Luanda, AO

africanCities, Low Density, Paulo Moreira, Politics and economics, Survey, Territory and mobility

Africa, African Cities, Building, Building boom, Built Environment & Low Density, Catalogue of Urban Sprawl, Cities, City, Density, Housing, Housing market, Informal city, Informal settlements, Infrastructure, Insight into the Terrain, Luanda, Mobility, New suburbanism, Photographic Atlas of the Cities, Photography, Survey, Urban environment, Urban growth, Urban planning, Urban renewal, Urban sprawl, Urbanism

These photographs document the complex and rapid transformation of Luanda’s urban form.

Luanda is undergoing a phase of great urban ambitions. The multiple pressures to which the city has been subjected are ever more visible when seen from above. Several high-standard urban renewal projects are changing the city’s profile irreversibly. These high-standard developments bring dramatic uncertainty to Luanda’s informal neighborhoods, where the vast majority of city dwellers live – the urban regeneration process is interspersed with evictions and displacement to peripheral resettlement colonies. The frenetic, unstoppable construction linked to Angola’s economic boom, caused by the abundance of oil capital in the years following the end of a long-lasting civil war (1975-2002), does not always take place in the most logical and measured way. These photographs document the complex and rapid transformation of Luanda’s urban form.