Informal land sale and housing in the periphery of Pointe-Noire
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Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract
This article examines the relations between practices in informal
land transactions under customary tenure and spatial differentiation
among suburbs in the periphery of the city of Pointe-Noire, Congo-
Brazzaville. Urban sprawl is a permanent feature of urbanisation in
Congo-Brazzaville that not only propagates slums for low-income dwellers
but also entails locally embedded ways of building the city in the
absence of state-led planning. The case of Pointe-Noire shows that large
tracts of customary land are sold without public control, a process accompanied
by the emergence of new suburbs with different stylistic
patterns of housing. While suburbanisation does carry the potential to
improve the quality of housing by attracting wealthy residents, it exacerbates
spatial fragmentation and the exclusion of certain groups in the
population from access to both land for housing in upmarket suburbs
and public services. Powerful actors tend to profit most from informality
Description
Keywords
Congo, Brazzaville, Point-Noire, Urban development, Urbanisation, Real estate market, Housing, Social change
Citation
Tati, G. (2016). Informal land sale and housing in the periphery of Pointe-Noire. Africa Spectrum, 51(1): 29–54.