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ABSTRACT
This paper interrogates what has and has not changed in 100 years of professional planning in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The geographical focus is on the area of the historic core of the city known as Ng’ambo (a KiSwahili place-name meaning ‘the Other Side’). The gap between formal plans for infrastructure, housing, or neighbourhood development, and their implementation, is examined in its evolution over this century. The central focus of the empirical examination resides with the most recent planning initiatives, since 2011, which present a strongly inclusive and participatory emphasis for planning on the Other Side. The key research question is this: has this new era of inclusive planning strengthened the urban poor majority’s citizenship, or has it continued the long run of state planning failures for Ng’ambo’s residents? This essay argues that, despite progressive ambitions, in implementation there are a number of continuities with both colonial and post-independence planning, where outside powers and elite interests have predominated. The paper is built from more than thirty years of the author’s research on urban planning in Ng’ambo and engagement with the literature of urban planning studies in Africa and the Global South.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks the Department of Urban and Rural Planning (DoURP), previously the Department of Urban Planning and Surveys, in the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. This paper is dedicated to the memory of the late Makame Ali Haji Muhajir, staff member of the department from 1985 and its director from 1994 to 2000. Thanks also to former DoURP Director Muhammed Juma, DoURP Acting Director (in 2021) Mohamed Habib, and (retired) DoURP Archivist Mohamed Mzee.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Declaration of interest statement
The revolutionary government’s planning department served as host institution for my research in 1991–1992, 1995, 1997, 1998–2000, 2003, 2006–2008, and 2019. I have never been an employee of the department, nor has the department ever controlled my research, findings or publications.
Notes
1 Juma, “Foreword,” 8.
2 Lanchester, Zanzibar: A Study; Kendall, Zanzibar Town Planning Scheme; Scholz, Zanzibar Town Planning Scheme; Kequan, Zanzibar Town Master Plan; Department of Urban and Rural Planning [DoURP], ZanPlan 2015.
3 DoURP, Ng’ambo Local Area Plan.
4 Selected publications include: Myers, “Making the Socialist City”; Myers, “A Stupendous Hammer”; Myers, “Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge”; and Myers, “Infrastructures of Submarine Urbanism.”
5 For instance see: Oldfield and Parnell, “From the South”; Parnell and Robinson, “(Re)Theorizing Cities from the Global South”; Patel, “Is there a ‘South’”; Robinson, Comparative Urbanism; Roy, “Worlding the South”; Schindler, “Paradigm of Southern Urbanism”; Simone and Pieterse, New Urban Worlds; Watson, “Seeing from the South.”
6 Cobbinah and Addaney, Geography of Climate Change; De Satgé, and Watson, Global South; Folkers and van Buiten, Modern Architecture in Africa; Gebregiorgis et al., Planning Cities in Africa; Harrison and Croese, “Persistence and Rise”; Meuser and Dalbai, Architectural Guide; Ncube and Lufumpa, Infrastructure in Africa.
7 Doherty, Waste Worlds; Ese and Ese, City Makers of Nairobi; Morton, Age of Concrete; Omolo-Okalebo, Evolution of Town Planning in Kampala; Smith, Nairobi in the Making; Tomás, Skin of the City.
