda Socio-historical Narrative
Abstract
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.
Publication Title
Reimagining Urban Planning in Africa
Recommended Citation
Okyere, S., Frimpong, L., Diko, S., Mensah, S., & Pedrosa, E. (2023). Informal Settlements and Pro-poor Urban Planning in African Cities: The Luanda Socio-historical Narrative. Reimagining Urban Planning in Africa, 52-69. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009389457.007
