Translation of urban planning models: Planning principles, procedural elements and institutional settings

•Present-day urban planning in Dar es Salaam is still greatly influenced by its colonial past.•The urban consequences and the urban planning institutions and practices of Dar es Salaam are interrelated.•The presence of colonial planning principles contributes to present-day urban consequences in Dar es Salaam.

This paper presents the process of the translation and instrumentalisation of colonial urban planning principles into contemporary urban planning laws and instruments in Dar es Salaam. Based on a historical reading of the urban planning institutions and empirical references about current urban planning practices in this city it develops three main claims. First, there is a continuation of colonial planning institutions in the post-colonial Dar es Salaam. The shift of power from the colonial authority to the national state of Tanzania did not greatly impact on the planning institutions and practices in this city. Second, colonial urban planning legacies still dominate the planning institutions and practices in the post-colonial Dar es Salaam, however in different forms. They are now shaped by different sets of actors, follow economic logics, benefit only small groups of the economically privileged at the cost of the majority, and support the accumulation of power of the nation-state authorities. Third, the urban consequences and the urban planning institutions and practices of Dar es Salaam are interrelated; each is a result of the process of translation and instrumentalisation of colonial urban planning principles in the post-colonial setting accompanied by poor management and governance processes as well as the contradictions in the land tenure system that characterise this city. Acknowledging the urban consequences as being conditioned by the intense interplay between planning institutions and practice, and urban management and governance, this paper shows how the continued presence of colonial planning principles in the shaping of post-colonial planning practices may contribute to present-day urban consequences in Dar es Salaam.