Portuguese-speaking African countries, namely Angola and Mozambique, faced important political-economic and social transformations after their liberations in 1975. Given the geopolitical context of the time, these two countries went through a brief socialist period (1975/1985–90) before opening their economies to national and international markets, in tune with the expansion and consolidation of a fierce global neoliberal matrix currently strengthening, enduring, and prevailing. Regarding their development strategies and dynamics, the analysis of these African countries’ infrastructural policies and practices, as reverse to the housing question, is an important tool to amplify the comprehension of their urban realities, particularly of their capital cities, Luanda and Maputo, from the guiding key-notion of the right to the city (Lefebvre, Citation1968/2009). Following the Lefebvrian perspective (Ibidem), the right to the city aims the access to a better and dignified life, this including broad access to housing, infrastructures, and basic urban services, as well as to a more democratic urban management and openness to participation. This guiding concept represents, first of all, the city as work of art (oeuvre), oriented to the appropriation of space and to a collective realization, where all the inhabitants have the same liberty to satisfy their desires and needs, and to conduct the urbanization processes collectively.
The infrastructural options concerning both macro-level approaches and ground-based interventions were first of all influenced, conditioned or determined by the legacies of the Portuguese colonial regime and its so-called soft logics of power and domination, but also, more recently, by the massive migration movements heading toward central cities, motivated by civil wars and/or the search for better living conditions. Demographic issues also became important factors for the accelerated growth and urbanization of major cities in these Portuguese-speaking African countries. Given this framework, the (inter)connections between distinct urban contexts were of interest for this special issue, since they pave the path for the ample reading of its suburban realities, reinforcing the importance of infrastructural issues, such as those related to the public administration, its processes and agents, but also its spatial dimensions, particularly road systems, water and energy supply, sewages, and urban facilities. These are vital complements to access adequate housing and, in a broader and transformative sense, to help to (de)construct the meaning and pertinence of the right to the city, all the while understanding and giving new significances to the current urban scenario.
Most research works included in this special issue were presented in the thematic session that we chaired at the I International Congress Colonial and Post-colonial Landscapes. Architecture, Cities, Infraestructures, held in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, on 16–19 January 2019, untitled: (De)constructing the Right to the City: Infrastructural policies and practices in Portuguese-speaking African countries. The seven articles that integrate this collection are organized as follows: the first and second ones referring to both Angola and Mozambique, tracing a trajectory from the colonial past to the present; the third, fourth, and fifth referring exclusively to Luanda in current times; the last three ones concerning Maputo underlying the colonial legacies, current realities and everyday challenges. In both capital cities, Luanda, and Maputo, the urban transformations reflect simultaneously the building of citizenship and of the urban space, i.e., of housing, infrastructures, public space, amongst other complementary dimensions, in a world constantly changing.
Adopting a historiographical approach, based on the official Portuguese work reports, the first article of Ana Vaz Milheiro – Colonial landscapes in former Portuguese Southern Africa. A brief historiographical analysis based on the colonial transport networks – starts a discussion on the socio-spatial implications of the developmental politics and practices adopted by the Metropolis in the colonial heydays, focusing on the building of transport networks and mobilities. The dissemination and analysis of the official reports analyzed contributes to situate and interpret the colonial mind of the political agents occupying and transforming Angola and Mozambique, among other Portuguese-speaking African countries as well, during the late 19th and 20th centuries. As such, this article paves the path for a broader understanding of the current socio-spatial dynamics from the colonial legacies, as they tend to be supported by old forms of segregating interventions and/or routines.
In its turn, the work of Sílvia Jorge and Sílvia Viegas – Neoliberal urban legacies in Luanda and Maputo – focuses precisely on the urban transformations in contemporaneity, also bearing in mind former legacies all the while constituting new ones influencing or conditioning the future. Based on the in-depth empirical knowledge of the both authors regarding, respectively, Mozambique and Angola, this article uses the theoretical key-motto of the special issue – the right to the city – to critical analyze recent urban strategies, instruments, and practices with fierce socio-spatial impacts, at the origin of more or less strong actions of resistances and/or counter-actions. It also reflects on the global dominant tendencies and local specificities and opportunities in both capital cities so as to find alternatives to the commodification of the urban space inspiring more inclusive and emancipatory visions and intervention approaches.
