Transport Mobility Analysis for Informal Settlements in Dar es salaam, Tanzania

Abstract

Dar es Salaam is one of the world’s fastest growing cities and is expected to be the third largest by 2100 with a population of 76 million. Dar es Salaam city is made of multiple neighbourhoods that are very diverse in terms of socio-economic status, gender, age and prevalent activities. One of the biggest challenges facing the city of Dar es Salaam is urban sprawl due to informal settlements that in turn leads to very long travel time and hinders equal mobility and accessibility of labour and goods. This study found that the current mobility vision for Dar es Salaam city that bases on transit-oriented development can help to alleviate transit pressure to the current mono-centric city, although integration of the vision to informal settlements that are the current majority of the land use is still lacking. The study also found that the current regularisation strategies of informal settlements provide an opportunity for urban mobility. However, the resulting mobility networks are not sufficient to meet the demand of the government mobility vision. To capture the future rapid population growth in the city, this study recommends a back casting strategy that looks on the future needs of the population including residency vis-à-vis mobility to establish current new transit corridors passing though redeveloped informal settlements.