Sustainable Urban (Re)development in Rwanda

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates the nature of the urban development process of Kigali, Rwanda, with an emphasis on the regularisation of Kigali’s informal settlements. Specifically, it seeks to answer what the current state of knowledge globally of regularisation is, and what actors and factors influence the urban development process in Kigali, from the perspective of urban planning and land management, focusing on social and economic sustainability. Furthermore, it studies how the Busanza project, Mpazi project and Green City Kigali urban development project have fared, and what lessons can be learned from them. A literature study has been conducted, as well as a field study to Kigali, where experts in the field were interviewed and the three urban development projects were observed. The literature study presented the importance of good governance structures that enable understanding of the informal economy and the local needs of informal settlements. It also signified the relevance of tenure security. The thesis presents several factors influencing Kigali’s urban development, such as the significance of participatory planning, well-designed financial models for development projects, and the impact of Rwanda’s low technical capacity in the urban development field. The Busanza project was a failure because of the lack of community engagement, the Mpazi project has been broadly successful but has lingering issues with gentrification, and the Green City Kigali project, while impressive in theory, has been too ambitious to be viable.