Luanda, AOÂ by Paulo Moreira
Luanda is undergoing a phase of great urban ambitions. The multiple pressures to which the city has been subjected are ever more visible when seen from above. Several high-standard urban renewal projects are changing the city’s profile irreversibly. These high-standard developments bring dramatic uncertainty to Luanda’s informal neighborhoods, where the vast majority of city dwellers live – the urban regeneration process is interspersed with evictions and displacement to peripheral resettlement colonies. The frenetic, unstoppable construction linked to Angola’s economic boom, caused by the abundance of oil capital in the years following the end of a long-lasting civil war (1975-2002), does not always take place in the most logical and measured way. These photographs document the complex and rapid transformation of Luanda’s urban form.