Fostering Successful Urban Rural Linkages in Tanzania

Historical Land-­‐Use Patterns and Modern Development in Tanzania: Looking at New Rural-­‐Urban Solutions, a Request for Proposals

Prepared By: Emily Appelbaum Yale University

2009

Growing Cities Changing land-­‐use patterns in Tanzania The practice of urban design, as we conceive of it today, arose in Western cities and was fully catapulted into being by the great upheavals of population, technology and sprawl brought on by the Industrial Revolution. If the bourgeoning of newly industrializing Europe was enough to engender a restructuring of the way we see and occupy space, then the similar catalyst that exists today is amplified to a whole new scale in the developing countries across the globe now struggling to complete their own industrialization.

In a Berkeley project entitled “New Geographies,” Nezar AlSayyad and Ananya Roy wrote, “If the previous fin-­‐de-­‐siecle was marked by rabid discourses about the chaos of the First World metropolis, then at the turn of this century, the Third World metropolis has emerged as the trope of social disorganization and unfathomable crisis. And if urban planning emerged as a 19th century drive to rationalize the city, then now the ideology of "civil society" – a celebration of grassroots movements and self-­‐management by the urban poor – bears the new millennial promise of taming the urban crisis.”1 In their report, Alsayyad and Roy warn against this crisis rhetoric, and also against seeing self-­‐management as a utopian cure-­‐all, applied blindly to the vast range of societies struggling against the legacies of developmentalist thought.

And yet, in looking at specific developmental legacies as the result of rationalist schemes, utopian in and of themselves, it becomes apparent both that there is, if not a crisis, then something that looks very similar, and that returning some measure of autonomous management to disenfranchised populations must be a part of the solution — a crisis being, as Rahm Emmanual famously said, echoing Stanford Economist Paul Romer, of 2008’s financial collapse, a “terrible thing to waste.” In this paper, I examine how the current challenges in Third World land use can be understood as the direct result of failed historical policies, and how the self-­‐provided settlement patterns which have thus emerged can be learned from and ultimately used in the creation of more equitable and effective strategies both locally and globally. Specifically, I examine the landscape and its occupants in Tanzania since the broadly inflicted policy of Villagization, and call for a new scheme of conscientious spatial planning, carried forth through self-­‐management, which will help alleviate the scars of a failed land policy, and address the problem of the Third World Metropolis.

Villagization and Ujamaa—Nyerere’s Dream Villagization in Tanzania is often thought of as a political and economic issue, deriving from the concept of ujamaa, (in Swahili, “familyhood,”) which, though originally spun as a traditional African of community, is usually understood as an idealist doctrine of socialism. The policy, conceived by President Julius Nyerere shortly after the state gained independence in 1961, and formalized first in the Arusha Declaration of 1967, was initially constructed to resolve a set of political issues centered largely on the creation of economic independence for the newly liberated state. While conventional wisdom has been to evaluate ujamaa as an ideological issue,2 and the policy’s specific failings are frequently explained in

1

AlSayyad and Roy, 1999 Ibhawoh and Dibua, 2003, p. 61

2

terms of bureaucratic inefficiencies and economic miscalculations,3 there is a legible, yet often ignored, reading of the story as a spatial treatise of modernization and development — the history of the policy is etched in its physical imprint on the landscape that, even today, continues to impact the population.

For Nyerere, the aim of the scheme was to initiate the transformation of rural society into "rural economic and social communities where people would live together for the good of all"4 The 1964 pamphlet “Rural Settlement Planning” describes a settlement policy of state-­‐ planned, gridded plots around a common, governmentally administered center, in contrast to the traditional land tenure system which involved a first-­‐rights system of dispersed homesteading. Land was to be farmed by cooperative groups rather than by individual farmers.

The pamphlet includes strict guidelines for harvest allotments, quotas, finance, and production of cash crops,5 which Ujamaa Village Plan, showing recangular cultivation plots surrounding a serves to make clear that when Nyerere village center with civic and light commercial buildings. Rural Setlement spoke of subsistence and economic Commission, 1964. independence, he did not mean at the community level, but rather, for the Tanzanian state as a player in the global market economy. Nyerere legitimized the villagization scheme in terms of traditional African practices of communal living and social equity, but in truth, his development scheme, though the well-­‐intentioned act of a liberated government, reads as the continuation of a colonial discourse, in which the appropriation of a people extends into the imperial domination of the landscape— rendering it rational, legible, and conducive to production.

Villagization was thus tied to national security, setting up local systems for meeting Pages from the 1964 Pamphlet, showing specific crop allocations and commodity ratios. Rural Setlement Commission, 1964.

3

Shivji, 1976 Nyerere, 1968, p. 337 5 Rural Settlement Commission, 1964 4

the needs of the newly independent nation. However, the paradox was that in order to create a locally based, self-­‐reliant community, land was first nationalized and redistributed.6 This resulted in the doling-­‐ out, by removed central authorities, of self-­‐same versions of a standard plan developed in isolation. The land-­‐planning solutions were not truly local, but were merely focused on the local scale of implementation—the stamping on of a self-­‐same unit, repeated uniformly across the national landscape.

