Paper short abstract:

Given the strategic importance of peri-central self-produced areas on the urban reconfiguration of Maputo in this new millennium, the paper analyses, in a critical and reflective view, the urban renewal and upgrading interventions that take place here.

Paper long abstract:

In this new millennium, Maputo city beholds an accelerated process of urban reconfiguration, resulting from the consolidation of the neoliberal model in which it is included. The diversity of powers, interests and strategies translates into different paradigms of intervention: some of neoliberal contour, tendentiously generating processes of gentrification and socio-spatial exclusion; others with an emancipatory character, aiming for a more inclusive and egalitarian city (Raposo et al., 2012).

Several areas of the city are subject of intervention, like the design of large urban projects outside the boundaries of the former 'cement city' and the verticalization of its center. This metamorphosis is particularly relevant in the peri-central self-produced areas that surround it, due to their strategic position in the dominant market logics, which favour profitable renewal interventions over the upgrading of the existing built space. As such, they are targets of urban renewal actions, based on its tabula rasa and on the (re)location of affected populations in more peripheral areas.

This critical and reflective analysis is based on empirical and documental information acquired, crossed with a detailed observation of aerial images of this city perimeter, registered since the beginning of the new millennium. This method which will allow to map and typify the urban renewal actions and dissonant upgrading interventions operated and/or planned in this period, as well as to identify relevant case studies.

RAPOSO, I., JORGE, S., MELO, V., VIEGAS, S. Luanda e Maputo: Inflexões sub-urbanísticas da cidade socialista à cidade-metrópole neoliberal. Curitiba: URBE, V 4, N.2, Julho-Dezembro 2012, 189-205.