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African urban fantasies: Dreams or nightmares?

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DOI: 10.1177/0956247813513705

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 African urban fantasies: dreams or
nightmares?

Vanessa Watson

Vanessa Watson is ABSTRACT Labelled as the “last frontier” for international property development,
based in the City and sub-Saharan Africa’s larger cities are currently being revisioned in the image of
Regional Planning Masters cities such as Dubai, Shanghai and Singapore, which claim top positions in the
Programme and the
African Centre for Cities
world-class city leagues. Draped in the rhetoric of “smart cities” and “eco-cities”,
at the University of Cape these plans promise to modernize African cities and turn them into gateways for
Town, South Africa. She international investors and showpieces for ambitious politicians. Yet the reality
is a founder and current in all of these cities stands in stark contrast to the glass-box towers, manicured
co-chair of the Association lawns and water features on developers’ and architects’ websites. With the
of African Planning Schools
majority of urban populations living in deep poverty and with minimal urban
and writes about planning
in cities in the global South. services, the most likely outcome of these fantasy plans is a steady worsening of the
She was lead consultant marginalization and inequalities that already beset these cities.
of the 2009 UN−Habitat
Global Report on Human KEYWORDS African cities / eco-cities / property development / satellite cities /
Settlements: Planning
Sustainable Cities.
smart cities
Address: School of
Architecture, Planning and
Geomatics, University of I. INTRODUCTION
Cape Town, Rondebosch,
Cape Town 7701, South
The urban plans for Africa’s larger cities, if they exist at all, are usually
Africa; e-mail: Vanessa.
Watson@uct.ac.za to be found in dilapidated condition, perhaps pinned to the wall in a
central government ministry or folded into a large technical report. Most
often, they reflect a static land use zoning plan covering the older parts
of the city and they usually bear little relationship to what is actually on
1. UN−Habitat (2009), Global the ground.(1) But this is changing fast. The proposed new urban master
Report on Human Settlements plans for many of Africa’s larger cities are now to be found on the websites
2009: Planning Sustainable
Cities, Earthscan, London, 306 of international architectural, engineering and property development
pages. companies, and they depart even further from African urban reality than
did the post-colonial zoning plans. Visions for these future cities reflect
images of Dubai, Singapore or Shanghai, although iconic building shapes
from elsewhere in the world may be thrown in for good measure. And
while the glass tower buildings and landscaped freeways suggest a revived
Corbusian modernism, the accompanying texts also promise that these
plans will deliver the more fashionable eco-cities and smart cities.
The urban fantasies portrayed on these websites reflect a notion that
Africa is “rising” (a term used frequently by both politicians and global
investors and following on, perhaps, from earlier assertions that India,
China and Asia have been “rising”). Pronouncements from investment
2. McKinsey & Company analysts such as McKinsey(2) that Africa is economically the second fastest-
(2012), “Africa at work: job
creation and inclusive growth”,
growing region in the world, that by 2035 it will have a larger workforce
McKinsey Global Institute, 18 than India or China, and that it is set to urbanize faster than these two
pages. regions, have no doubt excited the interest of the international property
Environment & Urbanization Copyright © 2013 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). 215
Vol 26(1): 215–231. DOI: 10.1177/0956247813513705 www.sagepublications.com
ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

development sector, which can anticipate a steadily rising demand for

urban projects and infrastructure.(3) In fact, African cities have been 3. See the Knight Frank reports
referred to as the “last development frontier”,(4) anticipating that as urban (http://www.KnightFrank.com)
for an overview of the African
land and development move to saturation in Asia and the East, Africa’s property market.
urban property market will be coming on stream and growing fast. 4. http://www.kenyahomesguide
However, these new urban visions and development plans appear .com/227/tatu-city-estate-
to disregard the fact that at the moment, the bulk of the population launches-in-nairobi/, accessed
in sub-Saharan Africa cities is extremely poor and living in informal 24 August 2013.

settlements. Some of these settlements are on well-located urban land

that is also attractive to property developers. Attempts to implement
these fantasy plans within existing cities will (and is already) having
major exclusionary effects on vulnerable low-income groups through
evictions and relocations. Moreover, these development interests bring
with them a host of additional demands − for new and particular forms
of urban infrastructure and for forms of governance and decision-making
that facilitate the realization of property investment interests. Michael
Goldman(5) has termed these processes “speculative urbanism”, drawing 5.Goldman, M (2011),
on the case of Bangalore where the main business of government has “Speculative urbanism and the
making of the next world city”,
become that of land speculation and the dispossession of those living on International Journal of Urban
land earmarked for private development. and Regional Research Vol 35,
The purpose of this paper is to suggest that processes of speculative No 3, pages 555−581.
urbanism, although undoubtedly set to take different forms from those
in South Asia and in Bangalore, are beginning to make an appearance
on the African continent. Private sector urban development in Africa is
certainly not new, but the interest of international property companies in
developing anew at the citywide scale, or often the city-region scale where
satellite cities are involved, seems to post-date the 2008 financial crisis and
may well be tied to the wider downturn in property markets elsewhere.
There is little published research on these new plans as yet, and this paper is
based largely on internet sources. The information was compiled primarily
through an internet search using African city names and the term “master
plan” and through a scan of the websites of the dozen or so international
property development companies that focus on Africa. New images for
Africa’s cities appear on the internet with great regularity, with many of
these now compiled by the website www.urbanafrica.net.
This paper begins with a review of the new plans, which tend to take
the form of urban renewal, urban extensions or entirely new satellite
cities. It then locates them within the broader discourse on urban form:
“new urbanism”, “smart cities” and “eco-cities” are all globally circulating
terms that have all found their way into these plans as part of their
promotion. These concepts link in various ways to a growing network of
interests in “future cities”, which includes an interesting mix of property
developers, designers, engineering and infrastructure companies, finance
and IT firms and those promoting urban sustainability. The last part of
the paper considers what the possible impact of these proposed urban
interventions might be, both in terms of those currently living in these
cities and those on surrounding land.

