Abstract:
Social service provision and accessibility play a great role in ensuring city development in
both developed and developing countries with emerging economies, Tanzania inclusive.
This paper provides a comparative study onthe situation, arguments and criticisms of three
planned neighborhoods, whereby in those cases, local communities were involved in
settlement up- grading through land regularization in Tanzania. The discussion centered
oncomparing the social infrastructure service provision and the levels of accessibility of
neighborhood residents to roads, waste disposal, water and electric- ity supply. Similarly, the
paper highlights the role of neighborhood leaders in ensuring social service provision,
accessibility levels, reasons for connections, and the correlation between source of water and
electricity supply as well asinferential statistics for the effects of the land regularization
on the access tosocial services. We find that local leadership determines provision and
accessibility of infrastructures in an area where informal settlement upgrading project
takes place. Location differences of neighborhoods and proximity to the infrastructure
service influence business growth, home improvement, ser-vice payments, and residents’
mindset change in the neighborhood land development processes. We also found that
conditions set for provision of social services include: availability of permanent building
structure, land ownership, affordability level, household agreement, offering land for public
use and freedom from the road reserve. Local Authority sets guidelines for service
provision and helps meet with the local community and thus, shows the recognized role of
community involvement in settlement upgrading projects. Furthermore, the role of
planning institutions and differences is highlighted.The study concludes that community
involvement and local leadershipchampionship in informal settlement upgrading are vital
elements for the success of the program and towards ensuring development control,
coordination and sustainability once the project ends.
