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Almost 40 years of war in Angola forced millions of people fleeing rural areas to seek a safe haven in the capital and to settle in informal slum settlements (musseques) on the periphery of Luanda. The new urban migrants created homes and settlements on land that they purchased in good faith but for which they could get no legal title. Now, they fa...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... Formal (public and private title or surface rights) & Informal occupation and spontaneous settlement pattern (no title or alterna- tive documentation demonstrating occupation) & Upgradeable tenure (with temporary titles or settlements with poten- tial to be renewed in-situ under existing legislation and policies ( Fig. ...
Citations
... However, the musseques grew demographically and spatially as masses of displaced rural migrants embarked on spontaneous and informal building of houses to address their need for accommodation (Development Workshop, 2011). By the 1980s, precarious housing with limited infrastructure had become ubiquitous in the city's periphery (not excluding the cidade), as more people sought a foothold in the safety of Luanda's outskirts (Cain, 2013). ...
... In terms of housing and informality, this was remarkably seen in new formal housing provided for employees by the big international firms. These housing investments improved deteriorating conditions in the cidade and attracted the wealthy, while slowly moving the inner poor back to the peripheriesa residential configuration that mirrors the colonial spatial difference (Buire, 2014;Cain, 2013;Rodrigues & Frias, 2016). Yet this new investment in the cidade would become the object of the idealisation and aspiration of urban life for the local provincial population, eventually pulling many away from war-ravaged rural areas into post-war Luanda. ...
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.
... Some came in search of job opportunities and other sources of income they hoped would spill over from the new centrality (Kimari and Ernstson, 2022), others extended themselves out into these 'surrounds' as 'spaces, times, and practices within and beyond capture' (Simone, 2022: vii, emphasis added). Finding land to settle through an unofficial and yet thriving real estate market, as so many had done before them throughout the rest of the city (Cain, 2013), they built their own houses without following any particular pre-determinations besides those of the materials used in the FIGURE 7 Neighbourhood Unit No. 1, Bairro Prenda (source: Arquivo Fernão L. Simões de Carvalho, available at https://cargocollective.com/ arquitecturamodernaluanda/; see also Goycoolea and Núñez, 2011) construction process. Of particular importance among these materials was the cement that further entangled the precariously urbanized new peripheries with the fully serviced new centralities, as the latter spawned the development of the local cement industry, which eventually led to increasing availability of the key material unit in the expansion of the former. ...
In this article we portray and unpack the fabric of urban expansion in contemporary Luanda. In doing so, we examine interdependencies and complementarities between the organization of oil extraction off the coast of Angola, the emergence of particular modalities of modernist city planning for the expansion of its capital city, and the proliferation of cement blocks in the making of new urban forms throughout its burgeoning peripheries. By showing how urban development has unfolded through the interconnected realization of multiple kinds of systematizing blocks—namely oil blocks, city blocks and cement blocks—we analyse key material components in the production of new markets and urban spaces in the Angolan capital. By tracing forms of capitalism and modularity in the making of contemporary Luanda, we develop the concept of blocos urbanism to draw attention to modes of standardization and the production of legibility in contemporary processes of urbanization. Through this study, we aim to contribute to the conceptual apparatus for deciphering our global urban condition.
IJURR 2023 Best Article Prize:
https://www.ijurr.org/best-article-prize/
"Blocos Urbanism: From Oil to Infrastructure in Luanda" Documentary Video:
https://vimeo.com/859728871
... The government of Luanda, Angola's capital, had also proceeded with an urban slum renewal program that increased the land price, which excluded the poor from the city and affected the city's land use dynamics in general [59]. In Kigali, Rwanda, an East African city, the government has also been interested in land finance and invested in urban development, which has stimulated private real estate developers and catalyzed urban changes [56,60]. ...
Urban land leasing is a land monetization strategy that was introduced in 1991 by the contemporary regime. Since then, urban center slum demolitions and their replacement by high-end commercial buildings and urban peripheral low-cost residential condominium expansions have been common occurrences in Addis Ababa. Land rentiers quote extreme land prices at the city center and relatively low prices towards the periphery. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that urban land supply and land prices are determinant factors for urban land use orientations, which have pushed low-end groups towards the periphery. Therefore, based on a lens of land rent theory, 1524 land lease prices and 1038 randomly selected land parcels using Google Earth were used to evaluate locational trends in land prices and land use orientations, respectively. This study revealed that there are significant variabilities between government benchmark land prices and actual quoted land prices. Because of the high rent gaps at the city center, significant land price quotations were recorded, and this overlaps with the urban center slum demolitions and slum resident resettlements at low-cost residential condominiums in the urban periphery. In the first 5 km from the urban economic center, land prices show a declining trend towards the periphery. The central business district is dominated by slums partially under demolition and high-end commercial buildings, while the periphery is dominated by high-rise low-cost residential condominiums. Therefore, the distance from the city center was found to be an explanatory factor of urban land prices. The contributions of other urban utilities to land prices, such as access to transportation routes, could be a future research area.
