Environmental Management and Urbanization: Dar es Salaam as an Illustrative Case

This chapter concentrates on approaches to environmental management and urban planning that have become skewed over time in order to resolve the African ‘environmental crisis’ in the name of sustainable development and/or poverty reduction. Such approaches have been brought to the fore by the global debate on Climate Change. The extent of the environmental transformations currently underway in Dar es Salaam and sub-Saharan Africa more generally are discussed, as well as the manner in which the two global strategies of mitigation and adaptation to Climate Change orient urban development policy and planning at the local and global level. The adaptation strategy emerges as crucial to planning processes in African cities, prompting a reconsideration of the impact of strategies that emphasize ‘securitization’ of the city as opposed to acceleration of the rural–urban transition in order to reduce social vulnerability. Such strategies raise questions that are not new to the planning debate, and draw attention to the role that people must play therein.