Resurrecting Luanda's Ghost City: City of 'Musseques '.

摘要

Slums are increasing rapidly in both the developing and developed world. It is estimated that one billion people worldwide live in slums.2 In 2003, the United Nations predicted that by the year 2050, one in three people will live in informal settlements.3 Civil war in Angola that lasted for 27 years, from 1975 to 2007, forced people to migrate from different regions and relocate in the capital city, Luanda; thus resulting in the housing deficit and expansion of slums (musseques) within the outskirts of Luanda's urban core.4 Out of the current six million residents of Luanda, an astounding 4.8 million (57%) live in informal settlements.5 Such settlements are considered to be a cancer on the development of the city, because their rapid growth prevents the expansion of Luanda's urban nucleus. Luanda's "musseques" are physical representations of the social segregation in urban areas of the capital city of Angola. The government of Angola constructed Africa's largest satellite city, the 'Nova Cidade do Kilamba Kiaxi social housing project, as a solution to the current slum predicament within its capital. Unfortunately, the implemented housing strategy was unsuccessful due to the fact that slum dwellers could not afford to purchase the luxurious apartments that were implemented within this social housing project. As a result, international communities are referring to the project as 'Africa's first Ghost City' because it remains vacant.6 The intent of this thesis is to implement an affordable architectural intervention within Luanda's existing ghost city that will allow for its resurrection, and the eradication of some of the slums, by inhabiting the Nova Cidade do Kilamba Kiaxi social housing project with low- income slum dwellers that cannot afford the unit prices currently being stipulated.