... Firstly, Luanda has undergone major urban transformations since P. Jenkins, P. Robson & A. Cain's (2002) foundational analysis of urban development in the city was written. The 1976-2002 civil war in Angola has resulted in very chaotic urban growth and an increase in the number of urban slums (Bettencourt 2011;Cain 2013). Secondly, after the civil war, many people left the provinces and moved to the capital, thus increasing the size and extension of the city's slum areas. ...
Slum redevelopment is occurring at a rapid pace in many African cities. This paper examines the urban development of contemporary Luanda, the capital of Angola. Central to this examination is an analysis of the city’s slums according to Foucault’s concept of governmentality. The focus is on the chaotic urban development that has resulted from the civil war and on the effects of poverty and gentrification in many of Luanda’s slums. The policy of violence towards slum population adopted by the municipality appears to define a technology of domination, the subjection of the individual to the formation of the state. However, with the high earnings obtained from oil production, the country clearly has the resources needed to fund investments in electricity and utility systems. The continuing persistence of slums and a housing policy based on neglect signifies a form of governmentality, adopted as a means of government coercion and a way of dominating the poor population. The paper closes with a set of policy implications for action.
... Until the mid-2000s, when a severe economic crisis caused by the drop of the oil price started, the urban transformation had been increasingly sustained by financial urban investment. Both the country's great wealth and global capital investments channelled to urban reconstruction turned real estate businesses into an important element in the transformation of the city (Cain 2013). Big entrepreneurs, building companies and realtors started to see Luanda as a city with not only a favourable location but also enough ambition to compete with other global cities. ...
Since its independence in 1975, Angola’s capital Luanda has been going through deep processes of demographic, economic, social and physical transformations. In this article, apart from introducing the case study of private condominiums in the general discussion on urban studies in the Global South, we focus on the dynamics of transformations regarding housing for the mid/upper strata, providing the background for the emergence and recent expansion of gated communities/condominiums, a phenomenon that has acquired major importance in the recent decades in Luanda. The specialised literature relates the demand for and multiplication of these residential structures in Africa with issues such as the search for safety associated with demonstrations of exclusive lifestyles. In the case of Luanda, the authors found––through a case study and qualitative data collected among residents and non-residents of condominiums––that, contrary to the results from other studies, condominiums in Luanda are essentially sought after primarily for functional reasons such as access to infrastructure and better living.
... These processes, taking place simultaneously and at times rapidly, have led to the present configuration of the city, a mixed situation of old and new centres, peripheries, wealthier and poorer locations (Cain 2013). 'The city centre […] and the southern area (Luanda Sul and Belas) are in fact expressions of Luanda's urban history, but they also layout [sic] patterns of socio-economic differences and ways of living that are mirrored in the architectural forms, spatial blueprints and physical traces of daily practises' (Vanin 2015, p. 166). ...
... Upward social mobility is today increasingly concentrated on housing. The latter have limited options in the face of scarce economic resources and, most crucially, fewer options in the context of urban land redistributions and relocations (Cain 2013). Certain trends and possibilities have been widely explored in recent years, namely, the occupation of areas potentially dedicated to new construction projects in order to claim them as compensation or the longstanding practice of buying, selling and renting houses and land from central areas of the city and moving into peripheral ones. ...
Luanda, the capital of Angola, has recently been subjected to extraordinary changes, supported by increased wealth and investments associated with the end of the war. The ideas of modernity that clearly stand out are deeply rooted in the city’s configuration and reconfiguration over the years. They inform not only the modernising perspectives and philosophy of policymakers and investors but also those of the urban dwellers. Often, however, the imagined modernity and its benefits do not match the lived realities. This chapter makes reference to the evolution of the city, emphasising the differences between main periods and identifying the underlining strategies in terms of inclusions and exclusions. The conclusions presented, based on empirical and documentary research, point to shifting strategies of urban inclusion and changing categories of the excluded.
