This paper is one of a series ofanalytical studies commissioned by the World Bank'sAfrica Region and Water Anchor which are intended toidentify and address the future challenges of urban watersupply, sanitation and flood management in Sub-SaharanAfrica's (SSA) cities and towns. Following the terms ofreference for the assignment, and as indicated by its title,the paper is directed at understanding and describing thelinkages and interdependencies between water management andwater security on the one hand, and urbanization, urbanplanning and development on the other. The paper isstructured in six sections. Section one presents an overviewof urbanization trends in SSA. This is followed by adiscussion in Section two of what can be seen as thecorollary of the unprecedented urban population growth nowoccurring and projected for SSA, large-scale urbanexpansion, involving potentially massive increases in urbanland cover. This expansion has implications, also discussedin section two, for the internal structuring of Africancities and towns, and for the planning and development ofthe overall urban form which is resulting, as well as forthe environmental risks cities and towns face now and intothe future. This 'poor urban planning' in thepresent-day has its roots in the inherited practices ofcolonial-era planning theories and practices, which aredescribed in section three. These still resonate, asdiscussed in section four, which discusses key constituentaspects of contemporary planning systems in Africa, asillustrated by a number of case studies. In section five,the focus shifts to the current institutional experiencewith urban water management, again with a number of goodpractice cases provided. The author then turn in theconcluding section seven to the key concern of this issuespaper: that of integrating urban planning and watermanagement as the Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM)approach emerges- or, perhaps to put it better, of findingways in which such integration can promote the emergence ofIUWM. This is a necessary but difficult task, complicated bythe reality that, as seen in the quote above, IUWM requiresquite considerable coordination within the water sectoralone. Moreover, our preceding analysis demonstrates, andthis is the core argument of this paper, that seen from theside of the overall urban planning system, the deficiencies,decline and the delegitimizing of the'traditional' planning system and practices inSSA, and the theory which underpins them, along with thefailure to modernize them in a consistent fashion, has led,if anything, to greater fragmentation in the planning andmanaging of urban development. Land use planning andinfrastructure (and other sector) planning, including water,typically occur in an uncoordinated fashion. This makesplanning adequately for large-scale urban growth andexpansion that much more difficult.
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