Co-evolving morphologies in Sub-Saharan Africa

African cities have been catalyzing attention since statistical data show that they will hold about 21% of the world’s population in the coming years. This increase in urban dwellers implies a rise in the demand for infrastructure, services and urban housing. Evidence of the phenomena is tangible, new increasingly large-scale morphologies can be appreciated all over the African continent. The fast changes seen in the continent in the last decades do not uniformly affect the built environment, making these morphologies to be in a constant state of “transition”. Two main morphological singularities co-exist and co-evolve in these contexts: informal settlements and new large-scale planned projects. For this paper, two mega-cities in the making: Luanda and Lagos; are re-visited in different scales. These samples from southern and western parts of the continent become a laboratory to observe contemporary urbanization phenomena through spatial lenses. Using geographic information systems and urban morphology as a decoding artifact, the case studies are analyzed as they develop in time to understand their spatial character and the current dynamics of their development. In this study, urban morphology serves as an instrument to map, analyze and compare the transitional built environments and highlight the contrasting morphological characteristics of these developments.