II. AFRICAN URBAN FANTASIES: MAKE-OVERS, SATELLITES AND

EXTENSIONS

The plans reviewed here have the following in common:

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 A frican urban fantasies : dreams or nightmares ?

•• they are large scale, in that they involve the re-planning of all or
large parts of an existing city or (more often) restructuring a city
through the creation of linked but new satellite cities;
• they consist of graphically represented and three-dimensional
visions of future cities rather than detailed land use plans, and
most of these visions are clearly influenced by cities such as
Dubai, Shanghai or Singapore;
• there are clear attempts to link these physical visions to
contemporary rhetoric on urban sustainability, risk and new
technologies, underpinned by the ideal that through these cities
Africa can be “modernized”;
• they are either on the websites of the global companies that have
developed them or are on government websites with references
to their origins within private sector companies;
• their location in the legal or governance structures of a country is
not clear – where formal city plans exist these visions may simply
parallel or over-ride them; and
•• there is no reference to any kind of participation or democratic
debate that has taken place.

There may be currently only one plan that aims to replace an existing
6. Although the Ethiopian city with something entirely new, namely the plan for Kigali, in Rwanda.(6)
Herald (1 July 2013) does make The rest of the new plans propose major projects within a city, urban
reference to a new master
plan for Addis Ababa, which extensions or new satellite cities. The Kigali Conceptual Master Plan(7) was
aims to “… give the capital a developed by the Oz Architecture Team, based in the United States, and
majestic look”, and the online was adopted by the Rwandan parliament in 2008. Oz and the Singapore
publication AllAfrica (7 July
2013) reports on plans in Addis
company, Surbana, developed more detailed plans. Figures 1A and 1B
for the tallest building in Africa suggest high-modernism (glass box towers, landscaped boulevards and
– a 99-storey hotel/retail tower freeways), yet the rhetoric is about sustainability. Dubai and Singapore are
to be built by the Guangdong clear sources of inspiration, although London’s “Gherkin” (the popular
Chuanhui Group.
name given to a 41-storey building at 30 St Mary Axe) can be seen in
7. http://www.rdb.rw/uploads/
media/KIGALI_CONCEPTUAL_ the background of one graphic. Rwanda considers itself the “Switzerland
Master_Plan.pdf, accessed 30 of Africa”, with a clear commitment to business-friendly development,
June 2013. and the plan reflects this vision of its government. Doherty(8) reports that
8. Doherty, K (2013), “Kigali – implementation of the new plan is underway, although the new statement
remaking the city”, Cityscapes
towers are sparsely occupied. Finance and construction can be linked
Vol 3, pages 30−31, available at
http://www.cityscapesdigital. back to global circuits of property construction − with the China Civil
net/. Engineering Construction Corporation and New Century Developments
(a real estate company based in Hong Kong and with a Rwanda branch)
having jointly constructed and financed most of Kigali’s simulated skyline.
9. UN−Habitat (2010), The State By contrast, a 2010 UN−Habitat report(9) stated that 90 per cent of Kigali’s
of African Cities, Governance, population lives in informal housing or with unregulated (unrecognized)
Inequality and Urban Land
Markets, Nairobi, 270 pages. tenure. Evictions in Kigali had been reported prior to the adoption of the
new plan, but seemingly have been stepped up to make room for the new
urban projects. The extent of these evictions, or where these households
have moved to, is not clear.
By far the bulk of new urban fantasy plans takes the form of new
satellite cities adjacent to an existing larger city. Eastern and western sub-
Saharan Africa seem to have attracted most of these to date, although there
10. “Nairobi 2030”, accessed are also examples in Angola. Just a selection of these is described below.
1 July 2013 at http://www. The Nairobi 2030 Metro Strategy(10) was unveiled by the Kenyan
tatucity.com/DynamicData/
Downloads/NM_Vision_2030. government in 2008. Its stated aim is to make Nairobi “a world class
pdf. African metropolis” and the emphasis on world class appears in almost

217
ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

F I G U R E S 1 A and 1 B
Kigali Conceptual Master Plan
NOTE: Plan/graphics developed by OZ Architects, Denver, USA (http://www.
ozarch.com) and Surbana (http://www.surbana.com).

