A key policy issue in large African cities is the nature and consequences of the urban policies that favour and ensure the integration of the populations of informal settlements. Choices have been made between formal land subdivision and restructuration depending on political and economic regimes. In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, massive planned housing policies were the instrument chosen by the authorities under the Sankarist revolutionary regime (1983-1987). The aim was to reduce urban inequalities and provide city access for the greatest number of people. However, these policies have effectively transformed these districts into areas of land conquest and speculation, placing them at the heart of the process of land commodification. Since the 1990s, the pursuit of the planned housing policy, in the context of decentralization and neo-liberal policies, has increased inequalities and caused social tensions leading to its suspension in 2011. With it came a period of uncertainty, marked by growth of the population in unplanned neighbourhoods, socio-economic diversification and the development of local initiatives. Political responses, linked to projects financed by international aid, resulted in the restructuring of these neighbourhoods in situ (road development, basic urban services) with a limited impact. The 2014 democractic turning point constitutes a break with the fragmentation of public action and the involvement of a diversity of actors, such as a more visible civil society, but also private property developers. In view of these changes, the authorities, confronted with the tensions generated by the divergent expectations and interests of the actors involved, are struggling to develop a policy that both contributes to the sustainable urban integration of the inhabitants of informal settlements and that also limits their expansion.