A History of Urban Planning and Infectious Diseases: Colonial Senegal in the Early Twentieth Century
Open Access
- 21 February 2012
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Hindawi Limited in Urban Studies Research
- Vol. 2012, 1-12
- https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/589758
Abstract
This paper deals with the spatial implications of the French sanitary policies in early colonial urban Senegal. It focuses on the French politics of residential segregation following the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Dakar in 1914, and their precedents in Saint Louis. These policies can be conceived as most dramatic, resulting in a displacement of a considerable portion of the indigenous population, who did not want or could not afford to build à l’européen, to the margins of the colonial city. Aspects of residential segregation are analysed here through the perspective of cultural history and history of colonial planning and architecture, in contrast to the existing literature on this topic. The latter dilates on the statutory policies of the colonial authorities facing the 1914 plague in Dakar, the plague's sociopolitical implications, and the colonial politics of public health there. In the light of relevant historiography, and a variety of secondary and primary sources, this paper exposes the contradictions that were inherent in the French colonial regime in West Africa. These contradictions were wisely used by the African agency, so that such a seemingly urgent segregationist project was actually never accomplished.Keywords
This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
- PROPRIÉTAIRES ET COMMERÇANTS AFRICAINS À OUAGADOUGOU ET À BOBO-DIOULASSO (HAUTE-VOLTA), FIN 19ÈME SIÈCLE–1960The Journal of African History, 2003
- Explaining the apartheid city: 20 years of South African urban historiographyJournal of Southern African Studies, 1995
- The Process of Urbanization in Africa (From the Origins to the Beginning of Independence)African Studies Review, 1991
- ‘A Perfect System of Control’? State Power and ‘Native Locations' in South AfricaEnvironment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1990
- Medical Knowledge and Urban Planning in Tropical AfricaThe American Historical Review, 1985
- Town Planning, Segregation and Indirect Rule in Colonial NigeriaThird World Planning Review, 1983
- The Sanitation Syndrome: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909The Journal of African History, 1977
- The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal, 1914Africa, 1971
- Dakar and the Other Cape Verde SettlementsGeographical Review, 1941