Land use dynamics in peri-urban areas and their implications on the urban growth and form: The case of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper examines recent trends in land use transformation taking place in the peri-urban areas of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It demonstrates that urbanisation in poverty is the key factor underpinning and catalysing changes in land use, land transactions, increased rural-urban immigration and the overall transformation of land use in the peri-urban areas. Unregulated peri-urban land development has given rise to complex organic urban structures which predominantly expanding horizontally. The emerging land use pattern, by and large, indicates a mismatch with the widely cherished planning norms and standards and land value theories which, underpin urban land use planning instruments such as zoning and density distribution and principles like equitable provision of basic services and complimentarity in urban land development. It is argued that for an unforeseeable future, organic urban growth is likely to remain an indispensable reality depicting urban land development in resource starved situations such as Tanzania because of the severe resource constraints facing local and central governments, the nature of the subsisting land tenure structure in most peri-urban areas, poor national economic performance and looming poverty in rural and urban areas. Therefore, planners and policy makers have little choice but to ensconce and consolidate the emerging form. Decentralised land management anchored on the subsisting local government administrative structures, introduction of user-friendly and pro-poor land regularisation systems, and embarking on land banking by local authorities are some of the key and immediate policy action areas of concern.