Kigali

Much contemporary economic growth in Africa is driven by urban service sectors including construction and real estate. This manifests in rapidly transforming landscapes and the proliferation of valuable property in the continent’s booming large cities, often accompanied by growing socio-economic inequality. In this context, improving systems for property taxation is an urgent and growing need – something that national and international policymakers increasingly recognise. Despite this, even in states considered particularly ‘developmental’ and committed to increasing tax revenue, property taxation has fallen by the wayside. This paper argues that, in addition to the usual technical and political difficulties associated with property taxation, it is crucial in reform-oriented developing countries to understand the nature of land tenure systems and how they are changing, as well as historical legacies relating to land and housing. Moves to introduce or improve property taxation need also to be considered in relation to how contemporary development strategies constrain or facilitate investment in real estate, and the political economy underpinning this sector. Through an analysis of existing property tax and land leasing systems in Kigali and Addis Ababa, as well as failed, stalled and ongoing reform attempts in each, the paper identifies key themes for the study of property taxation systems and their potential to succeed in rapidly transforming cities in the global South.

The 17th edition of W.A.Ve., “Italian Beauty”, examines
the beauty of Italian towns, focusing on small and medium-
sized historic centres. Selected from all areas of
Italy, from Sicily to Trentino, the towns were involved
in the project through contact with their local administrations
who – in synergy with Iuav – chose themes
pertinent to their most cherished areas.
W.A.Ve. 2018 was thus an opportunity to bring together
historic and contemporary architecture and
to recommence research into a theme – historic
centres – that has not been addressed with due attention
in Italy for over 40 years.
Examining the various case studies through the practice
of design is not just a case of contributing to their
conservation; it is also a chance to reflect on dimensions
and practices, and various forms of urban settlement
in a broader sense. This is particularly topical in
a period in which towns around the world seem to lack
credible reference models.
In addition, W.A.Ve. 2018 focuses on the relationship
between train stations and towns, working with the
sponsor, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana. Over the years, Italian
train stations have undergone a change of role and location:
once on the margins of the town centre, they have
become gradually more central. The increasing emphasis
on the automation of rail transport freed up spaces
and buildings. Today, they are available to the town as
information centres, meeting places or as terminals for
light transport networks. W.A.Ve. 2018 evaluates these
new opportunities from the broader perspective of
sustainable, connected, efficient and culturally vibrant
towns and cities.

Field trip publication on the theme of "The March of the City"  and Architecture Exchange in London, Kathmandu, Nepal and Kigali, Rwanda. Produced by students from Diploma Unit 6 and Degree Studio 7 at the Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University in 2014-15. Tutors: Maurice Mitchell, Robert Barnes, Francesca Pont and Bo Tang.

Although still predominantly rural, Rwanda is one of the world's fastest-urbanizing countries. This paper considers the Rwandan Patriotic Front's (RPF) approach to urban development in the context of intense pressure on land and a stated long-term agenda of moving towards a future that is ‘100% urban’. The RPF government has won plaudits for its transformation of Kigali, and its Land Tenure Regularisation programme is proceeding at a pace few anticipated. Its approach to the urban question remains, however, both highly controversial abroad and contested within the country. There is widespread acknowledgement that aspects of the government's urban agenda have been disadvantageous to the poor, but it is also unclear whether the implementation of this agenda is furthering or hindering their overarching drive for economic growth, structural transformation and political stability. In particular, the expropriation of urban land and the political–economic interests embedded in the real estate sector have critical impacts on Rwanda's development trajectory. Utilizing a ‘political settlements’ approach but introducing a spatial perspective focused on the transformation of Kigali, this paper explores the governance of land reform, urban planning, expropriation and property taxation, analyses how these illuminate the broader settlement in place, and considers the implications for Rwanda's future.

Inclusionary housing is one of the urban interventions that are adopted by cities that mainly face with social-economic segregation among citizens in the housing context, with the aim of transforming urban settlements that are able to integrate low-income and any other vulnerable groups while promoting better quality and affordable housing for them.

Looking at some middle-income neighborhoods of some developing cities like Kigali, a considerable number of backyard houses are observed and mainly used to accommodate low-income and lower middle-income tenants in form of small-scale rental housing market. This research intends to explain why this process takes place and to investigate to what extent provided houses are affordable and lead to the integration of low-income groups, hence the name bottom-up inclusionary housing.

Findings reveal that intrinsic-egoistic motives are the main reasons that drive small-scale landlords with a hope to generate income from their housing properties in both short and long-term. Moreover, circumstances such as death, unemployment, advanced age and larger household size were found to play a key role in influencing landlord’s investment decisions. It is also important to note that due to rigid housing regulations as well as increasing housing demand for cheaper rental housing play an important role in this process as extrinsic motives.

