Liora Bigon

This book deals with the cultural politics of the creation of a colonial urban space. The conceptual and physical dimensions of the process of making the West African colonial city, and especially a model space such as that of the regional and federal capital city of Dakar, reveal a complex negotiation both symbolically and politically. The creation of colonial Dakar and its perception as an imperial city in the French colonial imagery constituted an exercise in the self-building of the metropolitan French identity on the national and cultural levels. Simultaneously, it was an exercise in the ‘othering’ of the African indigenous populations, their modes of planning and architectures. By taking the latter into account, this book treats colonial urban space as a contested terrain, as a dynamic space with notions and practices ceaselessly negotiated upon between the involved groups. The study of the extra-European planning history of Europe has been a burgeoning field in scholarly literature, especially in the last few decades. There is a clear tendency within this literature, however, to focus on the more privileged colonies in the contemporary colonial order of preference, such as British India and the French colonies in North Africa. Colonial urban space in Sub-Saharan Africa has thus been left relatively untreated, hence the contribution of this book. Rich in the variety of historical sources and architectural models discussed, this book attests the connection between the French colonial doctrines and the French colonial architecture in sub-Saharan Africa.