Sixty years of urban policy in Douala

Ever since the country’s independence, the urban dynamics of Douala, Cameroon’s estuarine metropolis, have been calling into question the ability of urban policies to manage land use, anticipate risks, and meet the demand for basic services. The informal sector is responding by creating solutions (housing, transport, markets) and by building new neighborhoods. New approaches to urban planning that are more flexible and decentralized, and that break with the logic of colonial and postcolonial planning, are now being envisaged as a way of integrating these dynamics and turning them into assets.