Presented by: John M. Lubuva

Ilala Municipal Director

With Contributions by: Martha Mkupasi and Gombo Samandito

Ilala Municipal Council,

Dar es Salaam

 

Urban and Rural Planning or Town and Country Planning, which in this presentation will be referred to as ‘planning’ is defined as a process of making spatial analysis, for the purpose of organizing, managing and guiding the development of built elements and the conduct human activities in space so as to achieve harmony and to enhance social welfare and economic wellbeing through appropriate use of land and other natural resources. Planning involves a diversity of functions ranging from pre-planning studies through plan preparation, to the physical development of land. The focus in this presentation will be on urban planning, because it is the area with which the authors are more familiar, and perhaps it is in the urban settings that the challenges are more pronounced and where the results of failure are more daunting.

 

Planning is a professional activity that should be performed by adequately and appropriately trained professional planners. These must in turn be guided by a common legal framework in order to ensure that the physical planning profession and its practice cater adequately both for the public and private interests, while mitigating conflicts that often arise between individual and public interests.

 

The Town and Country Planning Ordinance, Cap 378 provides the legal framework for planning in Tanzania. The ordinance dates back to 1956 and it has certainly been overtaken by the many dramatic shifts and changes that have since taken place in the social, political and economic conditions of Tanzania. While there is urgent need to revise and update the planning legislation so that it reflects and promotes the aspirations of the 21^st Century Tanzanians, the technical aspects of the ordinance are still relevant.  In any case it would be incorrect to blame the law for any of the past and present planning failures in Tanzania.

 

As with any legal instrument, planning legislation requires an institutional framework for its execution. The law prescribes a general framework for plan preparation and implementation by designated preparatory authorities. According to Cap 378 both the central government through the directorate of human settlements development and the LGAs are responsible for urban and rural planning in Tanzania. At the local level LGAs are recognized as preparatory authorities with responsibilities for plan preparation and implementation (Nnkya and Lerise 1998). All plans must, however be approved by the Minister responsible for town planning who is recognized as a preparatory authority. In practice approval is done by the Director of the department that is responsible for town planning. While the legal framework has remained the same for 60 years, circumstances have changed considerably over time as discussed in the ensuing sections of this presentation.

Prior to independence, the powers for plan preparation were vested with the Town and Country Planning Control Board that was established at national level. The board could also delegate powers to an Area Planning Committee at the local level where it deemed fit. Using these delegated powers, Local Government Authorities (LGAS) prepared plans which were approved by the Central Planning and Building Committee. In actual fact, however, most of the planning activities were undertaken by the board (Nnkya and Lerise 1998). Planning and the planning institutions at that time paid more attention to matters considered important to colonial administration. Though urban economic activities including commercial and industrial development were influenced by zoning rules, the degree to which colonial administration consciously and systematically directed the growth of the urban centers was small and geared towards efficient functioning of urban areas as centers of rural surplus collection of raw materials for export to the metropolitan countries and as bases for colonial administration and garrisons.

Various policies and strategies have been implemented since Tanzania gained independence in 1961. The first six years after independence were largely characterized by market forces and a neutral economic policy that was non-restrictive of trade and capital movement although already there was the land nationalization policy of 1963. Fundamental changes began with the 1967 Arusha Declaration that proclaimed Tanzania a socialist state. All major means of economic production were nationalized as the state took control over the commanding heights of the economy. The Land Acquisition Act No. 47 of 1967 and the Building Acquisition Act of 1971 were passed to facilitate nationalization of land and landed properties. The latter required nationalization of all buildings then valued at T. Sh. 100,000/= or more. These policies had significant impact on the urban planning and implementation processes because they barred the participation of private sector capital in housing and other types of urban land development, altogether abolishing estate development business, which until then was providing good quality urban housing.

 

The prominent feature in the institutional framework during this period was that the state was doing everything through external planning agencies, since the LGAs lacked qualified staff. New public institutions were formed including the Registrar of Buildings to manage the nationalized properties, the National Housing Corporation to build new, low cost mass houses and the Tanzania Housing Bank to provide loans for housing finance. After an initial spurt of positive contributions to society, these erstwhile public institutions like so many others of their kind soon became incapable of discharging their responsibilities due to undercapitalization, gross inefficiency and mismanagement, among other reasons (Lubuva, 2005).

