Built on the alluvial plain of Kinshasa, the planned city of Matete is bordered on its peripheral areas by green spaces and benefits from a diversity of housing types and facilities laid out on serviced grids, compared to other neighborhoods of the city. Demographic pressure, population densification, and the spread of self-built housing on the former grid-based urban fabric—largely driven by rural exodus, the departure of colonial settlers on the eve of independence, the decline of the National Housing Office (ONL), the anarchic occupation of land extending to the foothills of hilly zones in complicity with the customary authorities of the time, and finally the shift to the rent-to-own system during the Zairianization period—are among the main factors underlying the current transformation of this former turnkey housing area.
A local land-use and development plan has now become necessary in order to address the effects of this spontaneous growth generated by upward urbanization.
Anarchic peri-urban town planning has become one of the modes of production of popular housing in African cities. Coming from ascending urbanization, it remains particularly today the most practiced method in the development and growth of the city of Kinshasa. Today, the city of Kinshasa no longer has an urban plan enforceable by all, a planning body or a private or public construction company which would take charge of the subdivisions, the land equipment, the construction of houses as well as their subsequent management and finally a housing policy which would juxtapose the individual initiatives of city dwellers and the regulatory framework of the State. Abandoned to its own devices, the population tries to support itself by building new forms of housing outside of legality, which is often the consequence of the gap between strong demographic pressure and the housing supply.
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