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Post-colonial visions on the role of modernization and the modern city in the colonization effort have looked at this process in an exclusively critical way, tending towards diminishing the role of modernity in the construction of a better urban existence. The dwellings for Africans were to be constructed as self-builds based on residential typologies Simoes de Carvalho was developing at the time, as seen in the particular case of the Bairro dos Pescadores in Ilha de Luanda. The Prenda district is a test tube for contemporary Luanda, its complexities and contradictions and its balances and vulnerabilities. Based on its current configuration, can define more appropriate parameters for the “type” of megacity Luanda is becoming. The conversion of all the void spaces in the common areas of the buildings to spaces that added residential comfort, helped the researchers involved in the study to understand the pivotal issue of the lack of housing in the everyday life of Luanda.

What kind of colonial city was produced by the First Portuguese Republic? Research into the Republic and colonialism is only now beginning to look at the topic of the city and the production of public space. For a considerable period the perceived knowledge was that the troubled times between 1910 – the end of the monarchy – and 1926 – the beginning of the military dictatorship – did not allow for the development of an urban and architectural culture that reflected the values of the so-called ‘republican ethics’. While in mainland Portugal one could observe the persistence of the kind of urban production that developed during the constitutional monarchy, namely in the design of the public space and in the infrastructures of the main metropolitan cities, in the African territories there was urgency in taking action that manifested itself in the expansion and beautification of the existing cities and in the planning and foundation of new cities. Many of these plans also reflected the ideological values that the republicans cherished with regard to Africa.