The Production of Urban Peripheries For and By Low-Income Populations at the Turn of the Millennium: Maputo, Luanda and Johannesburg

The dynamics of rapid urbanisation and urban trends in the present neoliberal context, which arise from the production of space in the capitalist mode of production, are evident in the peripheries recently produced for and by low-income populations. This article examines these peripheries in representative southern African cities, with Maputo as the main case study, analysed in relation to Luanda and Johannesburg. Basing my argument on the overarching theory of the production of space, I seek to understand how the interventions undertaken by the state and low-income people, and the interrelationship between these two main agents and the urban morphology, vary according to the historical, political and socio-economic specificities of each country. I argue that in Maputo, more than in the other two cities, these specificities, expressed in the morphology of these peripheral areas, benefit some crucial aspects of the living and housing conditions of Maputo’s low-income population, which is the city’s most vulnerable social group.