Abstract :
[en] Like most African cities, which are currently the main focus of global urbanization, Kinshasa provides a convincing example of the urgent need to re-examine the logic of exploiting spaces and resources. Indeed, the lack of planning in this city since Independence has led to its peri-urbanization characterized by increasing demographics and the dispersed and spontaneous occupation of the various geomorphological zones, suitable or not for construction. This has resulted in an environmental and landscape imbalance through environmental risks and damage such as erosion, flooding, pollution and other. It is thus clear that the challenge of urban and peri-urban development in Kinshasa is linked to improving the environmental quality of habitats. To do so, it is now recognized that it is necessary to calibrate and adapt management practices to natural and human resource conditions.
In this perspective, this study is based on the central assumption that: the adaptation of the existing green system to the biophysical, socio-economic and cultural context, through the approach of the landscape, consisting in taking into account the quality of the environments and their appropriation by the inhabitants, opens up new perspectives for restoring the balances disrupted by the spatial transformations underway in the urban and peri-urban context of Kinshasa. The research was organized around three main objectives, namely: (i) to study the ongoing spatial transformations in the urban and peri-urban landscape; (ii) to determine the existing green potential in order to understand its uses and its representations in living practices and (iii) to study the contribution of the approach of the landscape in qualifying peri-urban habitats through plant engineering.
The results show that Kinshasa's urban and peri-urban landscape is undergoing major spatial transformations to the detriment of vegetation cover. However, it should be noted that in the urban and peri-urban fabric, there are still residual green spaces and plant development practices in inhabited plots that could support environmental requalification. Based on this better knowledge of the landscape of Kinshasa, we carried out a specific study of a degraded site in Kisenso, one of the municipalities of Kinshasa, through an approach learned and developed within the "Ville-Territoire-Paysage" Laboratory of the University of Liège. This landscape approach, which we refer to as "reading and writing" of the territory, operationalizing the landscape approach, has enabled us to understand how to develop and/or set out possibilities of action. The latter rely on local plant dynamics to re-establish new interactions between natural resources and peri-urban settlements.
This research thus shows, on the one hand, the relevance and necessity of integrating the "landscape" into the planning of African territories and, on the other hand, the importance of maintaining or establishing a green infrastructure, based on the slightest existing plant gap, in the context of widespread peri-urbanization.
Institution :
ULiège - Université de Liège
Ecole Régionale Post-Universitaire d'Aménagement et de Gestion Intégrés des Forêts et Territoires Tropicaux (ERAIFT, Kinshasa, Congo - Kinshasa