Such intense management on a state level, even with the attempt to create local socialist units, effectively removed any understanding of the land, and of the characteristics of the individual communities, from the equation. In fact, though the policy was nominally socialist, as some scholars have postulated, “what the policy of nationalization so effectively achieved was to give rise to ‘state bureaucratic capitalism’ -­‐ the use of state capital by a managerial elite in a manner which entirely conforms to the ethos, values and dynamics of private capital.”7 In the work of Dean McHenry8, (“Tanzania’s Ujamaa Villages: The Implementation of a Rural Development Strategy”) it becomes clear that the Ujamaa Village fits directly into a genealogy of colonialism: following the forced resettlement and labor campaigns of the colonial government and World-­‐ Bank implemented development strategies, the coercive means employed by the now-­‐independent Tanzanian government nonetheless betrayed the same framework of imperialist thought—appropriating laborer and land in the name of “development,” which had little to do with providing resources, and lots more to do with providing commodities for an economy already entrenched in the world market.

Thus, in villigized Tanzania, the instrumentalist view extended from nature itself, to those who had traditionally lived in harmony with it—uprooting a cyclical way of life in favor of a linear, progress-­‐ and production-­‐oriented attempt at “modernization. That this type of progress was not what the peasants of Funding for Villagization went into farm machinery Tanzania desired or needed could be read implicitly in (above) and warehouses, (below) often in vast excess the increasingly forceful policies of relocation, which of what production on the land needed or could evolved from persuasion to inducement to compulsion, support. Other aspects of the program (social and humanitarian resources) were chronically but the system’s shortcomings were made explicit by underfunded. Public space was often ignored. the famine, social unrest, decreased productivity, and Architecture was cheap and utilitarian, layouts were overwhelmingly gridded. Jean M. Due, 1980. flight at the first opportunity, which followed

6

Jimwaga, 2002, p.21-­‐22. Also see Daley “Land and Social Change” 1 and 2, 2005 Shivji, 1976, p. 85 8 McHenry, 1979 7

widespread relocation to ujamaa villages. According to McHenry, this was at least in part due to shortcomings in planning — the villages were not well designed for production. James C Scott corroborates this viewpoint, pointing, for comparison, to other failed agricultural models such as the Ethiopian ground-­‐nut disaster, or the more poignant metaphor of scientific forestry, in which actual forest mechanics are sacrificed for an aesthetic of modernism and order, most notably in Fascist Germany. But Scott’s argument against the authoritarian modernist framework digs into the larger issue—not that the villages weren’t designed well for production, but that they weren’t designed well for living, an all too common problem with states’ historical and near universal obsession with the aesthetic project of legibility.

Scott writes, “Certain visual representations of order and efficiency, although they may have made eminent sense in some original context, are detached from their initial moorings. High modernist plans tend to ‘travel’ as an abbreviated visual image of efficiency,” in which the user has an almost religious faith.9 Thus, gridded beds and erosion mounds and straight roads, perhaps the very models of efficiency in the West, were fairly useless on the unfamiliar Tanzanian terrain, with its unexpected weather patterns. “For ideological reasons,” he elaborates, “the designers of the new society had paid virtually no attention to the local knowledge and practices of cultivators and pastoralists. They had also forgotten the most important fact about social engineering: its efficiency depends on the response and cooperation of real human subjects.”10 As much as a misunderstanding of the local environmental conditions for farming (building long straight roads and flat, gridded plots when seasonal flooding and drying required raised beds and rendered the roads hopeless mud-­‐traps) planners exhibited a misunderstanding of the local social conditions for farming and, more importantly, for community. Scott quotes Jane Jacobs as his champion for the irreplaceability of community micro-­‐order, saying that the “order” of a thing, for Jacobs, was determined by the purpose it served, not by a purely aesthetic view of its superficial qualities. Thus, the failings of earlier modernists like Le Corbusier lay in their inability to consider their spaces, fundamentally, as places where people would want to live and work.11 For Scott, the disaster of ujamaa fit neatly into this trajectory.

Farmers had traditionally enjoyed unrestricted settlement in scattered hamlets, as land was not held privately, but was state-­‐owned and allotted by a system of first-­‐right. This allowed farmers to roam widely, settle sparsely, and move frequently, as the land dictated. Beneficial fallow periods resulted, as well as a nuanced understanding of the natural circumstances most conducive to crop growth — inter-­‐ planting, multi-­‐tier farming, and natural shading provided by scrub-­‐trees not cleared from the land were all effective strategies which were lost in the desire to set up legible, “modern” monocultures of cash crops such as coffee, sisal and cashews.

