MAP/ Maraza Land Development Pilot Proj.

General

The problems confronting urban deltas are complex and require an all-embracing approach. The Dutch Government and the delta city of Beira agreed to enter into a medium term partnership to enhance the city’s resilience to flooding and assist it to adapt to climate change. In a participatory process, a plan was developed which was adopted by the City council in 2014, the Beira Masterplan. Part of the plan was a list of priority projects among which the development of the Maraza New Town Area. Maraza is an undeveloped swamp area of 350 ha inside the city of Beira. The Maraza pilot project envisages to prove that through organized extension of residential areas, suitable land can be made available to end users for affordable prices in areas which are currently inhabitable due to regular flooding. The Municipality of Beira will establish a mechanism to or-ganize this: the Land Development Company (LDC)- an au-tonomous entity that will raise, level and drain terrains to reach economies of scale. In the statutes of the LDCs it is stipulated that all revenues are returning to the LDC and that part of the area will be used for social housing. With the pro-posed EKN contribution and an equivalent contribution of the municipality of Beira a pilot will be carried out to create a ‘ fly wheel effect’ for the business case. An area of 3 hec-tares will be landfilled, 125 plots delineated and granted with secured land rights as well as basic infrastructure (ac-cess roads, utilities, drainage system). The British social investor REALL will be the launching cus-tomer. After scaling up the number of houses, it will be-come possible to build houses in the range of USD 10.000 per unit, giving the lower income groups an alternative to the present situation of forced habitation in flood prone are-as.