The rationale behind the development of Lusaka’s new master plan vision (see appendix 1 for more details beyond that contained above) is central to the very problematisation being pursued by this thesis. The following description taken from a discussion I had with the director of the Lusaka offices of an international NGO however, nicely captures the common perceptions about its emergence:
“When it comes to the vision 2030, mainly it is something that comes about due to the change in the population structure. Lusaka was deigned to be a small, self-contained garden city and when population growth became much higher than planners anticipated, the changes in planning were not following side by side and political influence and other aspects of development were causing the city not to grow well. There has been a lot of urban sprawl and people are beginning to live further and further from the city and there is a huge vehicle population on the roads. So I think the planners decided we needed to do something before it became a disaster…”
As already one of the most urbanised countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 40% of its population classed as city dwellers (UN Habitat 2007), Zambia is also reported to have the highest projected growth rate for 2100 of any country in the world (Guardian 2011). The United Nations, who have a strong presence on the ground in Lusaka, not only identify the issue of urbanisation at a national level, but have conducted various studies into the current situation facing the city. The material produced by the U.N offers detailed insight into what they perceive as the city’s most pressing concerns. There is no doubt that, as the following extract from their ‘Lusaka Urban profile’ suggests, it is the out of control informal settlements that are seen to pose the biggest threat to a sustainable future:
“In Lusaka, squatter settlements are partly a post-independence phenomenon caused by the exodus to urban areas of rural people…Squatter settlements are generally characterised by inadequate shelter, a lack of services, and inadequate waste management. Lack of essential infrastructure and inadequate access to clean water
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and safe sanitation facilities and services make the residents of unplanned urban settlements vulnerable to epidemics” (UN-Habitat 2007)
Established as a settlement in 1913, and designated the capital city of then Northern Rhodesia in 1935, Lusaka was formerly the site of a village belonging to the Soli people, named after its headman ‘Lusaaka’ (Times 2013). The location was chosen for the city due to its central location and good communication links to the rest of the nation. Lusaka is an example of a rigorously pre-planned city, designed by Professor Stanley Adshead, a planner at the University of Liverpool, who conceived the city as primarily an administrative centre (Mulenga 2003). Influenced heavily by Ebenezer Howard’s garden city plan, and framed by the controlling, racialized, power driven ideology of the colonial project, the new capital was to be ‘generous and spacious’ in style and designed for a population of 500,000 (Mwimba 2002; Rakodi 1986). The majority of Lusaka’s original residents were either European or Asian while the indigenous population who worked in the city were housed in peripheral ‘compounds’ - their wives and children having to be left behind in the rural areas (Wade 2014). After Zambia gained independence in 1964, colonial restrictions on the movement of people from rural areas to the cities were removed, leading to a rapid increase in the rates of urbanisation. The planning system subsequently failed to keep pace with demand for land during the post- independence period as Zambia negotiated its relationship with structural adjustment programmes. During the 1990’s the Zambian government embarked on nationwide strategies to direct city and regional councils to sell off all of their housing stock to the sitting tenants, most of which were done at “giveaway prices”. As a result, both the housing and land that is available to the city of Lusaka within its existing boundaries is at a “critical shortage” (Mwansa 2016).
Making a connection between the proliferation of informal settlements, poor spatial organisation, and uneven economic development in the city, the planning authorities in Lusaka wish to use their new plan as a vehicle to circumvent individual concerns and instil a broader sense of purpose and identity into the city. Producing such a plan fell, first of all, on the LCC and the MLGH’s planning and development department. Acting as mediators in the process of putting together a team of planners that could carry out the job of producing the master plan, the MLGH solicited an external consultancy team provided by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). This in turn allowed JICA to draw on a wider set of
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actors operating under the arm of the Japanese government to fill the technical roles and liaise with the local planners in the city council throughout the production process (JICA 2009). The process of producing the plan would comprise an initial stage of ‘study’ involving assessment, outreach and dialogue in order to ‘build consensus’, followed by the creation of a final, comprehensive plan based on ‘intensive analysis’ (JICA 2009). This was ultimately handed over exclusively to the government of Zambia and the Lusaka City Council to take on the responsibility of implementation.