15. Putting Together the Broken Pieces: Rewiring the Urban Geography of Zimbabwe

This chapter synthesizes the issues discussed in the preceding chapters in which the various authors have provided a discussion on the perspectives and paradigms of the country’s urban geography through the postcolonial lens. Specifically, the chapter does not provide solutions to solve the maladies that are currently bedeviling the towns and cities in Zimbabwe. Rather, the work is provocative as it discusses the ‘taken for granted’ issues and helps to raise awareness regarding the living conditions, especially of the urban poor. The chapter concludes that the urban geography in Zimbabwe is characterized by rapid urbanization that is breeding informality and opening wide gaps of inequality as the urban poor are marginalized and forced into ‘makeshift urbanisation’ and where the notion of stewardship is neglected as citizens seek survival strategies that are contrary to the notions of sustainability. Moreover, it is also revealed that there are marked politics of difference and increasing interference of the central government and the ruling ZANU-PF party in local affairs. This situation depicts a divergence from governance to government which may help to explain the proliferating government rot, embezzlement of public funds, and lack of basic services in many poor neighbourhoods. Implications for sustainable urban governance and planning are provided which recognize the complexity of the urban spaces in Zimbabwe and the need for a paradigm shift of modernism and western-oriented systems to locally based approaches to plan and govern the towns and cities.