Green Spaces in Residential Areas of Dar es Salaam City: Types, Coverage and Uses

Abstract

Green spaces in urban areas including in Dar es Salaam City provide multiple ecological, social and economic benefits. Despite their benefits they are inadequately documented in terms types, coverage and uses. This paper attempts to provide information on types, coverage and uses of green space in Dar es Salaam City. A number of methods including literature review, interpretation of remotely sensed image, interviews, focus group discussions and questionnaires were used to document city greenery. The research findings show that residential greenery is made up of greenery found within and external to plots. The dominant green spaces external to residential plots were natural and semi natural vegetation while within plots were woody plants, plots farms vegetable and ornamental gardens. Distribution of greenery varied among the wards due to differences in building density and distance from the city centre. Natural and semi natural vegetation increased with decrease of building density and increase of distance from the city centre, while the number of plots with trees for shade increased with increase of building density. Only Kawe ward that had greenery above Tanzania space planning standards, the other three wards which are informal settlements had green space deficit. Three quarters of the households use green spaces for shade provision and cooling, two thirds as a source of food products and a quarter for recreation and aesthetic purposes. The study reveals that Dar es Salaam City residents invest predominantly on shade trees in their residential plots compared to other green space types.

Tragedy of urban green spaces depletion in selected sub-Sahara African major cities

“…In Kumasi, Ghana"s fastest growing city and once the "Garden city of West Africa", land cover data shows that the city has lost a huge percentage of its green spaces as only 10% of the entire cityscape constitutes urban parks (Amoako and Adom-Asamoah, 2017;Mensah, 2014a;Narh et al, 2020). The situation in Luanda and Dar es salaam is not different as rapid urban expansion has led to the destruction of green spaces (Mwageni and Kiunsi, 2021;Ngolo and Watanabe, 2022;Roy et al, 2018). This seems to be the trend in other sub-Saharan cities (Adjetey et al, 2023;Colding et al, 2020;Girma et al, 2019;Ngolo and Watanabe, 2022;Takyi et al, 2022).…”