As regimented as the crops became in ujamaa villages, so too did the inhabitants. No longer did organically evolving, family-­‐based groups build their homes and their lives together. Rather, (and despite all the talk of familyhood as the governing social principle) the uprooted population was forced to resettle in artificial communities. The passing promises of social amenities (schools, hospitals) hinted at an underlying humanitarian motivation, but this was greatly outstripped by the motivation to

9

Scott, 1998, p. 225 Ibid.

11 Scott, 1998, p. 133 10

produce. Thinly veiled in even the most idealistic of village schematics (see village plan, pg. 2), there were times when this motivation dominated planning outright: even the guise of community-­‐oriented settlement disappeared in places where the new villages became grotesquely extruded along a transport routes (as in Mufindi District, discussed later). Here, then, is an attempt to create a community without the provision of any realistic center for public space. An endless row of houses only a couple of units deep did absolutely nothing to foster community interaction, inhibiting access to any new civic amenity through sheer decentralization. However, it is the very paradigm of state authority and legibility.

Informal Urbanization and the Spontaneous City Immediately after forced villagization, Tanzania urbanized faster than almost any part of the world. Financial crisis and political strife in the late ‘70s meant the end of the period of rigid enforcement of ujamaa policy, and pent-­‐up dissatisfaction with ujamaa caused a massive migration to the cities. While the few city centers of Tanzania (Dar es Salaam, most notably) modernized rapidly relatively early, it is the informal settlements on the city fringes that have taken the place of ujamaa villages for the vast majority of Tanzanian citizens who have migrated from the rural hinterland where they traditionally settled.

These new spaces exhibit the very antithesis of authoritarian ujamaa planning. They are rapidly evolving shrines to self-­‐reliance, ingenuity and self-­‐determination, in some sense demonstrating the type of creativity and agency implicit in a traditional relationship to the land, yet, at the same time, heavily influenced by the desire to modernize. As Anne S Lewinson describes in “Viewing Postcolonial Dar es Salaam, Tanzania through Civic Spaces,” these areas (called uswahilini, the land of the Swahili people) are more densely settled than a typical village, but share in common with rural areas the “tight-­‐knit sociality which contrasts with conventional ideas of urban anonymity.”12 These informal cities host a range of civic spaces so markedly missing in the ujamaa villages: including ritual spaces, groceries, roadside booths, and especially, placed to drink. In describing the women who conduct their business outside on porch steps, she certainly recalls a Jane Jacobs-­‐ian sense of civic community, writing of “the raised open verandahs of homes, where women (often) sell foods, provide tailor services, sell cooked foods or household goods such as charcoal, braid Man selling coconuts in informal market stall. Photo: hair and receive visitors; their customers, relatives and Reuters. neighbours are free to join them for a chat and a rest.”13

12

Demissie, ed., 2007, p. 50 Ibid., p. 51

13

As people build and adapt their homes in these fringe settlements (peri-­‐urban spaces) they are driven to fulfill new and rapidly changing sets of desires. Huba M Nguluma writes, “On one hand the desire to own a “modern house” may lead to deterioration of spatial qualities, on the other hand fulfillment of the desire may contribute to the modernization of urban settlements.”14 As Tanzania is one of the most rapidly urbanizing countries in sub-­‐Saharan Africa – with 30% of its citizens living in Dar es Salaam and the population of Dar doubling every decade – it is clear that this type of informal settlement on the fringes of the city will not be sustainable. Furthermore, recent studies of Tanzania’s rapidly evolving land-­‐use norms suggest that structural readjustment policies and a period of relative economic stability have increased commodification of land in peri-­‐urban zones since the 1990s, leading to a transition “more into a zone of investment and economic opportunity, rather than a zone of survival,”15 the result being the increasing exclusion and divestment of the poorer classes.16 Lastly, these informal settlements often lack resources such as water and sanitation until it is clear that they are permanent, at which point gentrification usually sets in. Thus, for the vast majority of Tanzania’s population, this type of urban slum is far from a permanent solution.

The need for Urban-­‐Rural Interface With the globalization of Tanzania’s economy, farming has transitioned from a subsistence activity to a market activity, meaning that farmers need access to financial capital, information on market prices and fluctuations, and, increasingly, resources like water and fertilizer necessary to produce cash crops. Access to these types of resources and data are highly dependent on the interplay of rural and urban systems. Post-­‐villagization, many of Tanzania’s residents, even those who have relocated to the urban fringe, are peasants or pastoralists, and farming is still the primary activity.17 Yet there is a marked trend toward the diversification of economic activity, especially where urban and rural meet. No longer can rural agriculture subsist in isolation, nor (as was proven with the failures of villigization) can it take place in small, isolated socialist collectives administered by a rationalist and removed government. A new land-­‐use paradigm is in the making.

The traditional system of land tenure has been interrupted, yet there remains the desire for positive growth and rising measures of quality-­‐of-­‐life. As planners, can we design systems that support a population still deeply rooted in a transient pastoral framework18, while still providing the needed services? We must find a way to create the desired infrastructural improvements, while at the same time allowing for the micro-­‐scale social, political and spatial determinations which we have come to accept as important — the type of articulation that is lost in the “thin” structuring of pre-­‐fab communities.

