ABSTRACT
The research on modern urban planning in Lusophone African cities is particularly stimulating, as traces of the urban laboratory and utopia of the 1950s are still evident despite the violent and rapid transformations these cities have been through. Excellent examples include cities in Angola and Mozambique, countries that experienced rapid growth in the period between the end of the Second World War and their independence in 1975. Before that and until the end of the nineteenth century, the Portuguese presence in these African territories consisted mainly of a few settlements along the coast which, in general, existed without a defined formal urban plan.
