Introduction

The five Lusophone African countries – Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe – are now confronting, four decades after independence, new and more complex urban challenges. New circumstances call for changes to the ways in which urban development and urban planning were considered in the past by different political regimes. This book – Urban Planning in Lusophone African Countries – aims to contribute to the analysis of the past and to discussion about the future of urban planning in these five countries. It examines the history of urban planning during the colonial period and explores contemporary planning systems and some of the challenges and opportunities with which they are confronted.