The analysis of the urban planning legislation, its underlying concepts and the resulting urban fabric clearly displays a continuum in urban planning principles from early colonial times until today. In none of the fields of planning legislation, planning documents, planning goals and the resulting urban morphology (Fig. 3) can a clear division between the colonial and post-colonial period be observed.
Processes of adaptation, appropriation, hybridization and refusal took place in planning, however not within clearly distinguishable periods. The top-down planning approach continued from the colonial to the post-colonial period, informal settlements already existed in the colonial period and the colonial principle of segregation as spatially expressed through the introduction of the three-zone model is still a main feature of the urban fabric of Dar es Salaam.
The race-based colonial logic of segregation has now been transformed into an economic segregation that currently conditions the planning practice of the post-colonial Dar es Salaam.
Despite this continuum, no specific African post-colonial urban model has been developed to address the particular urban challenges arising, neither in academic discussion nor in planning practice. However, the spatial dimension of informal urbanization (accounting in Dar es Salaam for about 70% of the area) makes it clear that it obviously represents the majority of the urban area and underlines the refusal of any codified urban planning model and urban planning regulations.
The growing gap between the continuum of planning approaches and underlying urban models and ideals on the one hand and informal urban reality on the other hand, calls for a rethinking of urban planning in general and for the development of a suitable urban model for African cities and appropriate planning legislation, accordingly