... The 2014 census finally provided accurate figures for the consequences of war and the continuous rural exodus of three decades (INE 2014). With regard to the geographical distribution of the population, the weighting of Luanda regarding the total population of the country needs to be emphasized, a situation that has been even more pronounced between 1991 and 2009, either as a result of the war or as a result of rural migration motivated by the search for better living conditions (Cain 2013;Udelsmann Rodrigues 2007). The distribution of the urban population in Angola is today, a decade after the end of the civil war, remarkable: according to the latest census, 62 % of the Angolan population live in cities, 27 % of the total in the capital city. ...
... However, the city was erected by the urban dwellers who spontaneously and informally built their houses (Development Workshop 2011). The result was a vast surrounding periphery with precarious housing, poor or inexistent infrastructural conditions and a mixed population of wealthier and poorer residents who settled on the available land on the outskirts of the safety of Luanda (Cain 2013). In the centre, the city became a confused mixture of people and housing of all types, hosting the poor and the wealthy in the same spaces, somehow trying to match the postindependence socialist ideologies. ...
... An important part of this urban informal economy became focused precisely on real estate: with the war, little new construction was taking place while at the same time major international businesses-particularly the oil industry-sought housing in Luanda and were willing to pay high rents. These residential reconfigurations initiated again the transformation of the city and its spatial composition, with the centre slowly being re-occupied by the wealthy and the poor slowly moving again to the peripheries, succumbing to the appeal of the real estate market (Udelsmann Rodrigues 2009;Buire 2014;Cain 2013;Croese 2012;Gastrow 2013/14). Reconfigurations within the new socioeconomic context represented then, to an increasing number of urban dwellers, new delusions with the urban life and the expectations created, particularly among the massive number of migrants seeking the city safety and opportunities. ...
With nearly five centuries of history and major war-related impacts in the second half of the twentieth century, Luanda has recently been subject to outstanding changes that make the capital of Angola an important urban case study for Africa. Today, the city is not only an evident materialization of the oil wealth being channelled into reconstruction after decades of civil war but also reflects and translates the diverse perspectives of its residents and policy makers regarding the city and urban life. As it is reconfigured, it also transforms the mentalities and daily lives of urban dwellers and policy stakeholders, reinforcing the idea of improvement and modernity. In order to better understand the processes of physical and social change that have taken place within the city and the intertwined logics, this article makes reference to three distinct key stages of its history, pointing out their main features and the transformations that have occurred: the colonial period of sociospatial dualization (1576–1974), the period between independence and the last peace agreement (1975–2002) of profound and extensive urban mixture and the post-war period (2002–present) marked by accelerated sociospatial reconfigurations. More specifically, it analyses the very recent urban phenomena, the urban plans and new urban features, discussing the correlations between physical transformations and the rationalities and perspectives that accompany them, both of the urban planners and of the urban dwellers, discussing the implications in terms of new inclusions and exclusions in the city.
... Research conducted by Cain (2012) shows that within Luanda the movement of people has been mainly inner-city movement, as people migrate from the old city center to the periphery due to development that is taking place. The study reveals that 75% of the property buyers in Luanda are from the older areas of the city. ...
... Research conducted by Cain (2012) shows that within Luanda the movement of people has been mainly inner-city movement, as people migrate from the old city center to the periphery due to development that is taking place. The study reveals that 75% of the property buyers in Luanda are from the older areas of the city. ...
... UN-Habitat's The State of African Cities 2010 report states that 'African cities on average exhibit the highest inequalities in the world' (UN-Habitat 2010:25). Of those that were measured in the graph above, South African cities had the largest income inequalities, although there is evidence to suggest that cities like Luanda experience significantly high inequalities as well (Cain 2013). ...
Trading Places is about urban land markets in African cities. It explores how local practice, land governance and markets interact to shape the ways that people at society’s margins access land to build their livelihoods. The authors argue that the problem is not with markets per se, but in the unequal ways in which market access is structured. They make the case for more equal access to urban land markets, not only for ethical reasons, but because it makes economic sense for growing cities and towns. If we are to have any chance of understanding and intervening in predominantly poor and very unequal African cities, we need to see land and markets differently. New migrants to the city and communities living in slums are as much a part of the real estate market as anyone else; they’re just not registered or officially recognised. This book highlights the land practices of those living on the city’s margins, and explores the nature and character of their participation in the urban land market. It details how the urban poor access, hold and trade land in the city, and how local practices shape the city, and reconfigures how we understand land markets in rapidly urbanising contexts. Rather than developing new policies which aim to supply land and housing formally but with little effect on the scale of the need, it advocates an alternative approach which recognises the local practices that already exist in land access and management. In this way, the agency of the poor is strengthened, and households and communities are better able to integrate into urban economies.