Since the gradual decline of the ujamaa system, economic crisis and reform have affected both rural and urban African populations. The vast majority of Tanzanians remain tied to the land, both economically and culturally, though for small farmers, the costs of agricultural inputs and consumer goods have risen faster than the prices of agricultural produce. This cost–price squeeze has created a

14

Nguluma p. 18 Briggs, 1999, p.269 16 Demissie, ed., 2007, p. 44-­‐50 17 Bah, 2003, p. 15 18 Jimwaga, 2002 15

high-­‐risk environment that makes it difficult for small farmers to compete on domestic and international markets, encouraging a return to pastoralism. Falling urban incomes affect both formal sector workers and the informal sector activities. Increases in food prices and service charges, cuts in public expenditures – especially health and education – and in infrastructure expenditures have been felt, particularly by the low-­‐income peasants who have been emancipated from the land. This has resulted in changes in livelihood strategies with very strong spatial implications: a widespread increase in mobility accompanied by strong social and economic links with home areas, which provide financial safety nets and social identity; and high levels of “multi-­‐activity”19—the intermixing of rural and urban modes of existence, with most households combining farming with non-­‐farm activities, especially in peri-­‐urban areas.20 Thus, it appears essential that any effective land-­‐use policy address this need for connection between the rural and the urban. Physical infrastructure is a crucial element of today’s rapidly changing Tanzanian economy — poor infrastructure drastically effects capital input and profit margins, and thus, overall patterns of activity.21 While larger or wealthier farmers can afford to adjust and create alternatives, poor farmers are especially disadvantaged by lack of infrastructure, and may be forced to turn to wage labor (increasing the numbers seeking employment in already overcrowded cities, and further sharpening the divide between rural and urban settlement) in the absence of sufficient infrastructure to support their farming activities. Cashew nuts, for example, can be sold at farmer’s cooperatives, but when farmers can’t reach these centralized locations, they must sell directly to traders, for lower returns. Information services are likewise important, with farmers who have good urban connections gaining a significant advantage. For farmers growing tomatoes in the plains towns of Himo in Northern Tanzania, market costs can vary by a factor of ten between the rainy and dry season.

Delicately calibrated analyses of world market supply and demand are crucial for farmers trying to balance their fields and labor, 22 and this requires access to the city. Lastly, because traders, even wholesalers, generally operate on a small scale, and are rooted socially in a community, “financial exchanges are embedded in wider social relations which provide the basic rules of trust needed for commercial transactions.” 23 Lack of formal credit means that traders rely on social capital and social capital is often rooted in physical place. Thus, a successful community is necessary to provide a strong sense of social space in which members may meet, interact, and exchange.

Farmers, families, and wage laborers are increasingly caught between an old world and a new one — but rather than push inexorably forward into ideals high modernism (as did the ujamaa policy) why not allow the transition itself to yield a fecund social and economic environment? Urban models of town-­‐and-­‐country have at times celebrated the connection between the urban and the rural. At the dawning of the industrial era, Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City concept promoted a large, vibrant city center surrounded by smaller urban nodes, each of these set like a plum into the pudding of a lush agricultural countryside. Though the vision was impractical in western cities that had largely abandoned agriculture in favor of industrial growth, this sort of urban triage is exactly the type of decentralization

19

Ellis, 1998 Bah, 2003 21 Bah, 2003, p. 16 22 Bah, 2003, p. 18 23 Ibid.

20

which may help in over-­‐expanding cities like Dar, which still rely heavily on intermixed agricultural and urban activities. A century later, urbanist Leon Kier looked at the endless sprawl of modern Western cities and called for the injection of village centers. These locally-­‐based, locally developed community and economy hubs differs from the “localism” in a policy like ujamaa because (In theory, at least) he concept fought top-­‐down design and zoning practices that only made sense in diagrammatic, not lived, space. He did not seek to prescribe a local character for the community, but allowed the community to develop itself.

Krier’s actual solutions were far too prescriptive, but in favoring the intermixed district over traditional zoning, in rejecting modernist ideology, and in recognizing the vital link between ecology and urbanism, Krier’s intuition was sound. He would have utterly rejected Nyere’s use of an economic goal as the foundation of a spatial policy, affirming that cities must not be the mere product of industrial force, which, “left to its own logic occupies land in almost military fashion, causing much collateral damage.” But, bearing this in mind, how can we plan effectively, given that many of the needs of developing countries are so expressly economic?

