Suburbanisation, homeownership aspirations and urban housing: Exploring urban expansion in Dar es Salaam

• Published in: Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Vol. 54; no. 10; pp. 2342 - 2359
• Main Authors: Andreasen, Manja H, Agergaard, Jytte, Møller-Jensen, Lasse
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2017; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Affordable housing; Aspiration; Center and periphery; Demand; Expansion; Home ownership; Housing; Income; Land; Motivation; Ownership; Planners; Residents; Suburban areas; Suburbanization; Supply & demand; Urban areas; Urban development; Urban growth; Urban population; Urban sprawl; informal settlements; peri-urban; urban expansion; 达累斯萨拉姆; 城市边缘带; Dar es Salaam; 市郊化; 城市扩张; suburbanisation; 非正式居住
• ISSN: 0042-0980; 1360-063X
• DOI: 10.1177/0042098016643303

This paper offers an exploration of urban expansion from the point of view of the individual residents buying land, settling and living in new, rapidly growing peripheral settlements of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The findings suggest that the demand for affordable housing is the primary motivation for residents moving to the periphery. The demand for self-built, owner-occupier housing is especially significant initially, while the demand for non-ownership housing increases in importance later in the process. Income-related motives, on the other hand, are strikingly absent from settlement considerations. Urban residents settle in the periphery, even though income-generation is often tied to working somewhere else, namely in the central parts of the city. The paper proposes that the processes of urban expansion depicted in this study are usefully conceptualised as suburbanisation processes, though it is a type of suburbanisation that has some peculiarities given the particular context, where expansion happens informally and largely unguided by planners.