A partial review is attempted of the development and under-development impacts of a massive population redistribution programme. Tanzania's villagization (sogeza) operations shifted over five million peasants from their former scattered homesteads into nucleated settlements of, in principle, 250–600 households each. The recent resettlement permanently altered the spatial, social and economic production relations of the peasantry as they were brought into approximately 8,000 vijijini vya maendeleo (development villages) and a new system of village government. In some quarters it has been praised as a model of socialist modernization, whereas in others it has been condemned as authoritarian state intervention in peasant relations of production.

After approximately one decade, villagization can be taken as established, but the relation between its original goals and the actual impacts requires critical examination. The focus in this paper is on the negative under-development impacts of the resettlement, both because these are already quite serious and could well be more so in the next decade, and because they are largely ignored in reviews of Tanzania's space economy and of the country's current economic crisis. Many problems can be ameliorated, though other negative impacts are unavoidable and justifiable. But certain basic changes must be implemented to reverse the environmental deterioration, the agricultural decline and a legacy of social discontent.

This is not a detailed study of particular aspects but a broad overview of problems and current solutions taken from contemporary studies. With 8,000 villages there are unavoidably some sweeping generalizations.