ABSTRACT
The two case studies that precede this one both originate in the United Republic of Tanzania and the model for the future of African urban planning suggested by Dar es Salaam. That model was disseminated far and wide through the United Nations system, but chiefly to other cities in eastern and southern Africa. Given the long reach of connections between post-colonial Zambia and Tanzania – symbolized by the vast and creaking Tanzania-Zambia Railway (Tazara) that in the early 1970s finally connected landlocked Zambia by rail with the port at Dar es Salaam as a tool in the fight against apartheid South Africa – it is not surprising that Lusaka became a Demonstration City for the Sustainable Cities Program that had started in Dar. The Tazara and the SCP are, of course, not all that is shared here. Each theme of this book – neoliberalism, sustainable development, good governance, and the politics of cultural difference – takes its distinct shape in Lusaka as well, coloring the beginning, middle, and end of the experimentation with an ostensibly more decentralized and participatory form of planning and of solid waste management.
