A co-designed city vision for the future has been awarded a Masterplan prize at British Expertise International Awards in London. The Masterplan Framework for the Province of Luanda, Angola received the top award for Outstanding Masterplanning Project of 2016. Designed by a consortium led by Broadway Maylan, Luanda 2030 is a 20-year strategic framework that outlines the transformation of the architectural and urban lines of the Province of Luanda into a “liveable, beautiful and international” city.

Consortium partners included Urbinvest, Aurecon, Deloitte, Mobility in Chain and the University of Lisbon, with the project also shortlisted for the Outstanding International Leadership category of the BEIA awards. Isabel dos Santos, Director of Urbinvest, said that rehabilitation of Luanda will bring, "clear improvements in the lives of city dwellers." "We are delighted with this international recognition, which is another sign that we are on track,” Ms dos Santos added.

Aurecon was engaged as the engineering consultant on the project and carried out work that was key to the development of the Luanda masterplan. Aurecon used a design-led approach to plan for prevailing urban challenges around energy, sewerage, solid waste, water supply and telecommunications. This allowed the projects team to envision how people want to live, now and in the future, and dramatically improve conditions for economic and social life.

Through a cross-African business footprint, and its multilingual workforce, Aurecon was able to lead project partners to meet the challenge of providing on-site skills training and mentoring to empower the local workforce and communities working on the project. “The significance of this project is that it took a strategic approach in developing a city vision for Luanda City Province and its municipalities,” says Abbas Jamie, Aurecon’s Market Director for Government and Transport. “This project is a wonderful example of how we can envision and co-design sustainable African cities of the future.”

“This is why Aurecon has developed the Our African City initiative; to open up dialogue between the private sector and local governments and encourage true partnerships in developing world class African cities,” adds Jamie.

Launched at the Institute of Municipal Engineering of Southern Africa conference in Cape Town last year, Our African City is a collaboration between Aurecon, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Business Connection and the South African Local Government Association. The initiative aims to address the challenges of designing better futures by assisting the government and the private sectors to work together to advance successful, integrated urban development across the African continent.

José Miranda, Regional Director Africa at Aurecon noted, “The key to successful delivery lies in the ability to listen and to instill a participatory process for developing the ideal solutions. Our own knowledge is not sufficient to make the right decisions for our cities, especially with the changing realities associated with rapid urbanisation, climate change and resource depletion.” Miranda added, “On this project, the project team’s strength lay in not only being able to provide leading engineering solutions, but also having the ability to communicate the value of design options to our client and, together, arriving at a solution that will continue to deliver value today and into the future.”

“African cities are experiencing dramatic change, including the far reaching impact of digital technology. The Our African City dialogue is allowing us to consider both the positive and negative impacts of this on the citizens and their quality of life,” say Aurecon’s Global Urbanisation Expertise Leader, Matt Coetzee.

“The cities which recognise the scale of this impact and then take advantage of the opportunities it provides will become a magnet for investment, an example of social equity and will experience broad based economic growth,” Coetzee says. “We are very proud of this BEA recognition because it shows how we have been able to contribute to shaping a better future for the residents of Luanda and of Angola.”