Introduction to the special issue on (De)constructing the right to the city: Luanda and Maputo

Portuguese-speaking African countries, namely Angola and Mozambique, faced important political-economic and social transformations after their liberations in 1975. Given the geopolitical context of the time, these two countries went through a brief socialist period (1975/1985-90) before opening their economies to national and international markets, in tune with the expansion and consolidation of a fierce global neoliberal matrix currently strengthening, enduring and prevailing. Regarding their development strategies and dynamics, the analysis of these African countries’ infrastructural policies and practices, as reverse to the housing question, is an important tool to amplify the comprehension of their urban realities, particularly of their capital cities, Luanda and Maputo, from the guiding key-notion of the right to the city (Lefebvre, 1968/2009). Following the Lefebvrian perspective (Ibidem), the right to the city aims the access to a better and dignified life, this including broad access to housing, infrastructures and basic urban services, as well as to a more democratic urban management and openness to participation. This guiding concept represents, first of all, the city as work of art (oeuvre), oriented to the appropriation of space and to a collective realization, where all the inhabitants have the same liberty to satisfy their desires and needs, and to conduct the urbanization processes collectively. The infrastructural options concerning both macro-level approaches and ground-based interventions were first of all influenced, conditioned or determined by the legacies of the Portuguese colonial regime and its so-called soft logics of power and domination, but also, more recently, by the massive migration movements heading toward central cities, motivated by civil wars and/or the search for better living conditions. Demographic issues also became important factors for the accelerated growth and urbanization of major cities in these Portuguese-speaking African countries. Given this framework, the (inter)connections between distinct urban contexts were of interest for this special issue, since they pave the path for the ample reading of its suburban realities, reinforcing the importance of infrastructural issues, such as those related to the public administration, its processes and agents, but also its spatial dimensions, particularly road systems, water and energy supply, sewages and urban facilities. These are vital complements to access adequate housing and, in a broader and transformative sense, to help to (de)construct the meaning and pertinence of the right to the city, all the while understanding and giving new significances to the current urban scenario. Most research works included in this special issue were presented in the thematic session that we chaired at the I International Congress Colonial and Post-colonial Landscapes. Architecture, Cities, Infraestructures, held in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, on 16–19 January 2019, entitled: (De)constructing the Right to the City: Infrastructural policies and practices in Portuguese-