Hesitant migration to emergent cities: Angola’s intentional urbanism of the ‘centralidades’

This article discusses migration and mobility towards as-yet uninhabited rural and disconnected areas and its relation to the emergence and growth of new towns and new urban arrangements in sub-Saharan Africa, using the case of the ‘centralidades’ in Angola as an example. These new ‘cities’ built from scratch, with apartment blocks, organised streets and planned infrastructure and services’ facilities, involve in-migration of new residents, the majority of them moving from relatively nearby urban and peri-urban areas.