Maputo, the Mozambique city capital, has been experiencing significant changes in its urban morphology. These changes have been pushed by public interventions, linked to the recent Maputo structure plan and the expansion of the city towards new neighbourhoods, or to private-led real estate developments resulting in the mushrooming of numerous high-rise buildings in the wealthier areas of the city.
These changes, spurred by modernity-inspired visions of what the city should be, seem to be leading to increasing social spatial differentiation in a city where social differentiation had decreased in the years after independence. Through exploring the plans for the rehabilitation and partial privatization of the Mercado do Museu, an iconic popular market located in the high-end Polana neighbourhood, Sandra’s presentation will discuss the discourses and visions around Maputo’s future and their implications in term of the city’s social spatial differentiation.
About the speaker
Sandra Roque has a PhD in social anthropology and has been working on cities and urban social life in Angola and Mozambique. She is currently a Project Director in COWI, a Danish consultancy company and was until recently involved in ‘The Ethnography of a divided city” looking into socio-politics, poverty and gender in Maputo, Mozambique.
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