Liora Bigon

Garden cities in colonial Africa: a note on historiography

While there is an abundance of published literature on the diffusion of planning modes and garden city notions in the western world, the corresponding literature on colonial (sub-Saharan) Africa is rather sparse. This brief paper, dealing with major historiographic trends in urban space and segregation in light of garden city literature proposes new directions for critical research on garden cities in colonial Africa. Both thematically and methodologically, the paper will highlight the importance of studying the influences of garden city ideas beyond the global North–West, and understanding the channels through which they were passed on to various colonial contexts in Africa, the circumstances of their application and the political interests they were meant to serve.

Sanitation and street layout in early colonial Lagos: British and indigenous conceptions, 1851–1900

There is little existing literature on the sanitary and urban planning policies of the British in their colonial cities throughout sub‐Saharan Africa in general and particularly in Lagos. This city has been examined mainly as part of a study of its town planning in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet, the examination of earlier British sanitary and planning practices in colonial Lagos between 1851 and 1900 is significant because, though British control involved direct rule from the start, Lagos was far from being an incarnation of a system of disciplinary power in terms of urban form. At this time there was rather a consolidation of the colonial rule, leaving considerable freedom of expression to the local population in the making of the town. This contrast is examined in several ways, including a discussion of the relation between geo‐climatic conditions and colonial and indigenous sanitary policies; how the socio‐physical organization of the town affected modes of planning; and how changes in the official status of the settlement were reflected in its physical form at the turn of the century. The article also asks whether there were any differences in attitudes or practices between colonial, metropolitan and local sanitary agencies; how problems of urban planning were actually treated by the early colonial state; and examines the general background political atmosphere. The article shows that the colonial authorities oscillated between two poles concerning colonial urban space. They were dissatisfied with the overall ‘unsanitary’ impression the town of Lagos made and they consequently agreed that measures should be taken to remedy the situation. At the same time, they were not ready really to commit themselves to this purpose, as sanitary reforms were not perceived as a legitimate target for public expenditure. This brought a failure to act in any very effective fashion, leaving many of the problems, leaving many issues for subsequent town planners, colonial and post‐colonial.

Urban planning, colonial doctrines and street naming in French Dakar and British Lagos, c. 1850–1930

The published literature that has thoroughly treated the history of European planning in sub-Saharan Africa is still rather scanty. This article examines French and British colonial policies for town planning and street naming in Dakar and Lagos, their chief lieux de colonisation in West Africa. It will trace the relationships between the physical and conceptual aspects of town planning and the colonial doctrines that produced these plans from the official establishment of these cities as colonial capitals in the mid-nineteenth century and up to the inter-war period. Whereas in Dakar these aspects reflected a Eurocentric meta-narrative that excluded African histories and identities, a glimpse at contemporary Lagos shows the opposite. This study is one of few that compares colonial doctrines of assimilation to doctrines of indirect rule as each affects urban planning.

Between Local and Colonial Perceptions: The History of Slum Clearances in Lagos (Nigeria), 1924-1960

Following the establishment of the British rule in Lagos in the mid-19th century, the pre-colonial settlement became most central in West Africa, economically and administratively. Yet, scarce resources at the disposal of the colonial government and its exploitive nature prevented any serious remedy for the increasingly pressing residential needs. This article examines slum clearances in Lagos from the early 20th century until the de-colonization era in Nigeria (the 1950s), from a perspective of cultural history. This perspective reveals the width of the conceptual gaps between the colonizers and the colonized, and the chronic mutual misunderstanding regarding the nature of slums and the appropriate ways to eliminate them. Tracing the indigenous perceptions and reactions concerning slum clearance shows that the colonial situation was far from being an overwhelmingly hegemonic one.

