Since the economic shifts of the 1990s, New Towns have become an increasingly popular approach to urban development across the African continent. While New Towns are not a new development model, their contemporary materialisation often targets middle- and high-income buyers, leaving no space for low-income residents. Strict regulations in these exclusive developments often impede spatial appropriations by the informal sector such as fresh markets, unregulated housing, street kiosks and ‘public’ transit options. As a result, this approach may exacerbate spatial segregation and increase the visibility of economic inequality. This research addresses contemporary African New Towns as a group through the lens of urban design, identifying shared spatial challenges across a dataset of 146 New Towns. Through three case studies (Sheikh Zayed City, Egypt; BuraNEST, Ethiopia, and Kilamba, Angola) it takes a deeper look at the idiosyncrasies of individual New Towns, and the diversity of examples within this group. By bringing together wider trends with the case studies, this study translates challenges into potentials for future New Towns in the form of adaptive planning and design principles. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, transdisciplinary workshops and Research Through Design exercises, the principles are tested, refined, and validated by peer review. The study concludes that these principles can be an effective starting tool for developers, planners, and decision-makers initiating New Towns in Africa. It also concludes that the principles must be adapted locally according to geographic, political, and social contexts and urgencies.@en

Africa is currently the fastest-urbanizing continent in the world. As part of this rapid growth, New Towns are increasingly employed by private developers as a means of providing well-serviced urban environments to middle- and upper-income groups. These comprehensively-planned New Towns are often seen in contrast to the perceived ‘chaos’ and ‘congestion’ of large African cities. As a result, two urban forms, the highly controlled New Towns and the unregulated settlements at their edges, engage in complex social and economic exchanges, but remain spatially segregated and socially exclusive. Current research points to the need for an alternative approach to top-down New Town planning in Africa.

Participatory workshops are one alternative that can offer planners access to local knowledge that is otherwise difficult to access. This paper explores the potential of short-term reflective, design, and serious gaming workshops by reflecting on the experiences of the authors in four recent workshops. The paper evaluates the effectiveness of these workshops as useful tools to increase inclusivity in African New Towns by bringing together stakeholders with competing agendas and supporting open discussion, negotiation, and informed decision-making. The paper concludes that participation from stakeholder groups that would normally be marginalized from the planning process (such as current residents, temporary users, and residents of adjacent unregulated communities), can offer new insights to planning bodies and inform more inclusive New Towns across the continent.@en

New Towns in development across Africa are overwhelmingly designed according to twentieth-century planning models ranging from functionalist Chinese grids to American gated communities. Contemporary African New Towns based on these models are often unable to adapt to stimuli and, as a result, exacerbate both spatial and ecological challenges. The objective of this paper is to argue that African New Towns require a substantial shift from current practice and that planners must imagine new, hybrid planning strategies. This paper takes an exploratory approach and identifies the spatial challenges specific to contemporary African New Towns. Building on the argument that planning benefits from linkages between critical social theory and environmental science, this paper asserts that an adaptive urban planning approach that effectively engages citizens can be a more sustainable alternative to current practice. The paper concludes with implications for future research on the translation of challenges into potentials for African New Towns.@en

Executive Report - African Perspectives PrepCon, UN, Addis Ababa, February 25th-27th 2018, Event jointly organised by the TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC). The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology is launching the ‘A is for AFRICA’ initiative, in which research, education and cooperation come together under one umbrella. This initiative articulates endeavours in three areas (research, education and cooperation) in order to maximise TU Delft’s positive impact on African urbanisation. The organisation of this PrepCon (preparatory conference) is the first step in this process. In the PrepCon, scholars and practitioners concerned with questions related to African urbanisation came together for two days in January 2018 to discuss the following questions: What are challenges associated with contemporary African urbanisation? How can TU Delft engage with African institutions in order to produce a positive impact on African urbanisation? What are on-going educational experiences and research projects from which we could learn together@en

Following the emergence of neoliberal economic policies across the African continent, over the last three decades many African countries have seen a shift from state-led housing development to fully privatized development. Increasingly, this urban development takes the form of New Towns: master planned communities developed on greenfield sites. Because they are dependent on market-driven returns on investments, these privately-developed New Towns tend to ignore existing social and environmental realities and instead accommodate only the upper and middle classes in spatially segregated enclaves. Although this urban model has recently become more popular with both investors and politicians, it is not entirely new. As early as the 1980s, Dutch urban planner Coen Beeker was a vocal critic of developments in and around Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which replaced vibrant traditional communities with both formally and demographically uniform developments. This paper argues for a re-examination of Beeker’s own methods and the reasons for the sustained popularity of the urban projects that he led.@en