Call for Abstracts & Articles
Kuveza neKuumba · Special Issue
Background & Rationale
Zimbabwe's peri-urban spaces are rapidly changing arenas in which urban expansion, customary authority, statutory planning, housing demand, livelihood strategies, infrastructure deficits and environmental pressures intersect. These transformations produce both opportunity and contestation: land is accessed, allocated, subdivided and developed through overlapping formal and informal systems, while actors exercise unequal power to secure benefits, recognition and tenure security.
The analytical point of departure is that peri-urban land access cannot be understood solely through legal categories or administrative procedures. It must be examined through the relationships, interests, practices and institutional arrangements that enable or constrain different actors. Evidence from Tanzania shows that formal systems may offer important protections yet remain bureaucratic and unable to meet demand, while informal systems persist because they fill land-supply gaps despite substantial risks. This special issue invites authors to interrogate how comparable tensions are configured in Zimbabwe and to identify workable reforms, designs and innovations.
Consistent with the mission of Kuveza neKuumba: The Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University Journal of Design, Innovative Thinking and Practice, the issue will provide a multidisciplinary forum for research, scholarly opinion and case-based inquiry that advances innovative, problem-solving responses to societal challenges.
Purpose of the Special Issue
The special issue seeks analytically grounded and practically relevant contributions that explain peri-urbanisation as a socio-spatial, institutional and design challenge. It aims to move beyond a simple formal–informal binary by examining hybrid practices, actor coalitions, power relations, lived experiences and the capacity of governance systems to deliver equitable, resilient and serviced settlements.
Suggested Themes
Eight thematic streams for contribution
1 Planning across formal, customary, informal & hybrid land systems
Analyses of how statutory plans can recognise multiple routes of land access, align development control with lived practice, and create context-sensitive pathways to serviced and legally legible settlement.
2 Land assembly, allocation and the politics of peri-urban growth
Studies of actors, interests, brokerage, negotiation and conflict, with implications for transparent land pipelines, accountable decision-making, intergovernmental coordination and protection against elite capture.
3 Tenure security, documentation and incremental regularisation
Work examining differentiated rights, perceived and legal security, inheritance and transfer, and how planners can sequence recognition, surveying, development permission and upgrading without displacement.
4 Strategic spatial planning for housing, livelihoods and rural–urban linkages
Contributions on settlement patterns, housing production, agriculture, food systems and economic activity, showing how land-use plans can accommodate mixed uses, incremental development and changing peri-urban livelihoods.
5 Infrastructure, services and settlement viability
Research connecting land access to water, sanitation, drainage, mobility, energy, waste and social facilities, with attention to infrastructure reservation, minimum service standards, affordability, maintenance and phased capital investment.
6 Land markets, finance and value
Analyses of affordability, speculation, compensation, land-based finance and value capture, and their implications for inclusive zoning, infrastructure financing, public land management and access by low-income households.
7 Inclusive, climate-resilient and environmentally responsible planning
Studies foregrounding gender, youth, disability and class alongside ecosystem protection and climate risk, and translating evidence into inclusive design standards, risk-sensitive plans and safeguards against unequal exposure or exclusion.
8 Planning knowledge, digital tools and co-produced governance
Contributions on participatory mapping, geospatial and land-information systems, indigenous knowledge and community-led innovation, with implications for evidence-based plan-making, monitoring, institutional learning and scalable reform.
Types of Contributions
We welcome original empirical articles, comparative studies, conceptual and theoretical papers, systematic or critical reviews, policy and practice analyses, and rigorously developed case studies. Contributions should make an explicit analytical argument, explain their methods or evidentiary basis, and demonstrate how the findings inform peri-urbanisation design, technical innovation, overall development policy and governance practice.
Submission Process & Requirements
- Abstract: Submit a self-contained abstract of no more than 200 words, together with a provisional title, five or six keywords not repeated in the title, author name(s), affiliation(s), corresponding-author email address and a short indication of the paper's contribution to the special issue.
- Full article: Invited manuscripts should be 5,000–7,000 words, use British/UK English, 12-point font and 1.08 line spacing.
- Anonymisation: Full manuscripts must be prepared for double-blind peer review. Author names and identifying details should be removed from the main text, running heads and footers and supplied separately.
- Originality and ethics: Submissions must be original, unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Authors must secure permissions for photographs, datasets and other third-party materials, and obtain appropriate ethical approval where required.
- Presentation: Titles should be concise and accurately reflect the article's scope. References must be complete and accurate; all tables and figures must be numbered and labelled.
- Submission platform: Authors should register or log in and submit through the Kuveza neKuumba online submission portal.
Editorial Assessment
Abstracts will be assessed for relevance, analytical clarity, originality, methodological promise and alignment with the journal's problem-solving orientation. Invitation to submit a full article does not guarantee publication. Full manuscripts will undergo editorial screening and double-blind peer review, and may be desk rejected if they do not meet the journal's aims, scope or minimum quality standards.