Interpreting the Sub-Saharan City: Approaches for Urban Development

This chapter reviews the key historical and political points of the urbanization process in sub-Saharan Africa, including the difficult ‘modernization’ process, promoted first by colonial policies and later by development aid. The distinct characteristics of sub-Saharan cities are then presented, specifically their hybrid rural–urban features, their ‘informal’ development modality, and their relationship with environmental transformation. The second part of the chapter introduces the case of Dar es Salaam as representative of the cities of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as part of the evidence obtained from the questionnaires or extracted from the literature. The city is analyzed with reference to the evolution of peri-urban areas and the challenges in contemporary planning are discussed, as well as some of the constraints on policies and planning approaches adopted in Dar es Salaam and sub-Saharan Africa generally.