Maxaquene. Counterintuitively, although Hananasif possessed these features, it is characterized by more public space than Maxaquene. This was suggested to be the result of local administration practices and a ‘slum upgrading’ initiative aimed at enlarging the streets of the settlement. The proposed methodology overcomes limitations of previous works, especially concerning replicability, scale, and robustness. It can be applied to further cases to gain a better understanding of local features of informal settlements and eventually guide ad-hoc strategies, which could deliver more effective urban planning and policies. The paper argues that limited informal land supply, partly caused by government control of the land market, leads to higher costs of accommodation and consequently fewer resources for private investments in infrastructures and home improvements. This, in turn, leads to proliferation of slum conditions in informal settlements, such as overcrowding and inadequate access to water and sanitation. The paper thus argues that accepting some modes of informal urban development will likely improve living conditions, as it would increase the informal land supply and thereby decrease the price of accommodation and free resources for investments in basic infrastructures. On this basis, the paper argues that governments should rather focus on guiding developments of informal settlements and invest in infrastructures rather than evicting them. This could be pioneered through state-financed allocation of small plots with leasehold titles on government-owned land, with allocation of sufficient street space, common water and sanitation units, and local guidance for auto construction without enforcement of the building code. The paper Urban Form of Informal Settlements in East Africa: A Taxonomy of Block Types (Venerandi & Mottelson, 2021) presents a taxonomic study at a fine level of spatial granularity of the urban form of five informal settlements, located in major cities of sub-Saharan Africa. More specifically, a k-means clustering is applied to eight indicators of urban form computed at block level, for each of the settlements under examination. The clustering analysis identified 10 different block types associated with distinctive features, such as blocks on public spaces (i.e., small, densely built, abundant public open space), fringe blocks (i.e., medium-sized, sparsely built, low local connectivity), blocks in the making (i.e., large, sparsely built, high levels of through movement at settlement level). While these findings may not cover all block types in informal settlements due to the limited number of cases, the taxonomy presents one of the first attempts to develop more generalizable quantitative descriptions of the urban form of informal settlements in East Africa. The paper Understanding Density in Unplanned and Unregulated Settlements of Peri-urban Africa: A Case Study of Maputo, Mozambique (Jenkins & Mottelson, 2020) analyze developments of built densities over a ten-year interval (2007-2017) using satellite photos of three case study areas in informal settlements compared with developments of population densities based on census data. The studies found
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increasing built densities in all three sample areas and decreasing population densities in the two more centrally located case study areas. The census data showed only 1% population growth within the municipality and more than 60% population growth in the larger metropolitan area over the ten-year interval. Accordingly, the two papers suggest that the rapidly growing urban population of Maputo is primarily accommodated through urban expansion. This could be seen as an indicator of unsustainable urban development and should arguably thus be considered a policy priority. The papers argue that the state capacity to control the urban growth will likely remain limited and efforts to curb the urban expansion should thus be focused on alternative policy measures to land use regulation. The papers suggest that such measures could include road pricing and construction of demonstration compact housing typologies which local residents could replicate.
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Agyemang, F. S., & Morrison, N. (2018). Recognising the barriers to securing affordable housing through the land use planning system in SubSaharan Africa: A perspective from Ghana. Urban Studies, 55(12), 2640–2659. https://doi. org/10.1177/0042098017724092 Alonso, W. (2013). Location and Land Use: Toward a General Theory of Land Rent. In Location and Land Use. Harvard University Press. https://www.degruyter. com/hup/view/title/320970 Álvarez, I. C., Prieto, Á. M., & Zofío, J. L. (2014). Cost Efficiency, Urban Patterns and Population Density When Providing Public Infrastructure: A Stochastic Frontier Approach. European Planning Studies, 22(6), 1235–1258. https://doi.org/10.1080/096543 13.2013.778957 Andersen, J. E., & Sollien, S. E. (2012). Home Space. Andreasen, M. H., McGranahan, G., Kyessi, A., & Kombe, W. (2020). Informal land investments and wealth accumulation in the context of regularization: Case studies from Dar es Salaam and Mwanza. Environment and Urbanization, 32(1), 89–108. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247819896265 Andreasen, M. H., & Møller-Jensen, L. (2017). Access to the city: Mobility patterns, transport and accessibility in peripheral settlements of Dar es Salaam. Journal of Transport Geography, 62, 20–29. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.05.005 Angel, S., Blei, A. M., Parent, J., Lamson-Hall, P., Galarza Sanchez, N., Civco, D. L., Qian Lei, R., & Thom, K. (2016). Atlas of Urban Expansion The 2016 Edition Volume 1: Areas and Densities (2016th ed., Vol. 1–1). NYU Urban Expansion Program at New York University, UN-Habitat, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
