ALBERT

Description: Integrating natural processes to build areas through the creation of green infrastructure (GI) in Africa with its rapid urbanisation is a challenge because of the information base. The aim of this paper is planning a GI linking biophysical, social, and legal contents in a specific Africa country with an approach that combines different scales and different levels of data and information. The paper proposes a framework beginning at the macro scale to integrate and operationalise the definition of GI in an African context, namely for the Luanda metropolitan area. The approach to nature and ecological structure (GI) has four phases: analysis, integration, diagnosis and proposal. All steps are developed in a GIS environment and consider variations in the biophysical, social, cultural, and legal dimensions. The research discusses the problems in collecting existing information and leads with missing data within the context of urbanisation growth and climate change adaptation. The proposed green infrastructure includes protected areas (existing and proposed), natural values, risk areas, rivers, and agricultural areas, to increase resilience and flexibility in an adaptation context. The results allow to include in the GI the mangrove areas, native flora, vegetated slopes, and riverbanks, providing a buffering function for natural hazards, crucial for these regions, with the aim to achieve the needs of creating a strategic GI to be implemented into the Luanda General Master Plan.

Description: In developing countries, where political instability, former conflicts and social breakdown take place, heritage can be included in urban regeneration processes as a driver for economic development but also for social cohesion and cultural identity. This paper presents a heritage-based method for urban regeneration, developed for the city of Luanda (Angola), within the elaboration of its Metropolitan Plan (2016). Actions focus on the rehabilitation of buildings and public spaces, creating the conditions to implement effective financial mechanisms able to cover the costs of urban regeneration by results. Here, rehabilitation measures are combined with the implementation of mixed-use development models, addressing one of the key issues of urban regeneration: attracting private investments. From a practical perspective, the proposed approach focusses on the elaboration of heritage preservation, valorization and requalification strategies, moving from a geographical urban delimitation of Heritage Sets to a regeneration process based on a radius of influence that goes beyond the single building. From the regeneration of the built environment and public spaces in these Heritage Sets, the surrounding area is naturally affected. Strategic actions applied to Heritage Sets aim to produce a domino effect of regeneration that involves multiple spatial scales: from buildings and public spaces to neighbourhoods and, consequently, to the entire city. The implementation of this approach to several Heritage Sets delimited across the city, would, in the long-term, create a connected heritage network that results in an integrated urban regeneration process. Criteria for the delimitation of Heritage Sets are proposed, dealing with the concept of diversity, namely: time, historical, symbolic and functional diversity. The results from this study aim to support decision-makers in integrating heritage-based urban regeneration approaches into public policies and local planning practice.