 

A decentralization program in government was initiated in 1972, which transferred planning, coordination and management of rural development functions from the ministries to the regions and the LGAs were abolished. At the same time the villagization policy and rural settlement program was vigorously implemented in the mid 1970s when nearly all development effort and resources were directed towards the rural sector at the expense of the urban sector. LGAs were reinstated in 1982 following amendment of the constitution in 1977, of which Section 146 states that “the purpose of having LGAs is to facilitate transfer of authority to the people” (URT, 1977). By then much of the accumulated knowledge, practical experience, expertise and institutional memory on local government including urban plan preparation and implementation had been lost.

 

Significantly all urban growth that took place during the period of abolition of the LGAs occurred without provision of any social or economic services and infrastructure, and the infrastructure and community facilities that existed until then were left to deteriorate, in some cases beyond repair. However a very important policy development took place during this period in the acceptance of informal settlements as contributing to the urban housing stock and adoption of unplanned settlements upgrading policy in 1972. In the absence of the LGAs, the responsibilities for plan preparation were discharged by Regional Town Planning Officers but nobody assumed the responsibility of the LGAs to implement the plans and it was at this time that the dichotomy of plan preparation from plan implementation became more apparent. Matters turned dramatically for the worse in 1979 when the Ministry issued a directive that allowed the Regional Town Planning Officers to approve schemes of up to 50 plots. This directive opened up a Pandora’s Box of malpractices and created opportunities for unscrupulous planners to create few plots every here and there for personal gain.

 

Under the name of in-filling, many open spaces and other public lands were encroached upon in 1980s to create plots for private development. All this was done with the approval of the then Directorate of Urban Development. On account of these malpractices the town planning profession fell to disrepute. In order to curb this rampant abuse of powers, the Director of Urban Development stopped the preparation of ‘extract’ drawings and directed that cadastral survey of plots would be permitted only against an approved layout plan. Among other things, the new directive stated that “The present practice of preparing extracts of one or a few plots as in-filling, sub-division, change of use …. and squatter incorporation has almost destroyed the town planning record system and professionalism. The extracts have, in one way or another caused double allocation, a shortage of plots for general public, poor record-keeping, destroying the land survey cadastral system, and jeopardized the standards and ethics of the town planning profession … extract (drawing) for one or few plots should cease from 1 July 1989 (Kreibich and Olima 2002).

 

Since then many layout plans have been prepared for guiding new planned development formal and for ‘upgrading’ of informal settlements. In the city of Dar es Salaam for example, layout plans have been prepared for nearly all of the 40 or more informal settlements that exist. Most of these plans have not, however, been implemented.

 

One of the key problems appears to be that the legal framework of Cap 378 lays more emphasis and is more elaborate on plan preparation than on plan implementation where it is silent for on the detailed modalities of coordination for plan implementation. The need to have distinct frameworks for plan preparation and for plan implementation is clearly demonstrated by the fact that ‘plan implementation’ is almost always at great variance with urban ‘plans’ as amply demonstrated in Sinza, Kijitonyama, Mbezi Beach and other similar ‘Schemes’ in Dar es Salaam and elsewhere in Tanzania. That the majority of urban dwellers live in unplanned settlements also indicates failure of the planning framework. Hence the need for many post-development interventions such as the Squatter Upgrading and Sites and Services Schemes, Community Infrastructure Upgrading Programs (CIUPs), the Sustainable Cities Program and now the Cities Alliance program.

 

The reform processes that came into play in the1990s influenced planning by insisting on the participation of stakeholders in the urban planning process. This coincided with introduction of new systems of urban and rural planning including Environmental Planning and Management and Strategic planning that allow for the participation of different stakeholders in the whole process of planning to implementation, both of which called for new institutional framework to create structures or focal points within the LGAs in order to facilitate constructive interface with citizens. Some municipalities have created public information and communication units for that purpose. It has been observed, however that, participation has not helped improve development control and management due to insufficient resources and staff (Mbyopyo and Kyessi 2003).

Implementation of plans is done by both government and private developers. The government is supposed to implement infrastructures components of the plans such as roads, water, power and waste water systems, which are not easy for the private sector to develop in a coherent manner. The institutional framework that assigned the responsibility for infrastructure development to the government did not, however, foresee that government would fail to implement infrastructure plansdue to lack of resources that resulted from the poor performance of the economy almost throughout the history of Tanzania since independence. Thus the present institutional framework at local level does not facilitate plan implementation because there is no inbuilt mechanism to ensure that services and infrastructure are developed as a way of implementation of plans.

