Paper short abstract:

Studying local building practices in the southern part of Ilha de Moçambique highlights the dynamics of the different ways of accessing building materials and their importance for changing dwelling construction practices in the historic and rapidly changing city.

Paper long abstract:

Ilha de Moçambique is an urban UNESCO World Heritage Site in northern Mozambique. Currently urbanization is taking place, like in other smaller urban centres all over Africa, in a situation with limited economic and urban management resources. Industrially processed materials have replaced the local construction materials of coconut palm fronds and mangrove wood. As local natural materials are becoming scarce, traditional construction and building materials take on new meanings and values in a context of slowly developing international and national tourism. Materials are mixed and experimented with to halt a general decay of the built environment and the dwelling space. Access to finance and hence to building materials, is a slow process often with an unknown outcome, at times based on small businesses like making cookies or linked to wide webs of highly mobile family networks.

Due to its status as World Heritage, the question is posed, whether detailed study of current building culture can inform new concepts of urban heritage management on the island, and whether the concept of heritage may be a resource for sustainable urban development. The transformation practices related to dwellings form part of an urban culture expressed in may different ways, emphasizing that it is impossible to isolate the built environment from the social and cultural practices which shape the city. This leads us to question anew and in a broader sense what the relation may be between everyday lived urbanism and building practice, heritage as a resource and planning for urban development.