Economic circumstances in Tanzania are already influencing spatial and community behaviors, just as they did in traditional Tanzanian subsistence societies. Trade routes, outposts, and community interrelationships fostered prosperity long before colonialism, and will continue to do so in the era of development. The difference between this and Krier’s tyranny of industry, or a policy like ujamaa, is that it evolves organically, and adapts spontaneously. The current economic circumstances of Tanzania mandate urban-­‐rural linkages, but needn’t define how space around these infrastructural opportunities is used. Might we thus create a rural-­‐urban interface which provides basic human resources to populations without holding them captive to a structured framework that inhibits their economic and

cultural activities? Might such infrastructural solutions be designed so they grow with communities, allowing for future spontaneous development? Old medieval cities in Europe functioned as seats for cultural and economic development, while supporting a wider agricultural hinterland. Can Tanzania make use of such a model during an interim period, as economic opportunity and spatial organization catch up with population needs, without denying the need for urbanization and modern city planning?

Can we consider spaces where the population would not settle, so much as “dock?”

In the 2008/2009 pamphlet State of the World’s Cities, UN-­‐Habitat declares, “Cities can no longer be treated as distinct spaces unconnected to the regions surrounding them. Linkages between rural and urban areas and between cities have created new opportunities that rely on connectivity to enable the flow of people and resources from one area to another. Investments in urban, inter-­‐urban and rural-­‐urban transport and communications infrastructure are, therefore, critical for balanced regional development”24 Certainly, there are widespread campaigns to improve urban conditions for Tanzanians, perhaps chief among them being the Sustainable Cities Programme and UDEM-­‐ the National Framework for Urban Development and Environmental Management. These organizations seek to address impoverished and declining social and economic conditions in cities by addressing real physical problems such as solid waste management, sanitation and sewers, electricity, pollution, and urban farming. But they are treating the symptoms of urban slums that have been created, at least in part, by an urban-­‐rural split and an exodus to the city.

Tanzania continues to urbanize at an astounding rate. According to UN projections, “whereas the worldwide 2007 urban population is projected to double only by 2050, i.e. a period of 42 years, the East Africa region is likely to double its 2007 urban population around 2025 – in merely 17 years.”25 There is a need, then, to create urban regions which can receive population, as it is currently split up disproportionally in Tanzania, like most east African countries, with approximately a third of the population living in Dar Es Salaam.

Careful urban planning has the ability to counteract, and even preempt slum formation resulting from rapid urban expansion—indeed, this sparked the inception of modern urban planning in Europe.

Now, as Africa undergoes its own industrial revolution, it is critical to once again use urban planning to counteract the social and political effects of the rapidly changing economy. UN-­‐habitat is confident that, for a population desperately seeking alternatives to their urban situation, this can and must happen.

Studies they conducted in Tanzania and Uganda have shown that “in situations where people are unable to deploy the steps in planning, surveying or registration in formal urban land acquisition, informal approaches more responsive to the local context were developed as an alternative. Drawing on combinations of formal rules and customary practice, local councils, local leaders and community representatives play a crucial role in providing community-­‐accepted legitimacy.” Already, the report notes, “Some of the region’s smaller settlements are becoming more important as nodes of rural and regional development; as cores of administrative, service and trading functions; and as employment-­‐ and income-­‐generators.” 26 These small urban centers may best be treated as “checkpoints” surrounded by a rural hinterland, that provide necessary urban infrastructure and may someday grow into larger urban

24

UN-­‐Habitat “State of the World’s Cities: Harmonious Cities.” 2008. p. xii UN-­‐Habitat “African Cities” 2008, p. 103 26 Cathy Mcllwaine, p. 406 25

centers, but, as of yet, don’t cut inhabitants off from their rural lifestyle, rather blending the urban and rural. By making their infrastructural amenities accessible to the rural population, small urban centers are assured their appeal, vitality and ongoing access to agricultural products. By “docking” at urban stations, rural farmers have an outlet for trade. Thus, infrastructure becomes the necessary and sufficient condition for development, with housing, farming plots, machinery (all the things that villagization attempted to provide) coming second. A UN study in Eldoret and Kisii in Kenya confirmed, “small and intermediate-­‐size urban centres can be viable development cores if they are endowed with efficient physical, social and organizational infrastructures.”27