SOURCE: http://www.rdb.rw/uploads/media/KIGALI_CONCEPTUAL_Master_Plan.
pdf.

every section of the document. Thereafter, an international competition

was launched to design a spatial concept to accompany the plan. Some
15 satellite cities were proposed in this plan, but so far none have
materialized. The rationale in the 2030 Metro Strategy for these new cities
is that Nairobi is over-congested and the satellites will redirect future
population growth away from the “mother” city. The strategy document
notes that these new centres will provide “… a wide range of lifestyle choices
outside of work [which] will complement the envisaged business success of the
region.”(11) 11. See reference 10, page 12.
Two of these new cities have reached an advanced planning stage
and have established websites. Tatu City,(12) to be built on productive 12. http://www.tatucity.com/,
coffee land, is planned for 70,000 residents and 30,000 day visitors. accessed 1 July 2013.
The developers claim that Tatu City “… will attract discerning residents,
companies and retailers who wish to live, work and play in the most modern,
well-planned urban development in East Africa.”(13) Financing was supposed 13. See reference 12, page 1.
to be underwritten by Moscow-based Renaissance Partners, which the
Tatu City website describes as the world’s leading emerging markets
investment bank, but the project is now tied up in a court case over land
acquisition. Figure 2 shows the hoped-for landscaped lawns, uncongested
freeways and commercial buildings.
Konza Techno City,(14) 60 kilometres from Nairobi, is planned for 14. http://www.konzacity.
30,000 residents and is supposed to be a Kenyan Silicon Valley. The first co.ke/, accessed 1 July 2013.
phase is expected to cost US$ three billion and will include a 5,000 acre
“technology park” (Figure 3). The Kenyan government has evidently been
looking for a single developer to plan and fund this project, but a lack 15. See AllAfrica, 13 May 2013
of part-funding of infrastructure by government appears to have been and 26 June 2013.
holding up the process. The online news publication AllAfrica has also 16. http://www.machakosg
been reporting on disputes with local landowners.(15) overnment.com/Governme
ntPhotosMachakos.aspx?
A third proposed satellite city, called Machakos City,(16) is to be PhotoID=6, accessed 4 August
located next to the existing and older town of Machakos, which is close 2013.

218
 A frican urban fantasies : dreams or nightmares ?

FIGURE 2
Tatu City, Nairobi
NOTE: Plan/graphics developed by Rendeavor (Renaissance Group) (http://www.
rengroup.com/UrbanDevelopments).

SOURCE: http://www.tatucity.com/.

FIGURE 3
Konza Techno City, Nairobi
NOTE: Graphics developed by Pell Frischmann (http://www.pellfrischmann.com/
search.php?query=Konza+City&x=10&y=11).

SOURCE: http://www.konzacity.co.ke/.

to Nairobi. The interesting aspect of this proposed satellite is that it is

being promoted by the government of Machakos County rather than by
national government, reflecting a regional initiative under Kenya’s new

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ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

system of devolved government. The new governor of the county promises

an airport that will compete with Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International
Airport, a Formula 1 racetrack and free land for investors(17) in Machakos 17. http://www.youtube.com/
City, indicating a degree of regional competitiveness emerging in Kenya. watch?v=9MSz3M_6pKU.
Gibb International (also Gibb Africa), originally a British engineering
company but now Kenyan owned, has produced the plans and designs.
Hope City is a new satellite “technology” city to be built at Prampram
outside Accra, in Ghana. It was designed by Italian architect Paulo Brescia
and will be built by RLG Communications, a Ghana-based IT company, at
an estimated cost of US$ 10 billion. Reportedly, Microsoft will be a partner
in this development. It will consist of six linked towers (Figure 4), which will
house 25,000 residents and 50,000 workers. These towers, which seem to
bear no relationship to their surrounding environment, were supposedly
inspired by ancient mud and thatched huts arranged into a compound
typical of traditional African society. It will also, according to the website,
be highly sustainable and promote green building technology.(18) The site 18. http://www.rlgghana.com/
for Hope City was recently shifted from Dunkunaa to the larger site at index.php/2013-02-07-11-25-
04.html, accessed 4 July 2013.
Prampram, but Dunkunaa residents claimed the project had incurred the
displeasure of the gods when the developers refused to acknowledge the
chiefs and elders of the area.(19) 19. http://www.modernghana.
Luanda, the capital city of Angola, seems to have spawned a range of com/news/468095/1/
confusion-rocks-hope-city-
satellite cities, including the well-publicized Chinese-built “ghost towns”: project.html, accessed 4 July
these are cities comprising tower blocks of apartments selling at between 2011.
US$ 150,000−200,000 each, when most Angolans live on less than US$
2 a day.(20) In addition, Luanda Satellite City (for 890,000 people) was 20. http://mg.co.za/
designed by the property development company Dar el Handasah Shair, article/2012-11-23-00-angolan-
trophy-city-a-ghost-town,
which has head offices in Beirut, Cairo, London and Pune. This is a luxury accessed 5 July 2013.
development, but the same company is developing “resettlement areas”
many kilometres outside of Luanda for residents who currently live in
Luanda’s informal settlements or who are displaced by new developments

FIGURE 4
Hope City, Accra
NOTE: Plan/graphics developed by Italian architects OBR (http://www.obr.eu).

SOURCE: http://www.rlgghana.com/index.php/2013-02-07-11-25-04.html.

