L’ÉMERGENCE D’UNE URBANISATION SUPPLÉTIVE

LE CAS DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE DÉMOCRATIQUE DU CONGO

Abstract

Carried out in 2020 within the framework of the OECD’s Africapolis program, the mapping of the DRC’s morphological agglomerations reveals the existence of a new settlement system whose spatial structures have never been formalized until now. Contrary to the national framework of the official cities of the DRC, this settlement system, which can only be revealed by fine mapping, follows the ridge paths of the interfluves which have given rise to innumerable settlements, almost all of which are not identified as ‘urban’ by any administration or public authority, to the extent that some of them do not even have a name on the maps. More than 400 of them have between 10 000 and 100 000 inhabitants. In this vast country, whose population tripled between 1984 and 2020, this settlement system appears to be a supplementary urban network, filling in the gaps of a legal urban network that is too extensive. The analysis of the morphology shows that, far from informality, the urbanism produced is particularly rational.