A corridor towards sustainable urban development is a reflection about the current planning techniques and how to apply them in the African context, specifically in Mozambique. It aims to raise awareness about the necessity of an understanding and adapting of European urban theories to the context conditionants and strong cultural identity of the African location. The main aim is to explore a shift in the metropolitan planning approaches in developing countries via a contextualized vision and strategy for Maputo Metropolitan Area 2040 that translates the expected growth of the area into a sustainable urban development introducing principles of adaptive governance and ‘non conventional’ housing policies. This project proposes a shift in perspective to approach the danger of the fast growing trend happening in the Metropolitan Area of Mozambique, which is currently leading to high rates of informality and precarious living conditions in 70% of its extension, The Maputo Metropolitan Area (MMA). The project reflects towards the research question: How can contextualized planning strategies structure metropolitan growth in a fast urbanization context as the back bone of mobility based sustainable spatial urbanization? How can adaptive governance support the decision making in this strategy?. It presents a detailed analysis and diagnosis of the area, the study of diff erent growing scenarios and the proposal of a vision and strategy for Maputo Metropolitan Area 2040. This final strategy is just a pilot of new approaches to orientate the urban development considering the diff erent aspects that condition the current situation of MMA: the spatial strategies and the policies to structure them. It introduce the proposition of changing certain principles of how to approach the context complexity, it does not aim to be a final solution. The integrated strategy is divided in three multi-scale strategies: The Corridors, Moamba airport and New Katembe that, based on non conventional housing policies and adaptive governance theoretical framework, will propose a suistainable framework for the urban development of MMA 2040