Reading colonial planning in African cities from a comparative perspective

Although some collective works on the urban history of African cities, often published proceedings of conferences, constitute an important supplement to the monographic studies on colonial cities by architectural historians, the comparative aspect between the different contributions of these collective works has rarely been elaborated. In addition to this, many historians dealing with social, cultural or political processes in the colonial city tend to overlook the physical space or ‘built form’ in which these processes take place. However and in spite of this observation, we believe that more comparative research on the architecture and urban planning of African, or in more general terms colonial, cities will be revealing on different levels. By studying the import-export of urban policy and planning between the mother country and the colony, most scholars take the nation-state as a primary category of analysis. Yet, we argue that comparative research would probably show that many aspects of colonial cities stem from other routes of knowledge and communication than those shaped by the métropole-colony axis alone. Since most colonial administrations looked across the borders while formulating their colonial policies, comparative research may unveil to which extent local policies in the colony were nation-bounded. On the other hand, while modern urban planning and architecture developed within a network of European architects and institutions, colonial cities often demonstrate particular national characteristics. Moreover, recent research on transnational migrations within the African continent illustrates the significant role of immigrants in the history of African cities. As a result, the question rises to what extent certain trends in colonial architecture and urban planning are specific to certain colonies or trans-border issues. By drawing on our own research that investigates the role and position of market places in three African cities, we will address the importance of comparative analyses of thematic topics such as urban segregation and agency, as well as highlight some methodological issues (e.g. micro-study, visual mappings, interdisciplinary approaches,…)