Abstract
The present scenery of Maputo, capital city of Mozambique, points
out the urgency of innovative development paradigms being alternative
to the neo-liberal one and capable of supporting the involvement
of urban identities still in a way of definition, as the Sub-saharian
African ones are, with the globalization?s world-web.
The present Maputo originates from the stratification of specific
historical moments showing themselves in the presence of social,
temporal and spatial fragments: the "baixa city", the
socialist FRELIMO city, but, above all, the sharp contrast between
the "cement city" and the "reed city" made by
a paradoxical(but, just apparently) Programme of Structural Adjustment
of the WB in the middle of the war against South Africa in 1987.
In spite of its present fragility, Maputo, catapulted in an unusual
metropolitan dimension, offers itself as the most "productive"
and "bankable" Mozambican city taking risks of breaking
the weak links with the rest of the national territory and of being
converted in a banal "appendix" of the near South Africa.
As the neo-liberal macro-economy wants, the foreign western action
becomes unavoidable for the implementation of ?megaprojects? both
in the field of the infrastructures (the big conversion of Maputo
Corridor in the Witbank- Maputo highway with 180 investments linked
with it; the administrative and technological conversion of Maputo
Port and Railway) and in the industry (Maputo Iron and Steel Project,
Mozal Plan for an alluminium foundry).
Contrary to this exogenous context, there is ?another? Maputo that
doesn?t know social partecipation to urban development problems
but, unconsciously, elaborates real processes of "social regulation"
( about the household, the gender, the religion the increase of
urban violence) and builds complex, social and temporal "spaces".
On one hand, the international "megaprojects" think about
"inclusiveness" as a spontaneous poverty reduction coming
from more efficient economic performances given just by a part of
the formal world; on the other hand, the idea of the "inclusive
city" asks for the understanding of those marginalized "spaces"
and the research of innovative and sinergic actions between the
formal world and the informal one at every scale.
Instead, the neo-liberal macro-economy pretends decentralization
and Maputo Municipality has to be able to manage with these contrasting
forces ( through a good urban governance) although it lives the
uncertainty both of its administrative structure (Law 3/94) and
of its power about land regulation (Law 19/97): will it be capable
of vouching for the "mozambicanity" of its path in the
globalization? The Maputo case study offers the opportunity for
re-thinking the difficult issue of urban identities between democracy
and globalization.
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