Why it looks like this

Sultan Majid of Zanzibar founded the town in 1862 around a superb natural harbour, a deep inlet with a narrow mouth. The Germans made it the capital of German East Africa in 1891, and the British kept it as capital of Tanganyika, each adding their own quarters near the port.

The whole street network answers the harbour: long radial roads — Morogoro, Bagamoyo, Kilwa, Nyerere — fan out from the centre like spokes, and the city's explosive growth has run outward along them, making Dar one of Africa's fastest-growing cities.