Maputo. From the Colonial Paradigm to the Peripheralization of the Contemporary Urban Space.

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2006

Authors

F. Brandão Alves (Author) FEUP; David Viana (Author) Other

Journal

Title: URBANISTICA PVS, International Journal of human settlements culture and planning in developing countries

Vol. 42/43 No. ISSN 1125-6257

ISSN: 1125-6257

Scientific classification

FOS: Humanities > Other humanities

CORDIS: Humanities

Other information

Abstract (EN): The explanation of a diagnosis on the evolutional process inherent to the altering of the social spectrum of the community in Maputo, will have to make reference to the colonial period, given the fact that the city we now find has been once planned by white Portuguese people, organized for the white and occupied by the white. The local black communities were always ostracized to the outskirts of the urban fabric, separated, with their own basic housing spaces. The interactions which took place here were most frequently narrowed down – in an urban context – to the professional relationship between a minority group (white), but a dominant one, and a majority and subdued black one. After the Revolution on the 25th of April, 1974, and the consequential independence of Mozambique, in 1975, there was a transformation in terms of dominium of the city of Lourenço Marques – at the time rebaptized as Maputo. With the mass-departure of white Portuguese people, the city was left available to welcome the local black populations. This constituted one of the first moments which led to the altering of the colonial paradigm of public space in this city. Later on, another moment was provoked by the civil war, which devastated Mozambique. The sudden appropriation of the urban public space by the local community constituted – in several moments – an hiatus, due to the fact that there was no time for the city to adjust itself to the new social habits, nor for the different groups – firstly periurban, now suburban – to understand and comprehend the inherent dynamics of the formal “concrete” city, completely different from the city of “caniço”1. In 1976, the civil war which took place in Mozambique demanded that the city had the capacity to welcome the ever-rising number of the displaced, who were seeking for sheltering, protection, work and sustenance. The city, however, was not yet prepared for such a challenge, and, as such, the urban community found itself socially ill-articulated, with a shortage of available spaces for the large-scale replacement. Then there was an almost unbearable mass-occupation of public spaces in the city, accompanied by the shifting from a working society to a survival-based society, once there were no longer conditions to assure labour for all of those who came to this city. The independent Mozambique gradually adopted management strategies, which instituted a vast state control of public welfare in its various spectra. There had come the time for a social upgrade, an advancement of a certain group, up to high positions in the political hierarchy and their re-placement onto nobler areas, in the most fashionable quarters. As such, the suburban specks were relatively left to be occupied, at its turn, by a consistent flowing of communities formed in periurban areas, and even from rural areas. This chain social-upgrading demonstrates the natural impact in the way and the steps to an appropriation of the different public spaces’ tiers, considering that each group already brought its own rules and hierarchical systems of life, and social, political and cultural interaction. Gradually, the city began losing its capacity to manage the public space. The civil war and the consequent migration waves reported in the country’s internal areas helped to stress this context of frequent internal movement.

Language: Portuguese

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific