?IN MOST SUB-Saharan African countries, the state lacks the capacity to fulfil the key tasks of urban land management, including issuing and registration of titles and regulation of sub-division and use. This is partly because the colonial administrations believed
that indigenous arrangements were inappropriate for urban use, so imported land use systems from the colonizing country. Most African governments, especially immediately after independence, interpreted the demand for housing as a welfare question and a
legitimate right of a newly liberated people rather than as part of a crucial national economic sector. This perception resulted in severe policy distortions, from which entanglements many governments have still to find a way out.
This book looks at the current state of urban land management in Africa generally, covering the problems of rapid urban growth, particularly informal growth. International experience with urban land management is covered as well as formal
approaches to solving housing problems, namely public housing programmes, sites-and-services and upgrading. The debate is brought into the present with a section on the growing acknowledgement by some governments of the informal sector as a legitimate area
of city life. Urban land development is increasingly taking place outside of weak systems of planning control and land ownership legislation, and for nearly three decades the majority of land seekers have found the informal sector more responsive to their demands
for housing land. This parallel system of social regulation at the grassroots is largely well-adapted to local needs, norms and competence and, in some areas, is even able to link up with formal institutions in the public sector.
The main section on Tanzania looks at urbanization trends and land management practices as well as the impact of rapid urban growth on land management capability. There is a problem of increased densification in informal settlements with a chronic shortage of planned plots for housing. This leads to health hazards and increased environmental degradation. Where plots are allocated however, there is slow development and prime sites tend to be under-utilized partly due to prohibitive standards and lack of capital but also due to speculation and the low costs of holding a piece of prime land.
Measures have been put in place to improve the poor urban land management system but insufficient resources reduce their effectiveness. This leaves open the potential for semi-regularized informal land transactions and development.
A theoretical chapter deals with research paradigms and methodology in land use planning, discussing such issues as the theoretical concerns of urban land use patterns, public intervention in private land markets as characterized by land use planning, the need to understand and incorporate informal land development and social regulation and regularization. It then explains the choice of case study areas and the method with which data were collected. The next section returns to informal land management in Tanzania and covers population growth, informal housing, the administrative setting and general land development patterns in inner-cities, and intermediate and peri-urban zones. Four case
studies of settlements are then given, two consolidating, one saturated and one informal in the capital Dodoma. Emerging issues are shown through a cross-case analysis of informal and formal linkages and the study concludes with policy implications and a conclusion.