This article traces an African Housing Renaissance through the Trabantenstadt (Satellite City) vision for Kigali embedded in the Gacuriro Valley Satellite, which is composed of two settlements (or umudugudu, in Kinyarwanda): Kigali 2020 (2001–2005) and Kigali Vision (2013–2016). While the Kigali 2020 is an integrated Trabant (Satellite) which is able to interact with the existing context and trace the future built and unbuilt developments, the Kigali Vision adopts the idea of a protected compound, morphologically connected with the older settlements, but unable to tackle and solve spatial and social issues due to its ‘defensive’ character. The particular topography of the hillside receives an ambivalent interpretation: in the first umudugudu, the slope inspires the whole project, an organic raumplan, and in the second it has been denied, having been leveled for flat houses’ foundations and consequently a flat spatial indoor distribution. Nevertheless, this article argues that despit...

Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence

While the sources and forms of social and political violence have been extensively examined, the ways ordinary people along with their neighbors and officials cope with chronic urban violence have earned far less attention. This eight-case study of cities suffering from a history of violence explores this latter phenomenon, which we call resilience. We define resilience as those acts intended to restore or create effectively functioning community-level activities, institutions, and spaces in which the perpetrators of violence are marginalized and perhaps even eliminated.

Fragile cities suffer from violence enacted on multiple scales concentrated in a single metropolitan space. How, then, do the spatial characteristics of the city shape violence? Are urban interventions successful in transcending sectoral approaches to violence by focusing on the greater community and city?

Using case studies of cities suffering from long histories of chronic violence, this project examines how citizens have evolved coping mechanisms (strategies of resilience) at various scales. Insights from field research in these cities are combined with theoretical approaches to security, violence, and resilience in order to develop a systemic, multi-sectoral approach to chronic violence.

With support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), URCV researchers have produced a series of publications that include a report that summarizes the research findings and recommendations, a toolkit that focuses on the practical implications of our findings, in-depth case studies of seven cities facing diverse violence challenges, a working paper, and policy briefs (forthcoming)

In the years immediately after the 1994 genocide, Kigali was a site of continuing crisis amid extraordinary levels of urban population growth, as refugees returned to Rwanda in their millions. Yet unlike many post-conflict cities that spiral into endemic crime and instability, it was rapidly securitised in the context of political consolidation and large amounts of foreign aid, and hailed by the UN as a ‘model, modern city’. This paper analyses the government’s approach to securitising Kigali, interrogating how its rapid trajectory from epicentre of conflict to carefully planned showcase for development has been achieved. We argue that Kigali bears the weight of many of Rwanda’s development aspirations and keeping it secure and orderly is viewed as critical by the government. After examining the national and local processes through which the government has aimed to achieve ‘secure urbanisation’, we consider the potential longer-term implications of its urban development strategy.

This study uses very high-resolution Pléiades imagery for the densely built-up central part of the City of Kigali for the year 2015 in order to derive urban morphology data on building footprints, building archetypes and building heights. Aerial images of the study area from 2008–2009 were used in combination with the 2015 dataset to create a change monitoring dataset on a single building basis. A semi-automated approach was chosen which combined an object-based image analysis with an expert-based revision. The result is a geospatial dataset that detects 165,625 buildings for 2008–2009 and 211,458 for 2015. The dataset includes information on the type of changes between the two dates. Analysis of this geospatial dataset can be used for a range of research applications in economics and the social sciences, as well as a range of policy applications in urban planning and municipal finance administration.

This article presents a new analytical framework for studying cities in the
developing world based on the ‘political settlements’ approach. This has a
dual purpose: to enrich comparative urban research by bringing new theoretical
ideas to bear on this field, but also to use capital cities as a lens
to better understand national political settlements. The central argument is
that urban built environments and their transformations in situations of late
development reflect the workings of different varieties of clientelism, and
by analysing the former we can better understand the latter. Specifically,
issues such as the nature of urban land use and land allocation, the pace and
form of construction, the effectiveness of environmental regulation and the
provision of housing for different income groups are all revealing of political
settlements and their broader development implications. The potential of this
approach is explored through three narrative ‘sketches’ of contemporary urban
development in Eastern Africa: the ‘city as marketplace’ (Kampala), the
‘city as expo’ (Kigali) and the ‘city as construction site’ (Addis Ababa). In
presenting this framework, the article seeks to advance debate on epistemological
and analytical approaches to the study of both power relations and
differential patterns of urban development.

This study uses very high-resolution Pléiades imagery for the densely built-up central part of the City of Kigali for the year 2015 in order to derive urban morphology data on building footprints, building archetypes and building heights. Aerial images of the study area from 2008–2009 were used in combination with the 2015 dataset to create a change monitoring dataset on a single building basis. A semi-automated approach was chosen which combined an object-based image analysis with an expert-based revision. The result is a geospatial dataset that detects 165,625 buildings for 2008–2009 and 211,458 for 2015. The dataset includes information on the type of changes between the two dates. Analysis of this geospatial dataset can be used for a range of research applications in economics and the social sciences, as well as a range of policy applications in urban planning and municipal finance administration.

Rediscovering the new that already exists is part of the Venetian
Heritage. The discovery becomes construction material, as the
travels1 that allow to rebuild and trace the arch that supports the
stones. Without stones, there is no architecture, and without buildings
adequately sited over time and space, there is no city. This analysis
generates the future of Kigali, a future based on precise rules,
grouped under the general name of “historical criticism”.