ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Cities in the Global South
Transformation of Residual Open Spaces into a Green Community Hub: A Case Study from Sinza D, Dar es Salaam
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universiteit Hasselt, Hasselt, Belgium
- 2Ardhi University School of Urban and Regional Planning, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
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Rapid urbanisation and incremental housing in Dar es Salaam have depleted urban green spaces, leaving many public areas underutilised or privately appropriated. This study, conducted within the Institutional University Cooperation (IUC) between Ardhi University and Hasselt University, examines university–community collaboration (UCC) as a means of transforming such spaces into community-owned and managed green areas. Drawing on one year of participatory action research in Sinza D, the study traces how collaboration among researchers, grassroots leaders, and residents evolved through facilitation, reflection, and trust-building. The findings reveal that effective UCC nurtures grassroots leadership, embodied in extended planners, who are local actors mediating between community aspirations and institutional frameworks. These leaders gain legitimacy and adaptive capacity through co-designed and inclusive processes that transform facilitation into shared governance. The study challenges extractive research models and calls for more context-sensitive, enduring collaborations that strengthen local agency in rapidly urbanising African cities.
Keywords: urban governance1, green space transformation2, university-communitycollaboration3, extended planners4, civic university5
Received: 05 Sep 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Majogoro, Devisch and Magina. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Manyama Majogoro, manyama.majogoro@uhasselt.be
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