220
 A frican urban fantasies : dreams or nightmares ?

there. These are tiny matchbox houses with little sign of any facilities,
and clearly very far away from work opportunities. Nova Vida, for 30,000
people, is another Luanda satellite city being built by Aurecon, a South
African-based construction company with global reach. These five- to six-
storey apartment blocks, like the ghost towns, are likely to be financially
unaffordable for most Angolans.
Taking a somewhat different form from separate satellite cities, a
number of Africa’s major centres are also developing large urban projects
within or on their urban edges. But like the satellite city or whole-city
plans, they are commercially driven and aimed at a middle- and upper-
income market.
Kigamboni City (Figure 5) on the edge of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)
claims it will be an eco-city that will relieve Dar es Salaam of congestion
and land shortages. This project has been supported by the current
Minister of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements, Anna Tabaijuka
(previous head of UN−Habitat and remembered for her promotion of
inclusive cities), and the first phase will be developed by the companies
Mi World from Dubai−United Arabs Emirates and China Hope Limited.
Plans were developed by a state-owned Korean company, LH Consortium,
which appears to initiate new cities in various parts of Africa and Asia. The

FIGURE 5
Kigamboni, Dar es Salaam
NOTE: In order to bring the plan to its actual realization, the government
engaged a Korean consulting firm, LH Consortium, to prepare a master plan
for New Kigamboni City. In May 2010, the consultant submitted a main report
– entitled New Kigamboni City Three-dimensional Master Plan, LH Consortium
(http://world.lh.or.kr/englh_html/englh_biz/biz_5.asp) − although there is no
mention of Kigamboni on their present website.

SOURCE: http://allafrica.com/stories/201305291042.html.

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ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

some 82,000 households currently living on the site have been promised
compensation to cover part of the costs of accessing the new units that
are to be built there. Yet the proposed “dream city”, anticipated to deliver
“… an ultra-modern urban centre with facilities competing with those in places
like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia”,(21) may only be affordable for a very few of these residents. 21. http://www.allafrica.com/
Traditional mono-functional zoning demarcates the area into five land stories/201305291042.html;
also http://www.hhhggg.
use zones, namely business, industry, education, residential and tourism, netorage.com:8711/harddisk/
and a road hierarchy that is oriented towards a car-owning public divides user/37vision/mission/
these zones. tanzania/Kigamboni_A.pdf,
accessed 4 July 2013.
In Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, a new development
called Cité le Fleuve (Figure 6) has been designed by a consortium
of international design companies and will occupy two “islands” on
reclaimed land in the Congo River.(22) It will include mixed retail, office 22. De Boeck, P (2012),
and residential development and one of the islands will be devoted to “Spectral Kinshasa: building the
city through an architecture
up-market residential accommodation. Hawkwood Properties (described of words”, in T Edensor and M
as a specialist fund manager based in Africa but serving European and Jayne (editors), Urban Theory
US investors) appears to be coordinating the development. De Boeck(23) Beyond the West: A World of
Cities, Routledge, New York.
describes billboards in the city for this and other urban renewal projects
23. See reference 22.
that promise to bring “modernization” and make Kinshasa a “model for
the rest of Africa”. In reality, though, Kinshasa is a war-ravaged city of
some nine million people, the majority of whom live in deep poverty and
eke out a living from small informal businesses.
A further example of this kind of project is Eko Atlantic, located on
an infill site on Victoria Island in Lagos, and the stage of development is
clearly visible on Google Earth. This project is close to central Lagos and
only peripheral to the extent that it is situated on newly created land that
projects into the sea. The developers are Dar el Handasah Shair with MZ
Architects, based in the Middle East, and funders are local and international.
Eko Atlantic claims to be the largest urban development project in Africa,
which will solve Lagos’ problems of congestion and infrastructure decay.
It will be a city built on 10 square kilometres of reclaimed land and will
hold 250,000 people.(24) As with other projects discussed here, the graphics 24. http://www.ekoatlantic.
(Figures 7A and 7B) show strong influences of high modernist architecture, com/broadcast-media/journey-
of-eko-atlantic-2012/, accessed
and visual references to other “iconic” eastern cities. 4 July 2013.

III. RATIONALES: REAL AND IMAGINED

These new city plans, satellite cities and large urban projects in sub-Saharan
Africa are a relatively recent phenomenon. Most date from the last five or
six years, although certain projects such as Eko Atlantic were considered
earlier but only gained momentum in the last few years. While detailed
research needs to be carried out, the fact that the private sector (with bases
in, or links to, economically stronger regions of the world) has become
a dominant player in nearly all of these projects (excluding the Chinese-
built ghost cities) suggests that global economic forces are interacting
with local African contexts in new ways. It is possible to speculate that
the downturn in demand for property and urban development in global
North regions after the 2008 financial crisis drove both built environment
professionals and property investment companies to seek new markets
in those parts of the world where economic growth and demand for new
urban growth continued: particularly in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

222
 A frican urban fantasies : dreams or nightmares ?

FIGURE 6
Kinshasa: Cité le Fleuve
NOTE: Plan/graphics developed by Hawkwood Properties (http://www.
lacitedufleuve.com/aboutus.php). The major shareholder is Mukwa Investment
(http://www.hedgeweek.com/2007/01/19/hedgeweek-interview-hillary-
duckworth-chief-investment-officer-mukwa-fund-unearthing-oppo).

SOURCE: http://www.lacitedufleuve.com/.

F I G U R E s 7 A and 7 B
Eko Atlantic, Lagos
NOTE: Plan/graphics developed by Dar al Handasah Shair (http://www.dargroup.
com).

SOURCE: http://www.ekoatlantic.com/broadcast-media/journey-of-eko-
atlantic-2012/.

