WHY TOWN PLANNING DOES NOT WORK IN TANZANIA?

It is a great challenge to us (Urban Planners, Government and all stakeholders) about urban planning practices in Tanzania. I have visited several cities, towns and villages in China but have not seen even a single unplanned settlement, squatter or slum. We can speak our normal excuse that we differ economically and level of development. But, in 1950s and 1960s we were in the same level.

Lets read and reflect on this article:

WHY PLANNING DOES NOT WORK: LAND USE PLANNING AND RESIDENTS’ RIGHTS IN TANZANIA. Tumsifu, Jonas and Nnkya. Mkuki na Nyota Dar es Salaam. 2007. ISBN 978 9987 449 682. pp360. p/b £29.95. Available through African Books Collective, P.O. Box 721 Oxford, OX1 9EN. www.africanbookscollective.com.

Town planning is struggling back into vogue after three decades of discredit. The World Planning Congress published a ten-point declaration ‘Reinventing Planning: a New Governance Paradigm for Managing Human Settlements’ in June 2006 that it took to the United Nations Third World Urban Forum in Vancouver for endorsement. The theme of UN Global Report on Human Settlements 2009 will be on ‘Revisiting Urban Planning‘. This return to planning is well overdue – but what sort of planning?

Physical planning in the rapidly growing urban areas of the developing countries of the South lost the plot in the 1970s when it became evident that the processes for determining and controlling land use by the public sector (local government) were being overtaken by the magnitude and speed of urban population growth and economic and social change. Private sector investors could not wait for, or be bothered with, the seemingly tortuous bureaucratic procedures entailed in obtaining planning permission. New migrants in search of urban opportunities could not wait for nor afford officially approved housing or licences to start enterprises. In short, planning and building standards could not be afforded, building permit procedures were too slow, town plans bore no relation to municipal budgets so they were rarely implemented, and there were not enough planning officers and building inspectors to ‘police’ new developments. As a result people, rich and poor alike, did their own thing and the authorities could not control them.

On the other hand, professional town planners saw themselves as the upholders of planning standards, procedures and legislation (that were largely inherited from former colonial administrations) that would ensure efficient, livable and beautiful towns to be proud of. They worked in ‘administrative black boxes’ that were secretive and exclusive and did not engage those who were ‘being planned’. Planning was seen as a technical process that ordinary people would not understand.

So, if there is to be a return to planning, what should the new planning be like? What should be its aims: control, promotion or both? Who should do it: planners, investors, citizens or all three? What is the interface between planning and plan implementation, or should there be no need for one? There are many glib and seemingly obvious answers to such questions, but in the real world of the cut-and-thrust politics of urban development they are far from easy to put into practice.

This is borne out by Tumsifu Jonas Nnkya’s new book ‘Why Planning Does Not Work? Land Use Planning and Residents’ Rights in Tanzania’, which is a fascinating and detailed analysis of planning, power and land rights in Moshi over the last thirty-years.

The story starts with a brief overview of Tanzania’s colonial planning inheritance, providing a lead up to the heady post-Arusha-Declaration times of “building a socialist and self-reliant egalitarian society” in Tanzania that characterised the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It saw the adoption of a national ‘growth-pole’ policy aimed at stimulating more “balanced development” away from the economic dominance of Dar-es-Salaam. Moshi was to be one of the nine regional growth-poles, for which it needed a new town plan that included significant extensions to the town boundaries, incorporating villages, previously under rural district administration. After two years of deliberation and dispute, the plan, which had been drawn up by “two non-resident planners and an engineer from the Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development in Dar-es-Salaam”, was approved in 1975, setting the scene for the rest of this often disturbing but at times encouraging account of “government versus the people”.

Dr Nnkya probes, recounts and analyses the interests and strategies of the wide range of different interest groups and actors engaged in the processes of planning in Moshi and its implementation through a series of captivating case studies, starting with the new town boundary. He digs deep into the political interests of the town council; describes the dismay of villagers at finding themselves liable to pay new urban licence fees; reports on how the Ministry of Works discovered that the airport, for which it was responsible, had been turned over to housing, requiring the construction of a new one; and tells how a group of villagers charged the Town Council with trespass in the High Court in a case that took ten years to resolve.

Building upon these and other examples of the lack of consultation and transparency by those in authority, the book examines a range of different issues such as how the planners and public sector developers faced civil disobedience that prevented the demarcation of new housing plots; the official appropriation of land that was deemed to be “inefficiently used” by a psychiatric hospital for therapeutic farming, which ended up as luxury housing for senior officers of the administration, despite widespread media coverage and public protest; and how even when the Planning Department was requested to plan a neighbourhood by its residents, who had themselves paid for its survey, they were not involved or consulted about the new layout, which bore little relationship to what was on the ground or what they needed and was therefore ignored.

Despite all of this, the book is not just a catalogue of horror stories or an account of conservative resistance to change. A picture of slowly evolving institutional change and effective public participation in Moshi’s planning and development is built up throughout the middle section of the book. This is largely achieved by the insightful and analytical introductions and closing summaries to each chapter and the reflective commentary that binds together the myriad of quotations from letters, minutes, judgements and the author’s his own discussions with those who had been involved. In the penultimate chapter Moshi rides gloriously into the sunset of the United Nations sponsored Sustainable Moshi Programme, hand-in-hand with citizen consultations and participatory decision-making in the planning and management of the town.

Throughout the book Dr Nnkya draws on the work of contemporary planning theorists and international experience to provide a coherent basis for his commentary and analysis, thus drawing out lessons for urban governance, management and planning of relevance to many African towns and cities, beyond the borders of Moshi and Tanzania.

The book is beautifully written in the fast-moving, easy-flowing traditions of the best of analytical investigative journalism, making it an exciting read for all those interested in the complexities of local politics and the creation of sustainable and just urban environments in Africa. We eagerly await Dr Nnkya’s next book, in which he promises to provide “an account of the changes that have taken … place in planning practice under political pluralism and a liberal economy”. This, we hope, will give a similarly exhaustive treatment to the first ten years of the Sustainable Moshi Programme - an example of the new urban planning.