27

UN-­‐Habitat “African Cities” 2008, p. 112

Looking at Specifics Comparing urban growth in Kinyanambo Village, and on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam Kinyanambo Kinyanambo Village, in Mufindi District, central Tanzania, provides a good case study for urban-­‐ rural struggle post-­‐villagization. The Mufindi District is one of the areas where villagization failed to create any sort of town structure, but instead played rather convincingly into the story of state production by organizing a single long, thin strip of housing and industry stretching for miles along a government road. (See map next page.) In Kinyanambo, a tiny segment along this endless road, the preexisting system of tenure—sporadic settlements controlled by local wenyeji who held traditional authority over land by virtue of first right – was explicitly dismantled by forced compliance with the reorganizing strategy of villagization in 1974, when the District Land Office officially took control of land allocation within the town boundaries. As state sponsored industry and plantations became established, the effects of urbanization, continuing local development and in-­‐migration combined to further disassemble the traditional village structure.28 According to Elizabeth Daley, who conducted a several year-­‐long studis in the village accompanied by first-­‐hand interviews, “Some older wenyeji mourned the time when their first right to land meant a lot more. Now, as development and urbanization accelerate the commoditization of land, the privileges of first residence and first right that their antecedents enjoyed no longer exist.”29 The disruption to the traditional system of land allocation way exacerbated by the fact that, while villagization initially assigned plots to farmers, as population increased in the area, the state effectively lost control over distribution. With traditional land distribution systems dismantled, a gradually more widespread and socially legitimate land market in emerged, and the formerly socialist village saw increasing privatization bypassing state policy.30 As the state attempted to regain control of the privatizing land markets, the legitimacy of an authoritarian central government dictating land use created further resentment, as the arbitrary exercise of power by local elites appeared as nothing more than a “ ‘state facilitated’ evolution of indigenous land tenure systems.”31 While the practice of first right played a central role in the formation of traditional Tanzanian communities, giving land a central place in the social and political relations of old Kinyanambo, land relations in the modern, urbanizing town are becoming increasingly formalized, much to the disadvantage of those who have traditionally held the land. As farmers become increasingly marginalized, they are being pushed out, or leaving voluntarily. Rather than fulfilling its original role of providing for subsistence, land is becoming commodified. Traditional communities of subsistence farmers have become increasingly marginalized, and are being pushed out by wealthy urban landlords, or are leaving voluntarily. Increasingly, this newly adrift population turns to the existing urban fringe to settle and look for wage-­‐work, to replace their traditional farming practices. Thus, the goals for moving forward in an area like Kinyanambo must be two-­‐fold: provide for a growing urban population, while re-­‐

28

Daley, “Land Use and Social Change. . . 1”, 2005 Daley, “Land Use and Social Change. . . 2”, 2005, p. 565 30 Daley citing Palmer 2000, 281; Manji 2001, 334; Alden Wily 2003) 31 Ibid. p. 566 29

empowering, and recreating a connection to, those who continue to live and produce within the traditional rural framework.

Google Earth Image showing the Mufindi Region of Tanzania. Development has occurred in one of the classic patterns of the Villagization movement—as one long thin strip of houses long a major road, stretching miles. Here, citizens are rendered completely visible to the state, but community is in no way fostered, and residents are in no way empowered. Development fails to centralize resources, making them inaccessible to those who live along the road and in the undeveloped hinterland. The large, dark green regions on either side of the road are likely to be irrigated tea plantations—the road serves as a convenience for those who own the plantations, but not for those who live in the region. Inset: View along road in Mufindi District, from Makalala Children’s Home

Peri-­‐Urban Dar

As noted earlier, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania, and is expanding rapidly, most notably along urban fringe areas. Infrastructural resources such as water and sanitation are scarce.

Manzese, a fringe settlement of Dar es Salaam, in 1967, 1975, and 1987. In the first image, scattered houses mostly owned by indigenous people stand amidst predominately agricultural and bush land. In the second image, land is being cleared by landlords not in residence, for the use of non-­‐subsistence farming, eventually giving way to densification and the switch to residential occupation, by slightly wealthier inner city residents. The last image shows marked development and densification, with the rural poor displaced by urban poor and middle class. Images: Nguluma, 2003.

Informal urban communities and peri-­‐urban spaces have been noted for their particular adaptability and flexibility. Indeed, amidst a very frequently desperate lack of alternatives, communities evolve surprisingly effective urban formations, arrangements for shared public space, and provisions for radically unstable circumstances. In Dar there is a trend toward the development of housing blocks as series of extensions—step-­‐wise infill of accessible courtyards which involves planning for later additions as a premise in the initial layout of the primary spaces.32 On a small scale, this Part of Hanna Nassif informal settlement. According to concept helps alleviate some infrastructural Nguluma, “Hanna Nassif is one of the oldest informal concerns, as it tends to tame disorganization on the settlements in Dar es Salaam. The streets are organic in pattern which is the characteristic of many informal level of the street. Certainly, it more effectively settlements in Dar es Salaam.” Photo: Nguluma, 2003 provides for the housing needs of a rapidly bourgeoning semi-­‐urban population that would completely unplanned expansion.

Left and center: phases 1 and 2 of a plannedmulti-­‐family housing unit is the settlement of Hanna Nassif. Rooms are

buildt out of mud, poles, concrete and corrugated iron, and

expand into internal courtyards. Right: sketch of a segment of

Hanna Nasif. Note open community spaces. Nguluma, 2003

This solution does not, however, solve the problems of a sprawling megalopolis, or the increasingly wide gulf between co-­‐dependent urban and rural systems. Taken on a larger scale, though, the idea becomes extraordinarily powerful. Not only does looking at the expansion of peri-­‐urban spaces in Dar reveal the need to relieve pressure on pre-­‐existing urban centers by creating interconnecting, accessible, livable towns, but it also demonstrates the remarkable process by which urban spaces in this region automatically flesh out, with spontaneous solutions. By comparing the failures of ujamaa planning with the relatively preferred spontaneous urban growth, it becomes clear, then, that our focus, as urban designers, should be on providing much-­‐needed infrastructure, rather than idealize village plans. If we can provide the bones of a community (roads, schools, clinics, civic space) rather than seeing these social amenities as afterthoughts, as in the case of villagization, the flesh will surely follow.

