From Dar es Salaam to Bongoland: Urban Mutations in Tanzania

Towards a two-tiered city?

Towards a two-tiered city? Lourdes Diaz Olveira And Pascal Pochet Inhabitants of Dar es Salaam rarely seem to travel and when they do, it is with some difficulty. Statistical sources are rare and incomplete but the available information advances a theory of ineffectual and constrained mobility on a daily basis. There is probably fewer than one return trip per person per day on average; mobility is also constrained as 70% of the trips are motivated by work or study. For many city dwellers, walking is the only means of transport and the use of mechanized modes remains at a low level, especially at off-peak hours. In today’s Dar es Salaam, there is a huge disparity between the need to move around and the means to do so. Situated in one of Africa’s poorest countries, the main city is experiencing particularly strong demographic growth, as the population has doubled in the course of the past ten years. This growth is accompanied by a rapid and disorderly extension of the urbanized area, which increases the distance between places of residence and of employment, businesses, medical care centres and schools. In view of the unfavourable economic conditions marked by a process of rapid liberalization, the transport service has difficulty responding to this double demographic and area growth. It is unable to satisfy inhabitants’ basic needs, and notably, the needs of the poorest of the poor. The numerous shortcomings in the transport system tend to aggravate the situation. First, the infrastructure is insufficient and often too run-down to offer service of even minimal quality at city and suburban level. Additionally, the characteristics of the current public transport service, the slow demise of the state-owned company and the increase of speculative strategies in the private sector (Pochet and Diaz Olveira, 2005) only contribute to worsening or emphasizing the disparities in accessibility from one suburb to the next. This leads to great difficulties in access to various urban services and facilities for most households, who have few alternatives due to their limited budgets. I - Residential expanse and job concentration According to census results, Dar es Salaam had 348,000 inhabitants in 1968, 852,000 in 1978 (or an annual rate of + 9.4 %) and 1,345,000 in the last census in 1988 (+ 4.7 % annually since 1978). Dar es Salaam of the mid1980s was a city of immigrants. Only one out of every five inhabitants was a native of the city (Kulaba, 1993). Over the past few years, demographic development has not slowed down although it is difficult to have an exact idea of the population of Tanzania’s principal city. Estimates settle on an annual 262 FROM DAR ES SALAAM TO BONGOLAND growth rate of 7 to 8%. Currently, the number of inhabitants would therefore be 2.5 to 3 million. This strong growth, barely controlled by the authorities, translated into the city’s functional and area explosion. Area wise, demographic growth translated into the exceptional expansion of urbanized areas, following the classical model of the fingers of a glove, with an initial diffusion along the roads infrastructure followed by a filling up of the open spaces in-between. The city’s surface area thus multiplied by five from 1968 to 1982 (Maunder and Fouracre, 1987). The city’s maximum expanse, which was only between 6 and 10 km in 1969 and 15 km in 1978, attained spectacular dimensions in the 1990s (Kombe, 1994): t
27 km in 1993, and currently almost 30 km to the north, along Bagamoyo Road and along the shore, where there is marked growth; t
between 15 and 25 km in 1993 to the west, along Morogoro Road ; t
between 15 and 25 km in 1993, to the southwest, along the highway of Nyerere Road, after the airport; t
13 km in 1993, currently between 15 and 20 km to the south, after Mbagala, mainly along Kilwa Road, on the other side of the bay (Kigamboni). However, this panorama must be qualified by observing that the majority of the population lives in a 10 km radius around the centre. This nevertheless constitutes a considerable surface area, if the structure of the existing roads network is taken into account.This distribution is even more problematic — an examination of both the urbanized areas and the location of the main activities (fig. colour) is proof enough of the high concentration of places of employment rather than that of residences. Particularly, administrative jobs are located in the...