Housing is widely provided by the ‘private sector’ developers who are by and large individual citizens. In theory after coming into effect of a scheme, all developers within the planning areas are required to obtain planning consent (or building permit) from the LGA and abide by the development conditions stipulated therein. In practice very few developers bother to seek planning consent and fewer still abide by the conditions and they have no contact at all with the preparatory authorities during most of the construction period. Most of individual developers also lack the necessary financial resources and skills to build according to plan requirements and so they operate as though there were no guidance, creating a huge gap between what is planned and what is implemented.

 

While it is the duty of the authority where the scheme is made to execute and enforce such scheme, to control and regulate development within its planning areas and to review or amend the planning scheme as it shall be deemed necessary after every five years, in practice very little or none of this happens. Due to severe human, material and financial resources constraints, the LGAs hardly make inspections on all development that is taking place at any time and they do not review planning scheme with any regularity, or at all. Even if the LGAs did make the reviews according to law, the period of five years to review or amend a planning scheme is much too long a time considering the fast pace of change in modern society. The minister is empowered by law to intervene, if it comes to his notice that any development is taking place contrary to the provisions of a scheme. In practice, interventions by the Minister rarely happen.

 

Budgets of the LGAs are not linked to the physical development plans of their areas of jurisdiction. This in part, is due to extreme poverty and a bad tax structure that limit the scope for mobilizing local revenues of urban LGAs (Sethuraman, 1997), but also it is simply because no deliberate effort is made to create linkages between the physical and the fiscal aspects of urban development management. While land and properties generate considerable revenue from land rent and property taxes none of this is deliberately set aside for land development purposes. Thus the opportunity to link the revenues to land development service delivery by the LGAs is lost (See Box 1).

 

 

Housing on average accounts for about 60% of the urban built environment and it is housing pattern that determines the urban form. In Tanzania planners have absolutely no influence on housing development and as a result urban development has been amorphous, lacking not only in form, pattern or character, but also in essential services. Nationalization of private properties in the 1970s curtailed private sector development of housing estates that provided for most of the urban housing needs as indicated in the remnants of good urban form, which came through private or public housing estate developments. Planners and the Ministry, having fallen victim to the above unfortunate circumstances now believe that people actually need plots in the towns, which is a wrong notion, since what people need is housing! Given a choice most urban resident who want to own a home would rather buy a finished house than build one, just like they would rather buy their clothes, computers or cars than make their own. Instead too much effort, time, resources and emotions, however, are expended to try to make available as many plots as possible in the towns with little regard paid to urban housing delivery.

 

Focusing on delivery of plots to individual developers instead of delivering housing is ineffective and wasteful in many ways. Apart from it being extremely costly to the individual developers and the economy, it is also practically impossible for development control planners and engineers to keep track of hundreds of thousands of individual ‘developers’ erecting hundreds of thousands of buildings over indeterminate periods of time, particularly in a big city that is growing as fast as Dar es Salaam. The ability of institutions to monitor and coordinate planned development is weakened where numerous individual developers are involved. Dealing with few enlightened firms as developers involved in mass housing construction will be easier for the LGAs that have inadequate staff and resources than dealing with a multitude of individual developers.

 

A new project to survey 20,000 plots is under way, ostensibly to preempt unplanned settlements in the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. The project has been replicated in Mwanza city and is likely to be replicated elsewhere. While the project will indeed curb spontaneous development, it raises many other planning issues related to sprawled development that is beyond the ability of the city authorities and national government to provide acceptable levels of social services.

 

Delivering housing and not plots will also eliminate the problems of double allocation. Planners and the Ministry need to urgently refocus attention on to mass housing development as a strategy for plan implementation instead of generating plots that may not necessarily be developed according to plans. Private sector firms should be encouraged to invest in housing development with appropriate financing mechanisms designed to provide for low cost housing. This approach would also have the advantage of creating compact city forms that are affordable to provide with a reasonable quality of infrastructure services. In addition the new approach will ensure economy in the use of scarce urban land for multiple-family instead of single family dwellings, reintroduce economies of scale in housing construction, ensure good quality of housing from professional supervision of construction and encourage effective utilization of infrastructure where residential land is occupied within acceptable time frames. Urban physical development will be better coordinated by removing many pockets of undeveloped or partially developed plots in the inner parts of towns while new developers are forced go to distant locations

