Institutional Initiatives and Dilemmas of Sustainable Urban Settlement Development in Modernizing Cities: The Case of Dar es Salaam City-Tanzania (original) (raw)

The problem of unplanned urban settlements' development in Tanzania has been persistent for decades. Efforts to develop sustainable, reliable, and affordable settlements including policies, institutions, and legal frameworks have been in place. Based on data collected through interviews with 45 urban settlement stakeholders from Dar es Salaam, this article examines why unplanned urban settlement persists despite concerted initiatives to develop sustainable urban settlements. The guiding assumption was that, with effective institutional framework and a variety of responsible and influential actors, effective and sustainable planning and implementation could be achieved. It is demonstrated that there are many institutions for facilitating sustainable urban settlement, but they work in a disjointed and less coordinated manner. There are disagreements, contradiction, and some mismatches in the existing legal and policy frameworks, resulting into lack of coherently integrated and codified popular guidelines for backing up the role of different actors. Last, important actors such as local grassroots' leaders and CSOs are not given sufficient opportunity for playing their role in urban settlement programs planning and implementation.