Suburbanisation, homeownership aspirations and urban housing: Exploring urban expansion in Dar es Salaam

Abstract

This paper offers an exploration of urban expansion from the point of view of the individual residents buying land, settling and living in new, rapidly growing peripheral settlements of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The findings suggest that the demand for affordable housing is the primary motivation for residents moving to the periphery. The demand for self-built, owner-occupier housing is especially significant initially, while the demand for non-ownership housing increases in importance later in the process. Income-related motives, on the other hand, are strikingly absent from settlement considerations. Urban residents settle in the periphery, even though income-generation is often tied to working somewhere else, namely in the central parts of the city. The paper proposes that the processes of urban expansion depicted in this study are usefully conceptualized as suburbanization processes, though it is a type of suburbanization that has some peculiarities given the particular context, where expansion happens informally and largely unguided by planners.

Finding a place to live in the city: analyzing residential choice in Kampala

“…Previous location, especially for those who most recently moved from outside the GKMA, was also not a significant predictor in any of the regression analyses. This is contrary to the findings of Andreasen et al (2017), who found that in Arusha (Tanzania), new migrants initially tend to settle in central areas of the city and are often renters. A possible explanation could be that, as various researchers have pointed out (e.g.…”

“…Most urban areas experience rapid population growth, and Kampala is no exception: between 2002 and 2014, its population increased on average by 3 percent annually (Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), 2017), the population of its metropolitan area on average by 5.4 percent (SITU-Transitions, 2018). Meanwhile, the land area that can be classified as urban land in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area (GKMA) increased on average by 8 percent per annum between 2006and 2017(SITU-Transitions, 2018. This is in line with predictions by Angel et al (2011) who find that with a doubling of population, built-up area is expected to triple.…”

“…As most African cities operate in a context of scarce resources, institutional capacity to steer urban growth is limited. Thus, individual actions are an important factor in the spatial growth patterns of the city: much more than official policies and plans, it is the decisions made by individuals which shape the spatial growth of the city (Andreasen et al, 2017;Kombe, 2005). A better understanding of how households decide on their future location when moving will therefore contribute to a better understanding of urban expansion and densification processes in an East African context.…”

Access to the city: Mobility patterns, transport and accessibility in peripheral settlements of Dar es Salaam

“…Transformation processes are characterized by incremental construction of residential housing, financed, built and inhabited by growing volumes of new residents. The new residents are of mixed ethnic origin, but predominantly long-term urban residents moving from central parts of the city (Andreasen and Agergaard, 2016). Their motivations for and aspirations towards settling in the periphery are shaped primarily by the search for affordable and comfortable housing, especially opportunities for self-built, owner-occupier housing .…”

Urban transformations and rural-city connections in Africa

“…While analyses of urban dynamics in Dar es Salaam (Andreasen & Agergaard, 2016;Andreasen, Agergaard, & Møller-Jensen, 2017b) have reported that the majority of urban residents plan their livelihoods disassociated from their rural connections, Mainet's analysis documents how urban residents are travelling to meet with their rural family on a regular basis. In the case of the secondary city of Bafoussam, up to 70% of these visits are related to farming and food supply, while in the primary city of Doula it is only the case for about 10% of visits.…”