Resource information
This paper is one of a series of
analytical studies commissioned by the World Bank's
Africa Region and Water Anchor which are intended to
identify and address the future challenges of urban water
supply, sanitation and flood management in Sub-Saharan
Africa's (SSA) cities and towns. Following the terms of
reference for the assignment, and as indicated by its title,
the paper is directed at understanding and describing the
linkages and interdependencies between water management and
water security on the one hand, and urbanization, urban
planning and development on the other. The paper is
structured in six sections. Section one presents an overview
of urbanization trends in SSA. This is followed by a
discussion in Section two of what can be seen as the
corollary of the unprecedented urban population growth now
occurring and projected for SSA, large-scale urban
expansion, involving potentially massive increases in urban
land cover. This expansion has implications, also discussed
in section two, for the internal structuring of African
cities and towns, and for the planning and development of
the overall urban form which is resulting, as well as for
the environmental risks cities and towns face now and into
the future. This 'poor urban planning' in the
present-day has its roots in the inherited practices of
colonial-era planning theories and practices, which are
described in section three. These still resonate, as
discussed in section four, which discusses key constituent
aspects of contemporary planning systems in Africa, as
illustrated by a number of case studies. In section five,
the focus shifts to the current institutional experience
with urban water management, again with a number of good
practice cases provided. The author then turn in the
concluding section seven to the key concern of this issues
paper: that of integrating urban planning and water
management as the Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM)
approach emerges- or, perhaps to put it better, of finding
ways in which such integration can promote the emergence of
IUWM. This is a necessary but difficult task, complicated by
the reality that, as seen in the quote above, IUWM requires
quite considerable coordination within the water sector
alone. Moreover, our preceding analysis demonstrates, and
this is the core argument of this paper, that seen from the
side of the overall urban planning system, the deficiencies,
decline and the delegitimizing of the
'traditional' planning system and practices in
SSA, and the theory which underpins them, along with the
failure to modernize them in a consistent fashion, has led,
if anything, to greater fragmentation in the planning and
managing of urban development. Land use planning and
infrastructure (and other sector) planning, including water,
typically occur in an uncoordinated fashion. This makes
planning adequately for large-scale urban growth and
expansion that much more difficult.
