Urban Development in Cape Verde Between 1970 and 2020

Abstract

This chapter analyses the urban development that took place in Cape Verde between 1970 and 2020. Its main objective is to understand how the urban development of the archipelago took place in the last 50 years. For this purpose, it studies the process of spatial concentration of the country’s population in urban areas, the expansion of its urbanized space, the tertiarization of urban centres, the changes in the social structure of cities, the restructuring of the national urban network, the emergence of various negative impacts associated with urban development, and its evolutionary trends and the similarities and particularities of urban development in Cape Verde. To study these issues, an essentially hypothetical-deductive methodological approach was used, to understand the temporal and spatial evolution of Cape Verdean urban development. The conclusions reached point out for the existence of an accelerated growth of the archipelago’s urban population; the increase of the urbanized space; the growing economic tertiarization of cities; the occurrence of profound changes in its urban social structure; significant changes in the national urban network; and a set of negative effects resulting from the accelerated urban growth. It is expected that cities will become more tertiary, which will be accompanied by a reduction in poverty and a greater concentration of the population in large urban centres. It is also admitted that their impacts will continue to be territorially differentiated. The urban development that took place in Cape Verde broadly follows that recorded in other develo** countries. Cape Verde’s particularities occur above all in the re-composition of urban social structures and in the restructuring of the national urban network.