Isabel Raposo
Abstract
Living conditions in the peri-urban areas of Luanda and Maputo have been determined by a set of factors ranging from strong population growth, both natural and caused by the influx of people fleeing war, to economic, social and human hardship caused by military conflicts and to substantial political and economic transformations.
This paper seeks to assess the impact of those factors upon the urban planning and management instruments and practices in these areas. Special emphasis is placed upon the integration, participation and interrelation mechanisms of the various public, private and civil society actors involved in the peri-urban planning process. Our understanding of these processes includes the definition of objectives and instruments, the elaboration of work-plans and action programmes as well as the actual implementation, management, monitoring and evaluation of projects and programmes.
As a result of the emergence of multiparty political systems and of the implementation of increasingly neo-liberal economic policies implying the reduction of the role of the State, and due to the lack of local authorities' planning capacities, non-governmental actors have come to play an increasingly important and diversified role in addressing the ever more complex problems of the peri-urban areas: local leaders and associations, religious congregations, NGO, political parties and private actors have been active in these areas.
However, initiatives promoted by civil society organisations have usually been of a palliative, non-systematic nature, whereas those undertaken by private actors have tended to aggravate social-spatial inequality. Moreover, the strengthening of the responsibilities and resources of the local authorities in Maputo, as well as certain decentralisation measures in Luanda, have been accompanied by the emergence of new liberal/market-oriented modes of management of urban areas. This orientation tends equally to aggravate social inequality and to further reduce the public authorities' means of intervention.
Hence, we seek to identify the logics, strategies, practices, conflicts and negotiation processes of the various actors and their impact on local authorities and on the potential for partnership between civil society organisations and public institutions, whether central or local, national or foreign.
Assuming both that the involvement of the local urban development actors and of the targeted peri-urban dwellers is a prerequisite for the improvement of the latters' livelihood conditions and that this aspect is largely neglected by the currently applied planning instruments, this paper also pays particular attention to this issue. We try to identify the weaknesses and potentialities of local authorities and actors in peri-urban planning and management. We analyse the links between the aspirations of the suburbanites and the objectives of the various institutions, the modalities of action and the ways by which local people are included in the management of urban areas. In order to assess the planning and management processes in the two capitals, we distinguish two types of situations: the interventions in already existing neighbourhoods (bairros) and the planning of new bairros. Regarding the latter, we pay particular attention to the new (re)settlement areas that have been designed to host displaced persons that have fled either the war (in the case of Luanda) or the floods (in the case of Maputo). We retain the specific case of the new Magoanine neighbourhood in Maputo, as a particularly interesting example for the coexistence of a multiplicity of actors, for the establishment of partnerships and for the conflicts which inevitably arise in these processes.
