The 102-page Luanda: Reshaping the City details the two year project, which is the largest project ever undertaken by Broadway Malyan’s urbanism team and the culmination of a number of past and ongoing masterplanning projects the practice is delivering in Africa.
The book project was launched at an event at New London Architecture with guest speakers including Baroness Lindsay Northover - Prime Minister’s trade envoy for Angola, and John Dennis - the UK’s ambassador for Angola.
The project to create the Plano Director Geral Metropolitano de Luanda (PDGML) saw the team completely remap an area the size of Greater London, review more than 10,000 documents and attend more than 200 meetings with six high level presentations to the Angolan president and the cabinet of ministers.
The result is a wide-ranging strategic document that provides a fully integrated framework for all aspects of development from land uses to economic diversification, which replaces all prior legislation, policies and programmes and will help direct government spending and external investment over the next 15 years when the city’s population is set to double to almost 13 million.
Lead masterplanner Phil Bonds said the project was designed to harness the city’s growth to the benefit of its growing population while capturing the imagination of investors as well as setting a benchmark for sustainable development for Angola and the rest of Africa.
He said: “Africa is experiencing a major period of urbanisation as well as a rapidly expanding middle class and so creating sustainable and liveable cities will be a major challenge for the continent in the decades ahead.
“This has been a hugely exciting project for Broadway Malyan in terms of its scope and scale and has undoubtedly help raise the practice’s profile on the strategic urban planning stage. As a result we are now working on a new project in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, optimising the land around its new transit network.”
“We discovered an incredibly exciting city with a rich and proud heritage, a dynamic and aspirational population and a government determined to create a better future for its citizens –hopefully our book has captured some of this fantastic journey we have been on delivering the project over the past years.”Monika Bik, Regional Board Member, Broadway Malyan
Broadway Malyan worked with a range of partners to deliver the PDGML including local partner Urbinveste, infrastructure experts Aurecon, transport consultancy Mobility in Chain, Strategists Deloitte and environmental/ social advisors UNL. Fellow director and masterplanner Monika Bik said the project was an exemplar in collaboration, be that with the client, its project partners or the people of Luanda.
She said: “Successful masterplanners immerse themselves in the city so that they can truly understand how it works, its issues and the people that live there. For this project it was important for us to go much deeper than any other previous project so that we could deliver a plan that truly responded to the needs and aspirations of Luanda’s residents.
“We discovered an incredibly exciting city with a rich and proud heritage, a dynamic and aspirational population and a government determined to create a better future for its citizens –hopefully our book has captured some of this fantastic journey we have been on delivering the project over the past years.”
Our aim with the plan for Luanda was to deliver something that would provide a new model for urban growth in Africa and deliver a focused roadmap for implementation over the next fifteen years. It was a huge undertaking and we wanted to capture some of our learnings in this book, marking the end of two years of detailed research and stakeholder engagement.
The book features chapters on Luanda’s economy; scenarios for future growth; the importance of an approach founded on the principles of transport orientated development; how housing led regeneration is key to people’s health, wellbeing and prosperity; the essential infrastructure works needed to transform Luanda into a competitive global city; the environmental impact of the plan and a series of interviews with local partners.