32

Nguluma, 2003, p. 88

Fixing towns like Kinyanambo, Relieving cities like Dar An Adaptable Masterplan for Flexible City Growth in Post-­‐Villagization Towns in Tanzania

Irreversible changes in the system of land tenure in the wake of villagization meant that the spatial organization of settlements in rural Tanzania transitioned from complex, fluid and organic to legible, prescribed and rational. With these more calcified systems of land tenure, based increasingly on commodification of agriculture, and thus, the land used to produce it, came a rigidity and order that fundamentally failed to accommodate the ways people lived and worked. While the settlements focused on providing opportunities for labor, morale was low, and the new villages dwindled, ultimately failing to produce either communities or commodities. With increasing urbanization, we have begun to see the opposite problem evolve—large peripheral city areas noted for their fluid, organic community development, but without any substantial open space, infrastructure or outlets for labor. The obvious solution to the dual problems is to connect these segregated urban models and allow them to neutralize each other. Indeed, there is a quickly emerging pool of literature stressing the importance of urban-­‐rural linkages in developing countries. But the question is, how might new urban planning foster such a connection without repeating the coercive (and ultimately, detrimental) tactics of authoritarian villagization? While ujamaa villages sought to round up the population and hold it hostage, a newer village design could be conceived of as a docking station—a node rather than a corral. Newer urban design must incorporate social services, provide opportunities for commerce, processing and distribution, and anticipate urban growth and settlement without mandating it. Lastly, city design must remain flexible enough that communities and residents may develop their villages according to their needs, allowing layout and building uses to evolve spontaneously.

Comparatively little is published on long-­‐term land-­‐use planning in developing countries, where discourse and policy have been so overwhelming focused on providing human services and improving living conditions in the short term, that spatial planning—a key element—has been left out of the equation. Amarta Sen challenged this way of thinking –what has traditionally been called the basic needs approach-­‐-­‐by proffering instead his ‘capabilities approach’ which focuses on positive freedoms. In this vein, development discourse becomes not about pumping resources into a community, but rather, structuring the community in such a way that it has the capacity to begin providing resources for itself.

With that in mind, this Request for Proposals, having reviewed dual land-­‐use phenomena in Tanzania (villagization and informal urbanization) is calling for innovative examples of master-­‐plans that bring the two into conversation. Rather than seeking a modernist, utopian, visually complete solution, a successful proposal will consider these urbanizing rural villages as works in progress, and plan accordingly.

How to Create a City That Adapts Urban Planning as Infrastructure: building the bones, growing the body

Design problem: Rather than the ujamaa village attempt to design a complete entity, master planners working in this part of the world must learn to expect and accommodate informal expansion. Likewise, they must understand the importance of the connection between urban centers and the rural hinterland, where most of the population still exists. These two elements must interact to create viable agriculture and industry, and access between the two, particularly for rural farmers marketing in urban areas, is crucial.

Thus, a new model of the Tanzanian semi-­‐rural town is called for: Design a town center that can act as an urban-­‐rural interface, creating resources and opportunities not just for permanent town residents, but for those who reside in the wider region Allow flexibility for future growth, settlement, urbanization and migration from those in the wider region to the city— fostering a sense of agency and community development, while allowing infrastructure to keep up with expanding population.

Design Components: -­‐School -­‐Health Care Facility -­‐Water System that serves not only immediate residents, but provides access to those migrating from hinterland.

-­‐Waste Disposal System that serves not only immediate residents, but hinterland (with potential to expand) -­‐Local Street System that fosters centralization rather than linear expansion, access to broader transit routes, potential to expand -­‐Town Hall -­‐Community Buildings -­‐Communal Market Space

Conclusion: The literature and case studies discussed, as well as the specific policy initiatives which follow in the appendix [already underway in the region] encompass abstract concepts, and do little to provide a definite spatial structure for new growth, that fosters both economic and social progress. Proposals in response to this RFP may thus take their cues from these initiatives, but must nonetheless provide a concrete master-­‐plan for a town center in a city like Kinyanmbo, as an alternative to the uncontrolled spontaneous growth on the fringe of city centers like Dar es Salaam. As the last vestiges of the ujamaa policy fade away, a disenfranchised working class population, alienated from their rural land, are once again victims of commodification, this time of land near urban centers. Only through initiating new town centers can the needs of this population be met-­‐-­‐ by providing the appropriate infrastructure and resources for today, and the possibility of growth for tomorrow.

Appendix:

The first case study provides an example of the type of social resource that may be located in a village but serve as a piece of community infrastructure aimed at reaching an entire region.

