ECAS 2013

Observing African cities, one usually easily distinguishes its formal and urbanized areas from its informal settlements. In Luanda, the latter are called "musseques" and one of the policies of Angola's urban planning is to end them. They represent poor living conditions and poverty. They are the side of the coin that must be hidden. But is this distinction between formal and informal so simple?

Since its foundation, there never existed a previous formal city plan and Luanda developed spontaneously, adapting to the topography and resulting in an organic radiocentric city structure, with axes coming from the bay and connecting to the interior. Throughout the centuries, Luanda grew along these axes, mostly due to micro-scale social and economic dynamics, despite some attempts to "formalize" many areas, usually expropriating poor people living near the center and pushing "informality" towards the periphery. This segregation movement has been occurring for a long time, shaping the city's urban growth and its citizens-mentality.

This paper aims to take a new approach at this dichotomy. As the standards defining "formal" were set according to Western societies from the North and not the African reality, whatever does not comply with those standards is branded as "informal": economy, social interaction, space appropriation, construction. The current paper wants to redefine this conception and question whether "informality", "urban informality" in particular (different from "slum conditions"), should be fought or, on the contrary, is a part of Luanda's character and should be taken into account in its relationship with the world.

With the end of Angolan civil war, in 2002, Luanda embarked on an overwhelming course of regeneration. The country's abundant natural resources have attracted massive foreign investment which, in accordance with the abiding policy of 'progress', is irremediably transforming the city's social and spatial order. Official planning strategies have so far largely ignored the role of the musseques (informal settlements) in the city's functioning, preferring to replace them with imported, uprooted, urban models. Entire neighbourhoods are being pushed to ever more peripheral resettlement colonies, to make place for speculation-fuelled, large-scale real-estate developments.

This paper challenges the prevailing cliché, one promoting a 'neoliberal city' surrounded by 'run down shanty towns'. It proposes an alternative, more inclusive, approach to urbanity. Through the deciphering of one of the city's most central musseques, Chicala, the investigation serves as an introduction to the idea of informality as a coherent possibility, one deserving to be part of the Luanda's "global" status.

The argument is sustained by ongoing primary research, grasping each feature of Chicala's civic life as a microcosm of Luanda and the World. On the one hand, scrutiny of the residents' areas of work shows how the site functions as part of a larger urban metabolism, with over half of the local residents commuting to the city centre (working for governmental institutions or multinational companies). On the other hand, trade routes of everyday goods, from production to the local market, underline the existence of a genuine dialogue between the neighbourhood and international commercial networks.

In this paper I propose a preliminary approach to how religious movements of Bakongo origin have been key actors in the demographic, economic and cultural shaping of certain notorious neighbourhoods in Luanda (namely Palanca and the Terra Nova or Congolenses). Through a description of two such phenomena - the 'Tokoist Church' and the so-called mpeve ya nlongo (Holy Spirit) movements - I will debate two questions: what are the national and transnational mobilities associated to such historical and contemporary processes; and what are the consequent 'territorializations' - i.e. identitary and political belongings and distinctions - that emerge within such processes.

It is striking. No matter where we look from, Luanda is a city undergoing profound transformations. From above one sees it expanding, parceling and splitting up. From below it rises, moves and hides. Articulating multiple scales of analysis, this paper is an exploration of its emerging forms of metropolitan modernity.

Fueled by a steep rise in oil revenues, a new type of urbanity seems to be taking over the capital of Angola. Its material configurations are difficult to miss. Closed condominiums have sprouted throughout the city. New centralities emerged out of thin air. Some have moved away from the center. Others moved behind walls. Many have resettled in new housing developments built by state. Many more have continued to build their own houses. Perhaps less evident are the immaterial forms of such urbanity, or the emerging qualities of metropolitan existence in contemporary Luanda. Inseparable from the amalgamation of surfaces and built forms is a transformation of urban imaginaries that seems to incorporate a language of condominiums and order, experiences of distancing, displacement and violence, as well as a quotidian of unrepentant commercialism and consumption.

This paper is highly speculative. Drawing on an extensive period of field research on urban planning, real estate investments and the experience of contemporary Luanda, it explores transformations across its territorial and social spheres in order to think more generally about the metropolitan form.