UCLAS is the biggest single university that has produced many competent and qualified town planners in the country. Since its establishment as Ardhi Institute, the college trained students on how to guide and control physical development by the use of a master plan and through detailed planning schemes. This presentation has shown much fault in the enforcement of plans, whish is attributed partly to inadequate institutional frameworks and partly it is a result of past policies and the lack of an appropriate framework for urban housing development. Recent debates have tended to encourage a shift of approach from the traditional master plan in favor of strategic urban development planning. These debates have naturally influenced the university to also shift its approach of training from master planning to the so called “strategic planning” which is considered more likely to provide solution for current planning problems in Tanzanian cities. Consequently, UCLAS now puts more emphasis on non-physical aspect of planning and less emphasis on physical intervention to guide development that takes place on land. A great danger is in the offing in that UCLAS may soon become less relevant to the physical planning needs of towns in Tanzania. There are complaints in some quarters that current students and graduates of UCLAS are unable to work on the drawing board or in the field. In one incidence for example, some students on field work in one municipality were assigned to work on a layout plan which they could not do, claiming that they were not trained to design. While strategic planning is the ‘in thing’ in modern urban management practice, it does not eliminate the need for a design oriented planning that will always bee required to guide the physical development of human settlements. If indeed such complaints are genuine, then UCLAS need to quickly reorient their approach to the training of planners as a discipline that will still be called upon to deal with physical reality.

 

Any professional training equips the practitioners not only with the techniques, but also with the tricks of the trade which can be abused to grave consequences. It is therefore important to ensure that town planners like all other professional disciplines such as architects, engineers, land surveyors and others are held accountable for their professional conduct. Unfortunately in Tanzania there is no independent body to oversee the professional conduct of town planners. Hence whoever appears to breach professional ethics is made to account to any relevant authority, including the courts of law in some cases. Those in wage employment, particularly in the public service are accountable to their employing authorities and many in the central and local governments have lost jobs for reasons of professional misconduct.

 

Sacking alone is not an adequate sanction against professional misconduct since offenders are free to continue practicing in the private sector or as bona fide individuals, which can be more destructive for lack of control. A Registration Board of Town Planners would be more effective because it could impose more severe disciplinary actions even to individuals outside formal employment, including deregistration. The Institute of Engineers Tanzania is a good example which has disciplinary procedures in place for engineers who beach professional conduct (Mbyopyo 2003). It is therefore important to urgently establish a Board of Registration for town Planners that will monitor the professional conduct and performance of individuals whether employed in the public service, in private firms or operate as bona fide individuals. There exists the Tanzania Association of Planners but it is only a voluntary special interest group whose membership is not mandatory.

 

Planning affects the day to day lives of people by defining the physical structure that permits certain things to be done in certain ways at certain times and limits or prohibits people from doing certain things at certain places and time. Planning also allocates land and other natural resources between individuals in society and between societies over time. For these two reasons, planning is as much a political activity as it is a technical activity and so planning requires political will. The role of the politicians in planning is to represent public opinion in order to ensure that planning meets the needs and aspirations of the people and not those of the technocrats. In democratic societies like Tanzania where political leaders are elected and they are therefore accountable to the electorates through the vote, people tend to trust that the elected leaders to make good decisions on matters that affect them. The inputs of politicians therefore make planning more just and acceptable to society. Politics becomes bad in planning only when it is serving self interest in much the same way that unscrupulous technocrats can be self serving through planning.

 

Politicians must, however, be guided by sound technical and professional advice in order to make good planning decisions which must be backed by legislation to curb the possible excesses of both the politicians and the technocrats. The legal requirements for plan preparation and implementation must be unambiguous and comprehensible to the general public in order to enhance compliance and reduce the costs of forceful enforcement. Policies and Acts should not contradict each other or create situations where authority and responsibilities overlap or are duplicated like it is the case with some sections of CAP 378 and Local Government (Urban Authorities) Act no. 8 of 1982. While the Local Government (Urban Authorities) Act of 1982 section 60 and 61 empower to the minister responsible for local government to acquire land, revoke right of occupancy and seek approval to use land; CAP 378 section 45 empowers the president to acquire land, which presumes that the president will receive advice from the minister responsible for lands. This is a contradiction that should be removed. Legislation also must be strictly enforced so as to avoid malpractices but it must create space for the public and other stakeholders to effectively participate in decision-making over matters that affect them.

 

Unlike in Tanzania the functions of town planning and those of local government in some countries are placed in the same ministry. In Tanzania these functions are in two separate ministries. While there might appear to be advantages in placing these two functions together under one portfolio at least by strengthening the links between, town planning, implementation of the plans and management of the physical development that ensues, this approach ignores the reality that LGAs are agencies for delivering a whole range of social, economic and cultural services, all of which are equally important to local populations. Nevertheless, too many institutions are involved in the planning process in Tanzania - from plan preparation to plan implementation. These range from the LGAs that prepare plans to the Minister who approves them. The process takes too long a time before realization of the plan through surveying of land to demarcate plot boundaries, which is also done at the local level but approval must be sought from the Director of Surveys and Mapping at the center.

