Garden city planning and Nordic (de)colonial ambivalence in Tanga, Mbeya and Moshi master plans (1973–1975)

Abstract

Researchers from former colonial powers and their respective former colonies have made extensive accounts of colonial planning heritage. The Nordic countries are mostly excluded from such historical narratives and rather interpreted as having been neutral, benevolent, and solidary foreign aid agents. This case study analysis of Tanga, Mbeya, and Moshi master plans (1973–1975), implemented with Finnish technical assistance, challenges this narrative and shows that Finnish agents operated in an ambivalent environment of (de)colonialism and moved between layers of colonial heritage, decolonial policy, and neo-colonial praxis. In the conflicting political pressure, they adopted and developed a planning dialect that translated the travelling concepts of suburbanisation, neighbourhood models, and urban gardening into the language of Tanzanian decolonial policy. The Tanga, Mbeya, and Moshi master plans utilised garden city planning ideas to extend the planning principles formerly reserved for the white European elite to include the entire urban population and advance the socialist project of ujamaa.