The article of Miguel Dias – Centralized Clientelism, Real Estate Development and Economic Crisis: The case of postwar Luanda – also reflects on this fierce commodification process, particularly in Luanda, whilst analyzing state-led real estate development and housing delivery in the new millennium. This contribution argues that postwar urban and housing policies and practices in Angola are at the origin and support the current economic crisis, all the while strengthening the regime and the formation and consolidation of a clientelist elite. As a matter of fact, from 2002 onwards, urban transformations under the slogan of the one million houses programme aggravated social imbalances and territorial fragmentation. At the same time, the impacts of this operation are hindering structural economic transformation. By channeling the resources from the extraction of oil to high-end real estate development to a narrow fringe of the society the state generated a market-driven building oversupply clashing with the necessities and interests of the majority in need. Trends are difficult to predict in the post-2015 oil crisis, as a recently emerged power structure has occurred with impacts yet to be seen.
The second article of this set of reflections paved the path for a deep analysis of the commodified urban policies and realities in Angola, as followed by Dias. It also framed local resistances and counter-actions, grounding the article of Paulo Moreira – Practices of Protest in Luanda, Angola: A Chronology of Recent Urban Change in Chicala. This article uses the central location of Chicala to present the reactions of those residing in this informal neighborhood to the ongoing transformations to their built environment and the consequent probable evictions. The author interprets the protests of the inhabitants as acts of citizenship as they question the referred state-led development and the hegemonic official structures. In line with the key-motto of this special issue, the article of Paulo Moreira also helps to (de)construct the right to the city in Luanda, as it documents Chicala’s story all the while implicitly advocating an inspiring horizon from a bottom-up perspective.
How can we understand the so many different ways of ‘being urban’? Taking the Mozambican capital city as a unique case study, the article of Murad Vaz, Cila Fernanda da Silva, Daiane Bertoli and Daniella Reche – Maputo: citizenship, everyday life, and public space – pursues this question, assuming that these dimensions are fundamental to identify and analyze the current urban dynamics. This engagement occurs in a close dialogue between the global and local production of space. Following a decolonial approach, the authors present a plural and multidimensional vision of the cultural and urban diversity of the Mozambican capital city, all the while expanding the many possibilities of ‘being urban.’ Their critical analysis concludes that the colonial attitude against citizenship, everyday life and public space permits new perspectives and processes of urban research.
The research work of Jéssica Lage – The struggle for access to essential infrastructures in self-produced pericentral neighborhoods of Maputo – identifies the contextual periods that determined the transformation and consolidation of Maputo’s urban fabric, whilst analyzing the processes, the policies and the practices oriented to the access to roads and water, sanitation, and electricity networks. The main objective of Lage’s article is to identify the limitations and potentialities of the infrastructural systems, underlying alternative initiatives, and mechanisms to overcome the many difficulties identified. It shows various initiatives advocated by different urban agents over time, taking into account the resident’s socio-economic, cultural, and spatial differences, as well as their roles and responsibilities concerning infrastructural provision, recognizing the importance of mediation between community powers, state entities, and service providers.
Finally, the article of Ana Beja da Costa and Anna Mazzolini – Maputo’s coastline in mutation. Current infrastructures impacts in Costa do Sol’s landscape – deconstructs the landscape of this paradigmatic case study from the different kinds of interventions that have occurred in the site, mainly after the recent building of the Circular de Maputo. The analysis of the impacts of this mega infrastructure grounds the discussion around its opportunities and challenges to the current development of the Mozambican city, taking into account the Costa do Sol natural capital and the daily life of its population. The authors’ advocacy of a balance between built and green infrastructure follows the importance of Costa do Sol coastal landscape and of the role of urban planning in the preservation of the green/natural spaces. It also stresses the resident’s aspirations to a much-needed urban life quality.
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Reference
- Lefebvre, H. (1968/2009). Le Droit à la Ville. Economica; Anthropos.