Rural Resource Center-­‐ Public Library These Community Resource centers, scattered throughout small towns and villages in the neighboring East African country of Kenya, provide an example of the “docking station” metaphor— these resource centers don’t serve a captive population, but are available for the use of a wider regional network. 33

Community resource center at Lodwar, Kenya. (Photo: Rosenberg, 1993)

The following two case studies deal further with policy initiatives which create infrastructure and opportunities for community self determination and empowerment.

Community Infrastructure and Self Determination The Sustainable Cities Project (SCP) in Dar es Salaam attempts to help communities in creating their own infrastructure as a jumping-­‐off point for city planning, rather than attempting to plan entire cities in one move. The Community Infrastructure Project (CIP) was born out of the SCP in Dar es Salaam and it sought to improve the living conditions of the target communities in Dar es Salaam in a

33

See Rosenberg, 1993

participatory manner involving several stakeholders. According to the executive summary for this project, the lessons learnt from its implementation were: • Dividing communities into smaller groups increases participation • Communities can flexibly negotiate their improvement projects if they are given the initiative to do so and if they are capacitated to know that they control their own destiny • Community projects implemented through participatory approaches require more time as compared to contractual works • Community contributions to infrastructure projects enhance ownership and further increases the community’s willingness to contribute towards the operation and maintenance of the infrastructure • Capacity Building of all stakeholders and Institutional Strengthening at the City Commission were the main success factors of the CIP • Community based projects demand specific skills which are not generically found in all professions and hence it was necessary to enlist the services of Irish Aid to focus on that aspect.

The Community Infrastructure Upgrading Programme (CIUP) is also being implemented in Dar es Salaam building on the lessons from the CIP. The pertinent emphasis in the CIUP is to implement detailed Community Environmental Profiling. Further findings from this second initiative were:

• The Communities can mobilize resources to contribute to their own development and poverty eradication initiatives provided they are involved throughout the project cycle • The nature of projects implemented have a bias on primary social needs such as schools, water, sanitation and transportation. A few environmental projects were also implemented such as afforestation, markets and irrigation projects. In all these aspects, the ‘brown’ environment does not play strongly into a sense of what the communities need, themselves.34

Urban Agriculture and Community Planning Urban Agriculture is one means of creating an urban-­‐rural interface. In larger and small cities, it helps alleviate the sharp distinction between the supporting hinterland and the dependent urban core.

Thus, even in smaller cities where rural land is accessible, urban agriculture helps create job diversification, community determination, and an interest in local legislation and land planning. The following case study discusses urban agriculture in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam.

In 1993, IDRC and UN-­‐HABITAT joined forces to support the Sustainable Dar es Salaam Project (SDP). The project’s goal was to strengthen the local capacity to plan and manage the growth and development of the city in partnership with the public, private, and popular sector. It was to lead to a new strategic urban development plan and policies for integrating urban agriculture into improved management of the city’s environment.

A series of city-­‐wide consultations identified nine priority environmental issues, ranging from solid waste management to the urban economy and petty trading. Each issue became the basis for smaller working groups tasked with detailing the problems and proposing action plans. At the insistence

34

MO-­‐RALF, 2007

of the Minister of Urban Development, urban agriculture was added to the working group dealing with recreational areas, open spaces, hazardous lands, and green belts.

To feed the policy-­‐making process, IDRC supported a team of six Tanzanian researchers led by Camillus Sawio. They surveyed nearly 2 000 urban farmers documenting the range of farming systems — aquaculture to agroforestry — in use across the city. They catalogued the areas under production, the numbers of people involved, the types of crops grown, and livestock raised. They examined changes and trends over the previous five years looking at related issues such as transportation, irrigation, waste management, marketing, and infrastructure connected to the processing and sale of urban agriculture products.

The researchers also looked at the interactions, both good and bad between, urban agriculture and the urban environment, as well as the role urban agriculture is already playing in recycling the municipality’s solid wastes. Most importantly, the researchers studied city by-­‐laws and other forms of regulation that have an impact on urban agriculture.

They found that inadequate enforcement, a lack of knowledge among urban dwellers and decision-­‐makers, as well as ambiguities in legislation may put the health of the local environment and communities at risk. Present bylaws, for example, allow residents to keep up to four animals in any “city area” providing they do not graze freely — a practice referred to as zero-­‐grazing. In the city centre, cattle are often kept in inadequate shelters with few options for safe waste disposal or composting. In some of the low-­‐density areas of the city, residents on larger lots keep more than the stipulated four head of cattle. To try and resolve these sorts of problems, researchers gathered recommendations from the urban farmers themselves on which activities should be prohibited or strictly regulated and why.

They critiqued the adequacy and enforceability of by-­‐laws and offered advice and assistance in revising them and writing new ones. By the time the SDP was completed in 1997, nine other Tanzanian municipalities were preparing to replicate the process.35

Urban Agriculture supplies food, and also ties people into community. (Photo: IDRC, Peter Bennett)

35

See Conway

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