Fast growing informal peri-urbanization in Africa: The role of local practices in assessing sustainability and planning

Peri-urbanization occurs differently across world regions, through urban sprawl, local development, and rural exodus. The latter is typical in primarily rural, fast urbanizing underdeveloped regions in an African context. In those regions, semi-urban settlements develop informally from local practices. For their large numbers, undertaking formal assessments and land use planning to any significant extent is impractical. The study applied a flexible framework to assess the role of local practices on sustainability in rapidly expanding settlements in peri-urban areas and how technical resources and narratives can influence and take advantage of such practices. The work reports a mixed-methods case study conducted in settlements North of Maputo, Mozambique using territorial and social cohesion as proxies for sustainability and as a guide for planning interventions priorities. The study used publicly available and participatory geographic information, limited expert opinion surveys, focus group discussions, and individual satisfaction surveys. We show that, while facing limitations, informal practices are conscious of the local suitability of risks in settlements land use planning and favor social cohesion. The framework supports existing theories and reveals that local microscale traditional physical planning brings marginal gains. The research suggests priority to interventions with a higher impact on territorial and social cohesion, such as narrative-based local institutional innovations, enhancing knowledge exchange on standards and risk management solutions, enforcing regulations, and improving regional networking infrastructure and practices, in face of limited resources and city and regional planners. Research is needed to improve the frameworks' replicability as a new tool to assist in peri-urbanization governance.