Bubonic plague, colonial ideologies, and urban planning policies: Dakar, Lagos, and Kumasi

The Third Plague Pandemic originated in Southwest China in the mid-nineteenth century, reached Africas shores around 1900, and spread globally for about a century. This article examines three plague loci in colonial Senegal (Dakar, 1914), Nigeria (Lagos, 1924), and the Gold Coast (todays Ghana; Kumasi, 1924). A tripartite comparative analysis is made of French and British doctrines of colonial rule, colonial urban planning policies, and anti-plague practices. While some common features are demonstrated in the policies and practices of the colonizing forces such as the implementation of rigorous measures and embracing segregationist solutions, divergent features can also be distinguished. These relate to the methods of implementation of planning and anti-plague policies, in accordance with colonial ideology (assimilation, direct and indirect rule); and to the very nature of autochthonous communities, responses, and levels of agitation. Our both comparative and more nuanced site-related view is also based on a large collection of archival and secondary materials from multilateral channels.

The Toponymic Inscription Problematic in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa: From Colonial to Postcolonial Times

We examine a variety of problems relating to toponymic inscription processes in urban sub-Saharan Africa. The objective is to promote understanding of: the origins, evolution, nature, extent and social implications of these problems in an era of globalization; the vocabularies of built space; and the navigation techniques of inhabitants of supposedly nondescript built space in this region. We employed primary data based on in situ experiences and secondary data from published and unpublished documents. We found that the region’s toponymic inscription problem, its built space, and urban vocabularies are deeply embedded in its European colonial legacy. Furthermore, we found that urban residents in this region have devised functional means to navigate their seemingly nondescript space. These revelations promise to fill some historiographic gaps in the literature on toponymic inscription in Africa in particular and urban history and planning in general.

The Making of the Central Markets of Dakar and Kinshasa: from Colonial Origins to the Post-colonial Period

This article traces the planning history of two central marketplaces in sub-Saharan Africa, in Dakar and Kinshasa, from their French and Belgian colonial origins until the post-colonial period. In the (post-)colonial city, the marketplace has always been at the centre of contemporary debates on urban identity and spatial production. Using a rich variety of sources, this article makes a contribution to a neglected area of scholarship, as comparative studies on planning histories in sub-Saharan African cities are still rare. It also touches upon some key issues such as the multiple and often intricate processes of urban agency between local and foreign actors, sanitation and segregation, the different (post-)colonial planning cultures and their limits and the role of indigenous/intermediary groups in spatial contestation and reappropriation.

An Anatomy of Symbolic Power: Israeli Road-Sign Policy and the Palestinian Minority

Perceived as mundane and experienced as mere informative images, innocent and undisputable, road signs can constitute part of a highly invested political strategy for producing a linguistic landscape. This is especially true in multiethnic or multinational states, such as Israel, where the linguistic landscape is being constituted in a contested context. The focus of this paper is on the visual and linguistic representations of Arabic and Hebrew toponyms in the Israeli road-sign system of the Galilee region. They will be examined in terms of positioning and organisation, landscape salience, and modes of transcript. Embracing Pierre Bourdieus concept of ‘symbolic power’, our detailed analysis exposes the very anatomy of a bipartite rhetorical policy on the part of Israeli governmental agencies: On the one hand is spatial exclusion of the Palestinian memory through various visual and linguistic manipulations, tactics, and mechanisms at the expense of its own rich toponymic corpus. On the other, there is the establishment of the identity and related imagery of the Hebrew-speaking majority, which supports the Zionist project, regional consciousness, and spatial appropriation.

Introduction: Place Names in Africa: Colonial Urban Legacies, Entangled Histories

Enframing the collective volume, this chapter elaborates on the distinctiveness of this volume and its contribution to recent critical place-names studies in terms of aims, scope, geography and methodology. It also provides an in-dept historiographic analysis in the field of toponymy against the background of (post-)colonial urban environments in Africa. Implying on a variety of toponymic inter-crossings between time spans, spatialities, scales and (post-)colonial legacies, the advantage of using the relational analytic approach of the ‘entangled’ in this context is brought into light.

Military Settlement Forms in Colonial Dakar and Western Sudan: Hesitative Moments

This historical essay critically examines the early military settlement projects realized by the French Engineering Corps in Senegal and the Western Sudan during the second half of the 19th century. The French were preoccupied with the establishment of official control over the hinterland, confronting a variety of challenges in situ. In striving to go beyond the prestigious image of the Corps and the discourse on colonial settlement forms as an instrument for domination, this article exposes aspects of uncertainty and haphazardness behind the projects. Visual correspondence with indigenous cultures is expanded, employing a rich variety of historical sources.