The African continent is very diverse, however, and there is no

doubt that foreign capital in search of investment opportunities would
be influenced in various ways by particular local economies and income
growth as well as by political factors, available local partners, land and
banking conditions, infrastructure and so on. The price per square metre
223
ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

of property(25) can give some indication of which cities are attractive to 25. http://www.globalproperty
guide.com.
investors, and Kenya and Tanzania show up as third and fourth ranked
on the continent. South African property prices are four times higher
than in either of these countries, but growth of value here has been slow
or negative relative to Nairobi or Dar es Salaam. However, cities such
as Kinshasa, Kigali or Luanda do not show up on these charts, so there
are clearly other factors attracting private investment. The MasterCard
African Cities Growth Index(26) assesses the investment potential of cities 26. Angelopulo, G and
based on a range of criteria (including political stability, rule of law etc.). Y Hedrick-Wong (2013),
“MasterCard African cities
According to this index, Accra is the best performer across all indices, growth index (2013)”,
followed by Lusaka and Luanda. Both Accra and Luanda have fantasy MasterCard Worldwide Insights,
satellite cities but there is nothing of a similar scale evident in or near 20 pages.
Lusaka yet. Clearly, it is not possible to generalize about the factors driving
these projects other than the willing engagement of senior government
officials and politicians, without which such projects would have little
traction.
Other local factors that are probably playing a role in the appearance
of these new projects are the expected increase in the size of Africa’s urban
population (this could double in the next 20 years and urban populations
are growing at 3.9 per cent per annum(27)) and a growing urban middle 27. The World Bank (2012),
class. Again, however, both of these claimed attractors must be viewed with The Future of Water in African
Cities: Why Waste Water?,
caution. Statements that Africa now has some of the highest urbanization Washington DC, 168 pages.
rates in the world are found in many policy and assessment reports on
sub-Saharan Africa. Certainly, urbanization (and urban growth as a result
of natural increase) is occurring and is fuelling demand for urban land
and property development. However, recent United Nations Population
Division figures show that Asia is urbanizing more rapidly than Africa,(28) 28. United Nations Population
and Potts(29) has argued that claims of very rapid African urbanization Division (2011), World
Urbanization Prospects: the
may be overstated and rates may be higher in smaller towns than in the 2011 Revision Highlights, New
largest and capital cities. Despite these indications, it is the largest cities York, 50 pages.
that are attracting most property development interest. 29. Potts, D (2009), “The
Agencies such as Deloittes(30) state that Africa’s middle class has slowing of sub-Saharan
tripled over the last 30 years and is now the fastest growing in the world. A Africa’s urbanization: evidence
and implications for urban
growing urban middle class generates demand for formal housing, public livelihoods”, Environment and
facilities and amenities, retail outlets and transport routes for growing car Urbanization Vol 21, No 1,
ownership, and are certainly potential customers for the kinds of urban pages 253−259.
environments portrayed in the urban fantasy plans referred to above. This 30. http://www.deloitte.com/
assets/Dcom-SouthAfrica/
class also provides a consumer market for goods and services of all kinds, Local%20Assets/Documents/
and hence investment in production and services buildings. A growing rise_and_rise.pdf.
middle class therefore fuels demand for well-located and serviced urban
land and development projects as well as architectural styles considered
“aspirational” or “modern”. Deloittes are cautious on the definition
of a middle class. They note that the African Development Bank uses
as a definition those spending US$ 2−20 a day, and even the “upper
middle class” as US$ 10−20 a day spenders. It is difficult to imagine how
households with such minimal spending power can afford the luxury
apartments portrayed in the fantasy plans (as well as the vehicles needed
to move around these new cities), and (as in the case of Luanda’s Chinese
ghost cities) it may be that prospective property developers are seriously
misreading the African market.
African middle-class consumer tastes probably align closely with the
images portrayed in the fantasy plans, as they all offer environments that
are (hyper) modern, high status, clean and well-serviced; and they appear
224
 A frican urban fantasies : dreams or nightmares ?

