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ABSTRACT
In Western (Eurocentric) research traditions of urban and planning histories, sub-Saharan Africa is generally denied an urban past, an urban settlement design culture, and especially an indigenous practice of grid planning. It is against this historiographic background that indigenous grid pattern settlements in Senegal are analysed, with relation to the gridded tradition of colonial settlement design. In light of both cultural sensitivities inherited in African studies and the diffusionist paradigm which seeks a supposed singular ‘origin’ for the grid plan – it is demonstrated that urban grid planning emerges independently in Senegal, before European colonization. In shifting the discussion from morphological essentialism regarding the genealogy of the grid towards a more interactive and processual approach of ‘entangled histories’, this article also provides insights into the dynamic criss-crossings between top-down and bottom-up cultures of urban planning. This Western-cum-indigenous formalistic entanglement is exemplified by analysing how such important contemporary Senegalese cities as Dakar, Touba, and Diourbel have been built. On the methodological level, we utilize a variety of secondary and primary sources, including archival material, an analysis of recent maps, satellite imagery, and direct observation.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for financial fieldwork support. The authors also thank Planning Perspectives’ external reviewers and Associate Editor, Maggie Gold, for their inspiring remarks.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Eric Ross is a cultural and urban geographer, associate professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane. He is a specialist in Islam in Africa and urban affairs, cultural heritage and tourism, particularly in West Africa and the Maghrib; and conducted research on Sufi institutions and urban processes in Senegal, especially on the city of Touba. Published widely in these fields, among his books are: Assessing Tourism in Essaouira (et al., Al Akhawayn University Press, 2002); Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba (University of Rochester Press, 2006); and Cultures and Customs of Senegal (Greenwood/Heineman, 2008).
Liora Bigon is an urban historian, senior staff member in Holon Institute of Technology and research fellow at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Interested in (post-)colonial urban history, architecture and planning cultures in sub-Saharan Africa, she has published widely in these fields, including articles, encyclopedic entries, (edited) books and exhibition curatorship.
Notes
1 Ross, “Marabout Republics Then and Now”, 35.
2 Garlake, Great Zimbabwe.
3 Sanders, “The Hamitic Hypothesis”; Ross, “Africa in Islam.”
4 Diop, L’Afrique noire précoloniale; “A Methodology for the Study of Migrations.”
5 Trevor-Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe; see also Fuglestad, “The Trevor-Roper Trap or the Imperialism of History.”
8 Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 91–9.
9 Kostof, The City Shaped, 99–100.
10 Grant, “The Dark Side of the Grid.”
11 Eglash, “Anthropology and Emerging Technologies”, 408.
12 Eglash, 405–6.
13 Eglash, 405.
14 Gasparini, “The Pre-Hispanic Grid System.”
15 Low, “Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean”, 749.
16 Low, 749.
17 Ross, “Marabout Republics Then and Now”; Sufi City; “Building Community: Configuring Authority and Identity on the Public Squares of Contemporary Senegalese Sufi Centers.”
18 Rose-Redwood, “Genealogies of the Grid”; Stanislawski, “The Origin and the Spread of the Grid-Pattern Town.”
19 Rose-Redwood, 50.
20 Randeria, “Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities.”
21 Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories.”
22 Werner and Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison.”
23 Werner and Zimmermann, 9–10.
24 On Sufi orders, (‘ways’ or ‘paths’ (ṭarīqah in Arabic), sometimes translated as brotherhood/confrérie) see Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam).
25 UN-Habitat, The State of African Cities, 2014, 271.
26 Ross, “Touba”; Sufi City, ch. 2.
27 Laborde, La Confrérie layenne et les Lébou du Sénégal.
28 Seesemann, The Divine Flood; Robison, Paths of Accommodation.
29 Sanneh, The Jakhanke Muslim Clerics.
30 Ross, “Marabout Republics”; Sufi City, ch. 3.
31 Ross, “The Grid Plan in the History of Senegalese Urban Design.”
32 Fall, “Recueil sur la vie des damel”, 117, translation by Eric Ross.
33 Ross, “Palaver Trees Reconsidered in the Senegalese Landscape.”
34 Ross, “Marabout Republics”; Sufi City, ch. 4.
35 Ross, “Building Community.”
36 In Senegal, the cities that serve as headquarters for the major Sufi orders are habitually referred to as their ‘capitals.’
37 Sylla, Le people lebou de la presqu’ile du Cap-Vert.
38 Charpy, “Comment et pourquoi est né Dakar”, 8.
39 Charpy, La Fondation de Dakar, 542.
40 Malverti and Picard, “Algeria: Military Genius and Civic Design.”
41 Pinon, “Raison et formes de villes.”
42 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, 103–117.
43 Bouche, “Villages de liberté en Afrique noire française.”
44 Pasquier, “Villes du Sénégal au XIXe siècle”, 406.
45 Bigon, French Colonial Dakar, ch. 2.
46 Bigon, “Names, Norms and Forms.”
47 Betts, “The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal”; Lewis “One Hundred Million Frenchmen.”
48 ANS, H22; H55, Bigon, “Bubonic Plague, Colonial Ideologies and Urban Planning Policies.”
49 Bugnicourt, “Dakar without Bounds”, 30; Bigon, A History of Urban Planning in Two West African Colonial Capitals, 199.
50 Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Configurations; Davie “Beirut and the Étoile Area: An Exclusively French Project?”
51 Betts, “The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar.”
52 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, part I.
53 Pheffer, Railroads and Aspects of Social Change in Senegal.
54 Said, Orientalism, 35–50.
55 Hall, “Un-settling ‘the Heritage”, 9.
56 Hall, “Un-settling ‘the Heritage”, 12–13.
57 ANOM, FM SG SEN/XII/12; Ndione, “Woyi Céét.”
58 Mercier and Balandier, Les pêcheurs Lébou.
59 Betts, “The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar”; Bigon, “Bubonic Plague.”
60 Bigon and Hart, “Vernacular and (Post)-Colonial Planning Interactions.”
61 Bigon and Hart, “Vernacular and (Post)-Colonial Planning Interactions.”
62 Guèye, Touba, 166, 324.
63 Guèye, Touba, 327; Ross, Sufi City, 64–66, 87.
64 Guèye, Touba, 336–7, 445; Ross, Sufi City, 97–102.
65 Ross, Sufi City, 102-4.
66 Ross, “Building Community.”
67 Babou, “Contesting Space, Shaping Place.”
68 Guèye, Touba, 117.