Sub-Saharan Africa is often regarded as the world’s fasted urbanizing region. This implies the high demand for urban housing, infrastructure developments and services. In many cases, because the government is unable to provide solutions, it shifts the approach from “providing to enabling”, encouraging the private sector to invest in the built environment. This results in developing New Towns which tend to envision of “Africa Rising” Narrative - driven by rapid economic growth. Ideologically, New Towns should be the solution for economic and population growth, however, influenced strongly by private sector’s ambitions, governments’ visions and emerging middle-class’s desires, they tend to become an exclusive and luxurious development, excluding the majority of the population who simply cannot afford living there. This approach may lead to socio-spatial exclusion, resulting in socio-spatial segregation. This research discusses this phenomenon in the case study of Tatu City – a private New Town in Kenya that is partly built, partly under construction and partly in the design process. This research discusses the socio-spatial and governance challenges of Tatu City that have a direct and indirect impact on socio-spatial exclusion. It shows the variety of different perspectives on this issue – public sector’s, private sector’s, NGOs’ and civil society’s. Furthermore, based on theoretical and empirical research it presents the concept of Inclusive New Town and the concept of Inclusive Space In-Between as a response identifies challenges. The outcome of this research is a planning and design framework with a toolkit that was implemented in making the final design
- an Alternative Vision for Tatu city.

This graduation project addresses the problem of waste management in Nairobi, Kenya. The current inadequate waste management throughout Nairobi remains a spatial challenge as it contributes to health concerns, threatens local ecologies, and degrades public space. Analyzing waste flows, the social construct and in particular communitybased-organizations which are catalyzing local challenges to enhance community participation brings forth a set of solutions. By combining circular economy principles, the strengths of community-based-organizations and proposing schools as collection point, this study develops a roadmap towards a circular, healthy and green future. By defining a spatial program at the urban river front of the Nairobi River, as well systemic interventions this roadmap has ambition to improve the local environment and give answer to local needs.

This project presents an alternative to the copy-paste deployment of China financed Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Africa. The darling of Africa’s political elite and favoured apparatus of China’s ambitious One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative the SEZ operates as an isomorphic territory from which endemic modes of existence are excluded.

The development of the Bagamoyo Mega Project in Tanzania, co-funded by China Merchant Holdings International (CMHI) and the General State Reserve Fund (GSRF) of Oman will see the enforced resettlement of 11 600 villagers. The majority of these villagers reside in the Swahili House.

Characterised by a rectangular floor plan cleaved in two by a central corridor leading from a veranda to a courtyard the Swahili House has structured hegemonic definitions of domestic and productive life across three key moments: Colonialism, Ujamaa (Socialism) and Liberalisation. It has also been transformed and appropriated by its inhabitants against such definitions.

In response to the SEZ as a homogenous and exclusionary urban form this project asserts the most fundamental of rights: to stay home. In doing so it engages the emancipatory potential of the Swahili house to collectively occupy and claim ownership of place - proposing a conditioning (rather than condition) of the SEZ master plan. It seeks to open up the possibility for new readings of kinship and collectivity by actively negotiating distinctions between community, family and the individual.

This graduation project aims at creating liveability (in terms of well-functioning control on social relationship and sustainable green in direct home environment) in Xiongan New Town to hosting residents who cannot find a suitable place in Beijing. The great majority of them are young professionals. They are facing the problem that their ideal housing type, which provides quality of affordability (affordable rental housing), assessibility (connectivity to work place through public transportation) and liveable living condition (proper privacy, neither social cage or anonymous community without green) does not exist. Thus this project is in motion to create a more friendly neighbourhood for the young professionals through designing a liveable neighbourhood in terms of control of social interaction, sustainalbe green, affordable rental housing and a seamless public transportation system. Xiongan New Town is a proper location as it provides a larger range of possibilities for this neighbourhood spatially. However, Chinese New Towns are until now built with-out a out relation to their historical and ecological context. This leads to a proposal for an new town that relates to the local ecological and urban context and with references to the history of dwelling in the area. Therefore the objective is to design a infrastructure framework for a New Town and a fully designed liveable neighbourhood as a illustrative example of alternative design approach. Therefore the strategy is composed by two parts. Firstly, based on typology analysis, scenario analysis, case study, mapping, etc., I put forward a series of approaches for Xiongan new town in multiple scales (regional, city, district, neighbourhood) to provide a framework as precondition for a liveable neighbourhood. These approaches aim to achieve a balanced harmony between landscape and city, history and future development as context for neighbourhood design. Secondly, a spatial design focus on the qualities of control on social interaction, historical continuity and sustainable green. Spatial design in neighbourhood scale includes an integral framework and smaller interventions. A blue and green network based on water and topographic condition will be introduced. Accessible network and density hypothesis will be created on top of this landscape layer. Smaller interventions will be embedded into this framework, to show the possibilities of balancing density, creating legible territory, preserving historical continuity, achieving spatial integrality. Specifically, the neighbourhood will be composed of housing types of various density (matching potential density); it will be divided into multiple legible territories of various levels of privacy; historical connection will be provided through preserving parcellation patterns and existing buildings. Houses will be constructed by the method of layer construction to leave space for future development. Green space helps to combine all spatial elements. Finally, the liveable neighbourhood will be a synthesis of all those interventions.