Addis Ababa city plans compliance and performance evaluation

Addis Ababa had a number of spatial plans prepared with intentions to solve its socioeconomic, physical and environmental problems and to serve as road map for its multifaceted development endeavors. But these plans were not implemented as intended; and rather unplanned interventions with harmful implications became the norm. These practices are seldom checked or evaluated, and the influencing factors are not examined. Existing literature give only general evaluation methods and criteria, or they deviate from the Addis Ababa’s or similar cities’ contexts. The main objective of this research is to understand the extent to which spatial plans were implemented and how plan quality, land management and institutional setup influenced this practice as a way of improving spatial planning system in Addis Ababa. Analytical models advocated by literature (highly structured, quantitative planning evaluation techniques) are not opted as they are rarely attainable in practice for reasons of cost, time, deviation form context, and data availability. Therefore, rapid and qualitative assessment was carried out using triangulation technique analyzing data from four different sources: documents review, observation interviews and the researcher’s rich experience, a reflective practice, with some degree of quantitative analysis. Integration of conformance and performance-based evaluation approaches along with reflective practice have been applied to understand the level of plan implementation. The overall city planning practice has been assessed but for more focus and detailed account of the research topic, two cases (ORAAMP’s AACDP of 2003 and Mercato LDP) have been assessed in detail as they are believed to demonstrate findings that can help represent and generalize the hypothesis. Assessment of the city’s planning practice revealed that the city’s planning approach has been favored and disfavored by the dominant agrarian nature of the country on the one hand, and the dynamic environment – political, socioeconomic, land system (the 1974 nationalization of land and the lease system after 1991) and institutional (regionalization, decentralization and reform programs) on the other hand. The planning approach has been mainly conditioned by imported planning practices with resistant local context and attempts to contextualize the imported ones as can be seen in the formal/informal housing and business conflicts. Continuity of the key tenets of different planning practices and incorporation of past legacies has created superimposition of city structures and morphology as well as mixed planning culture. The findings of the study also revealed that effectiveness of a plan and its implementation are conditioned not only by the intentions and quality of the plan per se; but also, by other factors mainly land management, governance, institutional setup, political, socioeconomic, and cultural settings. Failure to properly consider land management system in the planning process, the weak institutional setup and its lack of sustained system, absence of true participatory process, misguided monitoring, evaluation and accountability, the apolitical stances practiced by professionals, the double plan system because of political interference, were the core underlying factors for poor spatial planning system. It has been found that proper and adequate consideration of influential contextual factors (land, institutional and political setting) will contribute to improvement in spatial planning system. It is recommended that an improved new spatial planning system be developed where we have interactive hierarchical plans, integrated collaborative spatial plans across sectoral agencies, and where participatory community planning and implementation is pronounced.