La question urbaine au Mozambique : la ville malgré tout : héritages et devenir
Institution:
Paris, EHESSDisciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
Urban crisis in the thirld world and in africa in particular offer many similarities: overpopulated and underequipped shanty towns continue to grow and attract rural populations in spite of acute degradation of services and living conditions, local governements lack financial capacity and initiative to face the problems, civil society is dormant. However, in spite of this apparent uniformity, lie the complex history of each urban system, the caracteristics of its urbanisation process and its particular relationship to its spatial and cultural inheritage: these are some of the elements which condition the present situation and determine the future of these cities. The mozambican case studied here investigates the crisis and failures of the city in transition in the light of the colonial and socialist city which have succeeded to each other and have imposed their conflicting models on the urban system under construction. Urban space in mozambique has been disputed and occupied in different ways throughout time, but the mozambican city has mainly been ruled along bureaucratic and authoritarian methods of management and control, leaving little opportunity for its population to access its economical and cultural potentialities. As integral part of a democratisation process instigated by the world bank and foreign donors, decentralisation and the setting-up of municipalities have led in 1998 to the first municipal elections in this country. While the new local dispensation seems unable to introduce any change in the pattern of relations between the urban population and political power, market economy and globalisation are enforcing new forms of alienation and of exploitation of resources on the city-to be.
Abstract FR:
La crise des systemes urbains du tiers monde et de l'afrique en particulier presente maintes similitudes: bidonvillisation, surpopulation, sousequipement, degradation des formes urbaines et des services, mal vivre des populations qui continuent pourtant d'y affluer, faible capacite financiere et d'initiative des pouvoirs locaux. Pourtant, au-dela des apparences, se jouent la complexite de l'histoire de chaque ville, la diversite des processus d'urbanisation et des heritages - renies ou integres - qui modelent le present des villes et conditionnent leur futur. Le cas mozambicain traite ici interroge la crise et les echecs de la ville en transition - marquee par l'adoption de l'economie liberale et le multipartisme - a la lumiere des heritages de la ville coloniale et de la ville socialiste, dont les modeles conflictuels ont faconne un systeme urbain en difficile recomposition. Convoitee et disputee selon des modalites differentes a travers le temps, la ville mozambicaine n'a guere connu que des modes de gestion bureaucratiques et autoritaires, sans reelle appropriation de l'environnement urbain et de ses potentialites economiques et culturelles par les habitants. Parties integrantes d'une democratisation + pilotee ; par les bailleurs de fonds internationaux, la decentralisation, la creation des collectivites locales et les premieres elections municipales n'ont pas modifie les relations entre les citadins et le pouvoir politique, tandis que l'economie de marche et la mondialisation impriment a la ville en devenir de nouvelles formes d'exploitation des richesses et d'exclusion de l'espace urbain.