Community Action Area Planning in Freetown
Setting precedents for inclusive change in informal settlements
When: 2017 – 2022
Where: Freetown, Sierra Leone
Who was involved: Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC), Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDURP), Centre for Dialogue on Human Settlement and Poverty Alleviation (CODOHSAPA), and The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London (DPU), with support from the University of Sheffield and London Metropolitan University. Funded by Comic Relief and Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality (KNOW), a GCRF-funded research programme led by UCL.
Mohamed is a 35-year-old resident of Cockle Bay, an informal settlement in Freetown. Like many of his neighbours, he faces significant challenges, including unstable income and inadequate living conditions. Since his youth, he has actively participated in various community initiatives aimed at improving these circumstances, ultimately becoming the chairperson of the local Youth Group affiliated with the Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDURP).
Despite his efforts, Mohamed has consistently encountered obstacles in accessing government support, which often hindered rather than facilitated improvements in living conditions in Cockle Bay. Recognising the need for a deeper understanding of urban development and planning processes, he took proactive steps to enhance his knowledge. He contributed as a data collector for FEDURP’s first enumeration in Cockle Bay and later served as a community researcher during the initial pilot of the Community Action Area Plan (CAAP), co-facilitated by ASF-UK.
His journey began in 2017 when FEDURP invited Mohamed to participate in a week-long workshop designed to co-develop a methodology for community-led planning tailored to the local context. Co-led by the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC), ASF-UK, and the Bartlett Development Planning Unit of University College London (DPU), the workshop aimed to define ‘inclusive neighbourhood planning’ and explore how ASFUK’s existing participatory methods could be adapted for Freetown.
The ASF-UK team brought invaluable expertise in community-led planning, enabling participants to test how to tailor existing approaches to local needs and the city’s planning frameworks. A focus on action-based learning ensured that all participants— residents of Cockle Bay and other settlements— could effectively familiarise themselves with essential planning concepts and tools. This collaborative effort resulted in the co-creation of a manifesto for inclusive neighbourhood planning in Freetown and initiated the development of a methodology for future CAAPs.
During the workshop, Mohamed and other residents learned about community-led planning, gained insights into their neighbourhood, and developed skills as community researchers. This positive experience encouraged ASF-UK and its partners to advance a community-based planning process that could inform Freetown’s evolving urban policy frameworks. This culminated in a decision to mobilise resources for in-depth experimentation of the CAAP process in two settlements: Cockle Bay and Dworzark. In 2018, SLURC, ASF-UK, and DPU collaborated with FEDURP to lead an eight-month participatory process in both areas, resulting in the city’s first two CAAPs. These plans identified priorities such as environmental challenges, housing conditions, and the diverse needs and aspirations of residents while defining guidelines for future change.
Mohamed’s role as a community leader was pivotal; he brought residents together and contributed significantly to shaping the process. Overall, this initiative demonstrated the potential of CAAPs as a bottom-up planning tool that effectively centres the voices of Freetown’s residents in the planning process. It also significantly enhanced the capacity of residents and grassroots organisers like Mohamed to engage with urban policy and planning, allowing previously unheard community voices to be recognised. A governance structure for implementing the CAAP was established during this process to build community ownership and ensure that the Freetown City Council and relevant national ministries endorsed the outputs.
Since the publication of the first two CAAPs in 2019, SLURC, FEDURP, and their partners have utilised these plans to advocate for community-led planning in Freetown. Tools such as FEDURP’s enumeration processes and the CAAPs have become integral to a broader movement addressing the city’s need for adequate housing and the upgrading of informal settlements. The CAAPs set a significant precedent for community-led development, acknowledged by both the Ministry of Land, Housing, and the Environment and the Freetown City Council, which adopted new tools for participatory planning following their involvement in this initiative.
After 2019, SLURC, ASF-UK, and DPU refined the CAAP methodology by integrating a Settlement Profiling process and co-developing settlement profiles for several neighbourhoods. This methodology is documented in the Freetown Community Planning Toolkit, a two-volume publication released in 2022 that provides step-by-step guidance for residents and their organisations. These toolkits are vital instruments for advocating community-led planning, not only in Freetown but across Sierra Leone and beyond.
In numbers
Over five years of collaboration, the Community Action Planning process initiated by SLURC, ASFUK, and DPU trained around 50 residents from Freetown’s informal settlements as community researchers and engaged an additional 300 residents across three neighbourhoods. This initiative led to the creation of 3 Community Action Area Plans, 3 Settlement Profiles, a Planning Toolkit, a dissemination video, and several academic publications, significantly innovating the discourse and practice of urban planning in Freetown.
