Designing ‘Dream Houses’ in the fringe of development: occupants’ perception of low-cost housing in Luanda’s urban periphery

This paper explores issues associated with perceptions of low-cost housing in Luanda, which despite being considered one of the fastest developing and more prospective growing cities in Africa, is struggling to cope with a growing population putting extra pressure on an already saturated urban infrastructure. A renewed Luanda is taking shape, whilst the periphery is being gradually populated with thousands of new houses destined to the low-income population, absorbing some of the people displaced from informal settlements (musseques) but also open to those who would not otherwise be able to afford living closer to Luanda’s centre.