to be free of the congestion, pollution and what is often described as the

“disorder” of existing cities. The support given to these plans by local
politicians and governments is also significant. Both may consider that
they will gain some political support from the successful implementation
of these projects and there may be direct or indirect financial gain as
well. But the frequency of references to a desire to become a “world-class
31. Acuto, M (2010), “High-rise city” suggests that other rationales are present. Acuto(31) has attempted to
Dubai urban entrepreneurialism explain this phenomenon in the context of Dubai by examining its quest
and the technology of symbolic
power”, Cities Vol 27, pages to use “symbolic power” to establish itself as a twenty-first century global
272−284. city. The exercise of symbolic power involves the production of narratives
promoting the city and addressed to global elites; it also implies a concern
with the importance of a city in relation to other cities rather than the
extent to which it functions for its citizens. One important vehicle for
promotional narratives is the built environment, which has to be not only
“modern” but also has to display an iconic identity: skyscrapers (towers)
are commonly used but also ultra-modern and distinctive airports, trade
32. See reference 31. centres, office blocks and retail centres. Acuto(32) notes the tendency to
describe new tower block complexes as self-contained (“a city within a
city”) and themed: examples from Dubai are Internet City and Waterfront
City. Populations that live, work and shop in these gigantic “gated
communities” therefore never need to interact with the rest of the city.
The tendency to label buildings in ways that confer particular
identities and emphasize their modern-ness has also been extended to
whole new planned cities. The two most common “rationales” used by the
architects and developers of new satellite cities and major in-city projects
are that they are smart cities or (less frequently) eco-cities. Nairobi’s
satellite Konza Techno City and Ghana’s Hope City both claim to be smart
cities, suggesting that they are globally connected, infrastructurally wired
and operate through technological innovations. Smart cities also often
claim to be sustainable on the basis of these technologies. Labelling new
developments as “smart” or “eco” is certainly part of the exercise of Acuto’s
“symbolic power” and are no doubt part of a marketing ploy to encourage
local and other investors. But both terms also link to important debates in
the urban and planning literature on how cities can maximize the benefits of
technology and how they can become more environmentally sustainable.
Both of these are good qualities that should be promoted but, increasingly,
33. Hollands, R (2008), “Will writers(33) have pointed to ways in which “urban entrepreneurialism” has
the real smart city please used these terms as a smokescreen for rather different agendas.
stand up?”, City Vol 12, No 3,
pages 303−320; also Urban Hollands(34) has argued that it is often difficult to separate out
Studies (2013) “Special issue: the extent to which proposed urban projects actually intend some
Planning ‘smart’ city-regions kind of positive technological innovation as opposed to being high-
in an age of market-driven
fundamentalism”, Vol 50, No 11,
tech variations of urban entrepreneurialism or just place-marketing.
pages 2151−2387. Also problematic is the assumption that smart cities simply require
34. See reference 33, Hollands IT hardware and infrastructure to become “smart”. This completely
(2008). ignores the quite obvious human and social dimensions of “smart”: the
role of social capital and networks of trust and reciprocity that are pre-
requisites for innovation. In the context of Africa, with its often still low
levels of education, populations that have been uprooted or displaced
as a result of urbanization and hence have fragile and probably non-
place-based networks, and intermittent power supplies, achieving both
the infrastructural and human capital pre-conditions for smart cities
35. See reference 33, Hollands will be a major challenge. Hollands(35) also highlights the tendency to
(2008). use smart city discourse to circumvent processes of public debate and
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ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

participation. That cities should want to be “intelligent”, “connected”

and “cutting edge” is presented as incontestable and hence consultation
is unnecessary, and where these projects are on greenfield sites (as the
satellite cities inevitably are), the fact that such land may already be used
for agricultural purposes is considered of lesser importance.
The label “eco-city” has been used less frequently in the new plans
for African urban projects, although Lagos’ Eko Atlantic clearly makes
this claim, and those developments that foreground their “smartness”
also usually claim to be “sustainable”, as if the former ensures the latter.
Writers deconstructing the eco-city label tend to echo the points raised by
smart city critics. Pow and Neo(36) focus on the context of China but argue 36. Pow, C and H Neo
that their discussion has wider applicability. They explore the frequent (2013), “Seeing red over
green: contesting urban
attachment of the eco-city label to new city projects in China, as well sustainabilities in China”, Urban
as various efforts at constructing such cities, but note that it is still not Studies Vol 50, No 11, pages
possible to find an example of a successfully constructed eco-city. This in 2256−2274.
itself highlights the difficulties of executing such projects, where issues
such as costs, politics and planning have proved to be major stumbling
blocks, even when these initiatives have had strong state backing.
Pow and Neo,(37) like the smart city critics, argue that even in 37. See reference 36.
China eco-cities have been used as entrepreneurial place-making, and
that international growth coalitions made up of property investors and
transnational networks of professional architects and planners trading
in technical knowledge and global best practice have been deployed to
promote inter-urban competitiveness. Like smart city, the eco-city label
has been used as a legitimation strategy for projects that may well be
framed through sound sustainability goals but that are, in fact, driven by
commercial objectives.
The motivations and justifications for these African urban fantasy
plans thus come from a range of rather different sources, and from
within the continent as well as from beyond. To some degree there is an
alignment of the various discourses that underlie these ideas, although real
motivations may range from political status, to commercial profit or just
to securing a safe and clean living and working environment. However,
the wider and longer-term potential impact of these plans, should they
come to fruition, will be dramatic and could confront African cities with
far more serious problems than they face at present. The next section of
the paper turns to the question of impact.

IV. IMPACTS: WINNERS AND LOSERS

Africa is by no means the first continent to be on the receiving end of

these kinds of urban visions, and there is a steadily growing literature
that explores their impacts in other cities of the global South. In the
case of African cities, some of these plans are finding their way through
to implementation and are having an impact on the urban fabric, but
most are still at the ideas stage. This section of the paper suggests the
kinds of impacts that these urban fantasy plans could have, given the
realities of African cities and the outcomes in other cities in the global
South. To some degree, this section of the paper is speculative, given the
very little empirical work on these new trends, but the commonalities in
outcomes in other contexts suggest that the impacts in African cities can
be predicted with a reasonable degree of confidence.
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 A frican urban fantasies : dreams or nightmares ?

