Abstract

BEJA DA COSTA, Ana  and  JORGE, Sílvia. A landscape in mutation: the case of bairro dos pescadores in Maputo, Mozambique. Finisterra [online]. 2019, n.112, pp.145-162. ISSN 0430-5027.  https://doi.org/10.18055/Finis17838.

Maputo's coastal areas represent one of the last vacant land resources in the Mozambican capital, making it the city's new image stronghold, embedded in the dominant neoliberal ideology. In practice, among various intervention proposals and projects, most of which guided by a market-led logic, these self-produced neighbourhoods are expanding in a very particular way. This process is intrinsically related to its superposition on local landscape systems, namely on dunes and mangrove areas. Considering that there are only humanized landscapes and their dynamics, this research aims to understand the coastal landscape of Maputo as a system that originated from multiple natural and social factors, with shifting dynamics over the past decades. Grounded on recent fieldwork, undertaken as part of ongoing PhD research, this paper aims to portray a self-produced urban tissue in ecologically vulnerable areas, as a means to understand landscape dynamics in the light of space production processes. Taking Bairro dos Pescadores (Fishermen's Neighbourhood), in Costa do Sol, as a case study, an analysis of the urban tissue is carried out to include the relationship with the natural landscape, starting from the new millennium, along with the establishment of the current neoliberal context. By mapping the interactions between the expansion and densification of the urban tissue and landscape, we reflect upon the influence of these same elements in the form of the neighbourhood and what they mean to its inhabitants.

Keywords : Urban tissue; self-produced neighbourhood; landscape systems; mangroves; Maputo.

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