Building the Just City in Tanzania: Essays on Urban Housing 1. Introduction This reflective paper seeks to analyze how the governance and institutional framework at both city and national levels affect and impact the promo­tion of justice in access to housing for all in Tanzania. The paper explores the housing governance systems, including available policies, legal frameworks, and key actors’ roles, interactions and power relations. The study borrows concepts from the new institutional theory(North 1990; Peter 2004; March and Olsen 2006; Nuhu, 2018). The theory explains institutions through reference to both formal and infor­mal institutional approaches prevailing in the access and provision of public goods, such as housing and services in Sub-Sharan African countries(among others, Kombe and Kreibich 2001; Quaye 2014; Nuhu, 2018; 2019; 2020). Furthermore, the new institutional the­ory takes a governance approach, as opposed to only examining government (Obeng-Oddom, 2017). As document­ed by Stoker(1998:18), governance entails a“set of institutions and actors that are drawn from but also beyond government”. It also refers to a net­work of actors, their roles and respon­sibilities, the relationship between insti­tutions and exercising authorities, and the distribution of power among them. The‘just city’ concept used in the pa­per draws from Susan Fainstein’s(2008) conceptualization of a city that incorpo­rates dignity, diversity and equity, and democracy. Dignity means respecting an individual’s or a group’s right to be valued and treated ethically. Equity and diversity are realized when a city’s ben­efits and ideals are shared equally and equitably by all its residents. A city with diversity appreciates that democratic processes may result in the exclusion of some people; as a result, the city is able to put in place safeguards to pre­serve minorities’ rights. Moreover, de­mocracy is displayed in a city where all residents make collective decisions in a manner that respects all citizens’ digni­ty, protects minorities’ rights, and takes equity and diversity into account(ibid). This paper, therefore, puts in question the current governance and institution­al framework by accounting for the extent to which dignity, diversity and equity, and democracy are reflected in access to housing for all in Tanzania. In current times, attempts to address urban governance issues have been highly affected by a shift from a provid­er approach to an enabling approach (Briggs and Mwamfupe, 2000; Nuhu, 2018). Although the government has succeeded to acquire dominant pow­er over land in the country, local, in­ternational, and informal actors have also been on the rise(Kedogo et al., 2