Goldman suggests that transforming rural economies into urban real

estate is “… the principal tension running through the urban periphery of much
38. See reference 5, page 555. of Asia today.”(38) Using Bangalore in India as a case study, he explains
how peri-urban communities have been at the centre of “world-city
making” but also how this process of land acquisition and dispossession
reshapes the local state. Reforming the older bureaucracies into “one-
stop shops” for approving and facilitating foreign capital projects has
supposedly contributed to, but has also undermined, India’s processes of
decentralization and democratization. Newly created parastatals designed
to fast-track particular large projects are externally funded and have little
or no local oversight, and hence local government has been carved up into
the older bureaucracies left in charge of small maintenance budgets and
39. See also Benjamin, S the new autonomous agencies(39) fed by international loans but also large
(2000), “Governance, economic obligations of risky debt finance. Projects being dealt with in this way
settings and poverty in
Bangalore”, Environment and
are the new Bangalore airport, an “IT corridor” and overhead freeways
Urbanization Vol 12, No 1, to connect them, as well as the familiar satellite cities: for example,
pages 35−56. Knowledge City, built on working farmland, is financed by a Dubai firm.
These shifts may still be on their way in African settings, and there is
little information to date on how these new satellite cities will be governed.
One worrying scenario painted by Rockefeller’s Society for International
40. Society for International Development(40) publication is that these satellites will adopt the Charter
Development (2010), “Are City(41) model. This concept, promoted by US economist Paul Romer as “…
satellite cities the (official)
future of GHEA’s urbanization?”, a radical solution to the problem of poverty”,(42) is, in effect, “city states” that
Greater Horn of Eastern Africa are removed from national processes of fiscal and political accountability.
(GHEA) Outlook No 18, available As these satellites are most likely to be occupied by local and international
at http://www.sidint.net.
business interests and middle-class residents, this scenario suggests a
41. http://www.Chartercities.
radical carving up of urban territories and populations according to
org.
income, but with satellite city occupants subject to a governance regime
42. See reference 40, page 13.
entirely driven by market principles.
A further and most obvious set of impacts relates to the removal of
less powerful actors who are occupying land earmarked for urban renewal
43. See reference 5. and extension. Goldman(43) refers to 200,000 rural people displaced by
the Mysore−Bangalore project with minimal compensation for what was
called unproductive farmland, but which was immediately turned into
high-value urban land. In Bangalore, as elsewhere, many dispossessed
landowners, especially women, found it very difficult to prove ownership,
or were tenants with no claim to the land. Farmers in the peri-urban area
surrounding Gurgaon, some 32 kilometres from Delhi, have lost extensive
44. Narain, V (2009), “Growing land as part of the real estate boom in the region.(44) Land has been seized
city, shrinking hinterland: by the state “for public purposes”, sometimes without compensation;
land acquisition, transition
and conflict in peri-urban
some farmers rendered landless have moved into alternative occupations,
Gurgaon, India”, Environment but others have squandered their land payments on consumer goods
and Urbanization Vol 21, No 2, and alcohol.(45) Mass removals of populations on or beyond the urban
pages 501−512.
periphery inevitably swell the ranks of those already in urban informal
45. See reference 44, page 506. settlements (or, in the case of India, have greatly escalated the farmer
suicide rate).
Interventions within current city boundaries set in motion similar
46. Shatkin, G (2008), “The
processes. Urban developments in Metro Manila involving land clearance
city and the bottom line: for new commercial developments and new elevated transport systems to
urban megaprojects and the link them together have been labelled as “bypass-implant urbanism” by
privatization of planning in Shatkin.(46) These enclaves for the “global class” are designed to avoid and
Southeast Asia”, Environment
and Planning A Vol 40, No 2, supplant the “failures and decay” of the existing city, and in the process
pages 383−401. have led to large-scale evictions. In Bangalore, Goldman has argued that
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ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

the most palpable urban anxiety today is the fear of official land theft and
the “speculative” nature of routine decision-making: “… social angst over
whether or not one’s domicile will be taken over to build the new metro, widen
a road, construct a housing complex or a special export zone.”(47) All this is 47. See reference 5, page 575.
justified in the name of world-city making, or “worlding”, to use Roy’s(48) 48. Roy, A (2011), “Urbanisms,
term for the strategies and models of urban development that cities use to worlding practice and the
theory of planning”, Planning
enter the global networks of economic exchange and profit. Theory Vol 10, No 1, pages
In the African urban visions described above these processes are just 6−15.
beginning. The impact on poorer urban dwellers is felt most directly
where new urban master plans and projects attempt comprehensive urban
renewal to remake the city in the image of somewhere else considered
“world class”. Kigali and, to a lesser extent, Addis Ababa seem to be
currently subject to these kinds of make-overs, and their extensive shack
populations are being systematically moved to make way for the new
projects. Many other cities (such as Nairobi) are responding to the very
real problem of traffic congestion by planning new systems of freeways
and fly-overs that carve their way through older and poorer urban areas.
These cater directly for the still small, car-owning middle class, but are of
little help to the majority of people who travel on foot.
In most cities, however, governments find it easier to avoid the
difficulties of removal of dense urban fabric and to seek less fiercely
contested land on the urban edge (for example Dar es Salaam) or in the
rural areas beyond. Around African cities, peri-urban areas have been
growing very rapidly as poor urban dwellers look for a foothold in the
cities and towns where land is more easily available, where they can
escape the costs and threats of urban land regulations, and where there is
a possibility of combining urban and rural livelihoods. These are the areas
usually earmarked for development by new urban extension projects.
Writing about the Cité le Fleuve project in Kinshasa, De Boeck(49) 49. See reference 22.
describes how colonial and post-colonial planned expansions of Kinshasa
have over the years been re-territorialized and reclaimed by poorer city
inhabitants, redefining the colonial logics that were stamped onto this
space. Large tracts of land along the Congo River have been converted
into productive rice fields that supply Kinshasa’s markets, although
more recently pressures of urban growth have seen some of these areas
converted to shack lands. Acknowledging that this existence outside of the
official frameworks of formal urban regulation and services is not an ideal
way to live, De Boeck(50) nonetheless argues that it allows the pursuit of 50. See reference 22.
livelihoods with a degree of freedom and flexibility. In other terminology,
this would be called “resilience”. All this stands in contrast to the recent
initiatives to “modernize” Kinshasa, starting with the conversion of tree-
lined boulevards to an eight-lane highway into the heart of the city and
efforts to “sanitize” the city by expelling street children and small traders
(a “politics of erasure”). Cité le Fleuve on reclaimed land in the Congo
River is a continuation of this modernizing effort, but in the process will
destroy much of the rice-producing areas and the economic networks that
they support.
In the case of satellite cities, these are frequently justified as being
51. Mwau, B (2013), Blog:
located on “empty land”, but it is rare that land around larger cities is “The planned hatches the
empty, and if such land is not within an environmentally protected area unplanned”, accessed 2 August
then it is very likely to be actively farmed. In all these kinds of eviction 2013 at http://slumurbanism.
wordpress.com/2013/08/02/
processes, landowners rarely hold land title, and full compensation the-planned-hatches-the-
for land, shelter and livelihoods is unlikely. Baraka Mwau,(51) writing unplanned/.

