Cramped homes, blocked streets- The hidden crisis in Botswana’s cities

One in every 10 Batswana city dwellers live in neighbourhoods that look crowded and chaotic. These are areas where houses are packed too close together, streets are too narrow for cars to pass, and there is very little planned open spaces. Scientists and planners call this “ morphological deprivation,” which is just a fancy way of saying a neighbourhood’s physical layout is cramped and poorly built because it lacks proper town planning.

Botswana is among the African countries where about 10% of the urban population lives in neighbourhoods showing signs of morphological deprivation.

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