8 Home, Of Planting and Planning; Omolo-Okalebo, Evolution of Town Planning in Kampala.
9 De Satgé, and Watson, Global South; Croese et al., “Persistent, Pragmatic and Prolific.”
10 Ese and Ese, City Makers of Nairobi, 6.
11 Folkers, “Planning and Re-Planning Ng’ambo”; Longair, Cracks in the Dome.
12 Croese and Harrison, “New Forms of Urban Planning,” 4.
13 Fabian, Making Identity, 8–9.
14 Fair, Pastimes and Politics; Bissell, Urban Design.
15 Livingstone, Last Journal of David Livingstone, 6–7.
16 Christie, Cholera Epidemics, 306.
17 Burton, Zanzibar: City, Island, 102.
18 Lonka, The Other Side, 30; Juma, “Foreword,” 8
19 Lanchester, Zanzibar: A Study, 51; see also Home, Of Planting and Planning.
20 Myers, “A Stupendous Hammer.”
21 Crofton, Zanzibar Affairs.
22 Myers and Muhajir, “Afterlife of the Lanchester Plan.”
23 Myers, Reconstructing Ng’ambo.
24 Harris and Myers, “Hybrid Housing”; Myers, Reconstructing Ng’ambo; Myers, “Designing Power”; Myers, Verandahs of Power.
25 Kendall had a major role in town planning in British-mandate Palestine, but, like Lanchester, he had only a minor commitment to the Zanzibar plan, which most Zanzibari planners associate instead with the colonial town planning officer in Zanzibar at the time, Geoffrey Mill; see Home, Of Planting and Planning; Myers, Reconstructing Ng’ambo.
26 Myers, “Sticks and Stones.”
27 Bissell, Urban Design; Fair, Pastimes and Politics; Issa, From ‘Stinkibar’ to Zanzibar.
28 Kamata, Becoming Nationalist, 119–20.
29 Myers, “Making the Socialist City.”
30 Scholz, “Socially Sustainable Socialist Homes,” 318; Scholz, Zanzibar Town Planning Scheme.
31 Wimmelbrücker, “The German Democratic Republic”; Wimmelbrücker, “Architecture and City Planning.”
32 Ibid.
33 Scholz, “Socially Sustainable Socialist Homes,” 418.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., 419.
37 Sheriff is cited in DoURP and African Architecture Matters [AAM], Ng’ambo Atlas; see also Myers, “Making the Socialist City.”
38 Folkers and van Buiten, Modern Architecture in Africa, 74.
39 Myers, “Social Construction of Peri-Urban Places.”
40 Kequan, Zanzibar Town Master Plan; Myers, “Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge.”
41 DoURP and AAM, Ngambo Atlas; Folkers and van Buiten, Modern Architecture in Africa.
42 Myers, Reconstructing Ng’ambo; Myers, Rethinking Urbanism.
43 Myers, Disposable Cities.
44 DoURP, National Spatial Development Strategy.
45 DoURP, Ng’ambo Local Area Plan, 6.
46 Ibid.
47 DoURP and AAM, Ng’ambo Atlas; Perzyna, et al., “Everyday Originals.”
48 Myers, “Infrastructure of Submarine Urbanism.”
49 World Bank, “Implementation Completion Report Review.”
50 World Bank, “Implementation Status and Results Report.”
51 Myers, Rethinking Urbanism.
52 Ibid.
53 DoURP, Ng’ambo Local Area Plan, 96.
54 Perzyna et al., “Everyday Originals.”
55 DoURP, Ng’ambo Local Area Plan.
56 Myers, Reconstructing Ng’ambo.
57 DoURP, Redevelopment of Kwahani, 7.
58 All quotations here and those that follow are anonymized to protect the identity of the speakers.
59 DoURP and AAM, Ng’ambo Atlas.
60 Myers, Rethinking Urbanism.
61 Myers, Reconstructing Ng’ambo.
62 Mwinyi, Mzee Rukhsa.
63 Barry, “Zanzibar”; Barry, “House of Wonders”; Longair, Cracks in the Dome; Meier, Swahili Port Cities.
64 Zanzibar Mail Staff, “US$21 Million Deal.”
65 Myers, Verandahs of Power.
66 Ibid.
67 Gurnah, Gravel Heart, 195–7.
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Garth Andrew Myers
Garth Andrew Myers is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies at Trinity College, where he also serves as Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies. He is the author of five books, co-editor of two others, and author or co-author of more than 90 research articles or book chapters. The primary focus of his research for more than thirty years has been on the history and politics of urban planning in Africa.