Urban Planning Education and Urban Development

Many Plans but Little Planning

Abstract

With an estimated 38 per cent of its population classified urban, Africa is still the least urbanized continent but its urban population growth rates of about 3.3 per cent per annum are among the highest in the world. UN-Habitat projects that by 2030 half of the estimated total population in Africa will be urban. What is particularly striking, however, is that incidences of poverty are more extreme than elsewhere in the developing world. Urbanization in Sub-Sahara Africa is, associated with high unemployment, absence of basic infrastructure services particularly in settlements of the urban poor, widening social and spatial marginalization, wide-spread growth of informal settlements, and formation of slums. Africa’s ailing states are unable to effectively manage urban growth and provide basic services.