Subúrbios and Cityness: Exploring Imbrications and Urbanity in Maputo, Mozambique

Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, shows profound spatial, social, and economic differentiation built on the legacy of colonial structures of inequality. After Mozambique’s independence from Portugal, the nationalisation of Maputo’s real estate transformed the racial and social landscape of the city, but liberalisation of the economy in the 1990s and the increasing commoditisation of property linked social and economic status more strongly to the structure of urban space. Although the use of old colonial spatial categories, such as cidade de caniço and cidade de cimento, has been fading, the terms used today by residents to describe Maputo’s urban space still underscore spatial, social, and economic differences. Based on fieldwork carried out in three Maputo neighbourhoods that are undergoing significant change, this article looks at people’s activities and movements across the city and the resulting imbrication and interaction between different neighbourhoods. It suggests that Maputo, an African postcolonial city, is experiencing changes that allow residents to establish new relationships with the city, encouraging novel expressions of cityness and new conceptions of the urban to emerge.