 

This sequence is repeated for allocations and titling which also involve the LGAs, the Commissioner for Lands and the Registrar of Titles, both at the center. Where valuation is necessary in order to acquire a housing loan for example, a similar sequence has to be repeated, with the local valuers doing the assessment that cannot be legal unless endorsed by the Chief Government Valuer, at the center. This creates a situation of unclear assignment of responsibilities between the center and the local institutions, which breeds a fertile ground for lack of accountability at both levels and for corrupt practices. If Tanzania wishes to build a modern competitive and robust economy, the country, extending well over 945,000 sq. km with a population of more than 35 million, cannot afford such centralized, bureaucratic and cumbersome procedures for transacting and developing land.

 

Plan preparation and implementation is essentially part of a local development process. A good policy and legislative framework one that gives sufficient autonomy and trust to local authorities in decision-making without compromising issues of national interests, which must be very clearly defined in the legislation. These may include national safety and security matters, preservation of cultural heritage or conservation of natural or man-made features of unique character for the common enjoyment of all or for environmental sustainability. National institutions have the responsibility to ensure that agreed national standards are met and to sanction abuse of powers. Requirements that all plans must be approved by the Minister and that all surveys and valuations be approved by the Director of Surveys and Mapping and the Chief Government Valuer respectively, need to be reviewed in order to enhance efficient transactions in land and to hasten the implementation of plans.

 

A mechanism could be developed to require all local government authorities for example, to prepare general physical development frameworks with very explicit policies, standards and other specifications that would be approved by the Minister to become a binding document to the LGA around which detailed layout plans would be prepared and approved by the council. Similarly network survey of coordinates could be prepared for each LGA area of jurisdiction which must be approved by the Director of Surveys and Mapping. Detailed demarcations of individual plots could then be approved locally by competent professional Surveyors. A similar arrangement could apply for local approval of valuations.  The Ministry should maintain close supervision and oversight over these approvals through annual or other regular audits. Some competent professionals could be appointed in the LGAs or regional secretariats to make approvals on behalf of the minister.

 

Taking account of the nature of Tanzania’s current market economy in a globalized context, the rapid pace of change in modern society and the inherent slow speed of government institutions, more space should be created for participation of the private sector in plan preparation and plan implementation. Central government and LGAs should focus the scarce human, material and financial resources available at both levels to ensure that good policies and legislative guidelines are in place and are regularly updated and revised to cope with rapid changes dictated of modern society, and to ensure close monitoring, supervision and regulation of plan preparation and implementation. In this regard, Tanzania could borrow a leaf from the Government of Kenya which has recently transferred a considerable proportion of the responsibility for plan preparation to the private sector.

Various institutions implement their plans regardless of what is happening in the others. For example, TANESCO, Water Agencies and TANROADS make and implement plans without consultation with preparatory authorities and without coordination between them. An institutional set up that ensures coordination of all activities of various development agencies is urgently required. At the local level utility companies especially, and other service delivery agencies should be required to obtain consent of the LGAs for any installation in order to ensure that infrastructure is coordinated with settlement growth. Lack of coordination often leads to idle, or inadequate capacity, which is costly, or lack of essential services in some areas. Lessons could perhaps be drawn from the structure of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) for Dodoma, which had separate but interlinked units for plan preparation and plan implementation, or from the Dar es Salaam City Commission that merged the two functions for economic and physical development under one Department of Planning and Coordination as part of its restructuring strategies for the city of Dar es Salaam, in order to enhance coordination.

The present institutional arrangement cannot catch up with the “fast moving train” of busy and uncoordinated developers who seek to solve their housing and business problems quickly. To the contrary, the current complex bureaucratic structure only creates favorable conditions for “a gravy train” to the unscrupulous. Public resources are not enough and the allocative efficiency is poor in the current public institutional set up. The issue at stake is not necessarily to increase availability of public resources but is more on how to allocate them efficiently to priority areas in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of functions between central and local institutions and to create space for the more efficient private sector to contribution to plan preparation and plan implementation. Public resources should be allocated to guiding, supervising and monitoring private sector activities.

 

To resolve the current town planning crisis of poor implementation, the institutional framework should provide for one body to coordinate all physical development. All other implementing agencies should have to report and seek consent before any development takes place so that all developers conform to approved planning schemes. Affordable housing generation, rather than plots generation should be the focus of town planning.

 

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