228
 A frican urban fantasies : dreams or nightmares ?

about landowners near Nairobi’s satellite Konza Techno City, describes

their anticipation that the new city may create construction jobs for
unemployed youth and also a demand for their food products. But at
the same time, their properties fall within the 10-kilometre radius of
Konza and hence are marked for (or not for) demolition, and all new
developments now need planning approval. In the small town of Malili,
Mwau describes a mushrooming of activities and land speculation, with
52. See reference 51. “… plots changing ownership within hours.”(52) He reports that authorities
are now doing their best to contain this informality, which has sprung
up in at least 10 towns near the proposed Konza site. A two-kilometre
buffer (cordon sanitaire?) around Konza is designated for “wildlife”, and
development for eight kilometres beyond this will be controlled. Quite
what happens to the land and livelihoods of farmers in this area is not
clear.
Beyond these immediate impacts of the new urban developments
there are a number of further outcomes that can be anticipated with
a degree of confidence. State spending on large-scale infrastructure
(transport, sanitation, power) is likely to be skewed in the direction of
support for these new cities and projects and away from meeting the basic
services and housing needs of the much larger poor urban populations.
Should the middle classes and higher-end investors retreat to these new
elite enclaves (and this, after all, is their target market), then their tax base
and spending power will be lost to the existing city, thus exacerbating
urban decline.
The spatial separation of rich and poor that these new urban
fantasies will entrench opens up the prospect of urban spatial and social
inequalities at an unprecedented scale. At the same time, the hope that
these new cities and developments will be “self-contained” and able
to insulate themselves from the “disorder” and “chaos” of the existing
cities is remote. Satellite cities are frequently unable to sustain all the
job and service requirements of their populations, and tend to generate
large volumes of movement and traffic as their residents find themselves
having to travel back to more established centres. Wealthy enclaves are
also usually unable to function without low-income service providers
(domestic workers, gardeners, construction workers etc.) and inevitably
53. The persistence of an informal city grows up around the edges of the formal city.(53) In a
informality around the range of ways, the utopian dreams of these urban fantasies (most of which
modernist city of Brasilia is a
well-known example of this. are based on concepts that have been attempted before in other parts of
the world and their impacts well-documented) are unlikely to materialize,
yet the efforts to achieve them will have profound effects on lives and
livelihoods. While those with a degree of power and resources may well
be able to benefit in various ways, given the overwhelming dominance
in African cities of those with very little, a widening and deepening of
inequality is inevitable.

V. CONCLUSIONS

Africa’s larger cities seem to be entering a new era of change, driven by the
continent’s own economic growth and emerging middle class as well as an
international property development and finance sector in search of new
markets. The urban visions and plans that this confluence of interests has
produced stand in dramatic contrast to the lived reality of most urbanites,
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ENVIRONMENT & URBANIZATION Vol 26 No 1 April 2014

and while their impacts are likely to be complex and contradictory, what
seems most likely is that the majority of urban populations will find
themselves further disadvantaged and marginalized. It is access to land by
the urban poor (as well as those on the urban periphery and beyond) that
is most directly threatened by all these processes, and access to land in turn
determines access to urban services, to livelihoods and to citizenship. As
the poor confront new alliances between international property capital,
national and city politicians and emerging urban middle classes, all bent
on the seizure and re-valorization of land, it is also possible (if trends in
parts of South Asia are reflected on the African continent) that systems of
governance will also be reconfigured in order to facilitate the speculative
urbanism to which Goldman(54) refers. As elsewhere, the possibility exists 54. See reference 5.
that poorer urban dwellers in Africa’s larger cities will find themselves not
only dispossessed of land but also of political rights.
These visions and “master plans” may or may not materialize or may
be implemented in part, and much will depend on local political factors
and the extent to which economic growth in Africa’s emerging economies
continues. It will also depend on the extent to which the various urban
groupings disadvantaged by these processes are able to collaborate and
resist. There is no doubt that the scale and extent of change envisioned in
these plans might be sufficient to mobilize shack dwellers, unemployed
youth, local informal and formal business and the NGO sector at a
citywide scale, to effectively counter these interventions.

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