AN URBAN SOLUTION FOR DEVELOPING CITIES IN AFRICA rhazi m. kone
As a result of the economical crises occurring throughout the continent, many African cities have encountered common issues in urban planning. Important factors such as war, rural exodus, famine, and most certainly, poverty have led to the creation of informal and self-developing urban sets which have taken over the poor post-colonial planning of the continent. Cities such as Lagos, Accra, and Abidjan are witnessing an accelerated population growth and are unable to cope with the extraordinary needs of this rising population. Consequently, there has been an increase in crime rate and disease infection. Urban and environmental problems such as water supply, sewage, solid waste containment, loss of green and natural spaces, urban sprawl, land contamination, traffic, transport, air pollution and noise are today the major characteristics of these cities. The purpose of this study is to develop an urban planning model to resolve specific urban issues such as waste disposal, housing and water supply which are increasing exponentially in severity in important cities of the African continent. The site of the research will be Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, one of the fastest growing cities in Africa. Both in the process of peace and on the verge of a second civil war, the Republic of Cote d?Ivoire, and most certainly the economic capital Abidjan, present the characteristics of both a governmentally stable and unstable urban set. An understanding of Abidjan can allow us to develop a general idea of the contemporary city problems and urban needs in sub-Saharan Africa.
SITE = ABIDJAN, COTE D’ IVOIRE
Abidjan is the economic and former official capital of Côte d’Ivoire (the current capital is Yamoussoukro). It is the largest city in the nation, and the second largest French speaking city in the world. It has, according to the authorities of the country in 2006, 5,068,858 inhabitants in the municipal area inhabitants and 3,796,677 people in the city. Only Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria has a larger number of inhabitants in this region. Considered a cultural hub of West Africa or Africa, Abidjan in the 21st century is characterized by high industrialization and urbanization. The city stands in Ébrié Lagoon on several converging peninsulas and islands, connected by bridges. The city grew after the construction of a new wharf in 1931 and its designation as the capital of the then French colony in 1933. The completion of the Vridi Canal in 1951 enabled it to become an important sea port. In 1983, Yamoussoukro was designated as the nation’s capital, but most government offices and foreign embassies are still in Abidjan.
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1. Victorian Abidjan
(Understanding of Abidjan, and its similarity to nineteenth century Europe)
Rue du Prevot Paris, 1898
Vridi Cite-Abidjan, 2009
1. Victorian Abidjan (Understanding of Abidjan, and its similarity to nineteenth century Europe)
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Abidjan, just like Victorian Europe is facing severe urban issues. The rapid increase of the population right afte independence in 1960 has left the city in a deteriorated state. Abidjan lies on the south-east coast of the country in the Gulf of Guinea.
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The city lies on the Ébrié Lagoon and is divided into ten different municipalities. The business district Le Plateau is the centre of the city. It lies with Cocody’, Deux Plateaux (the richest neighbourhood with big mansions for rich people and diplomats) and the slum area of Adjamé on the north shore of the lagoon, while Treichville and Marcory lie to the south, Abobo-Doume and Yapougon to the west and Boulay Island in the middle of the lagoon. Further south lies Port Bouët, home to the airport and main seaport.
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1. Victorian Abidjan (Understanding of Abidjan, and its similarity to nineteenth century Europe)
HOUSING
Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper; every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three – fruit and ‘sweetstuff’ manufacturers in the cellars, barbers and red-herring vendors in the front parlours, cobblers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor, three families on the second, starvation in the attics, Irishmen in the passage, a ‘musician’ in the front kitchen, a charwoman and five hungry children in the back one – filth everywhere – a gutter before the houses, and a drain behind – clothes drying, and slops emptying from the windows; ... men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing.
Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1839 on St Giles Rookery
Adjame is one of the most populated neighborhood of the city. It is mailny inhabitated by the Ivoriran working class. This picture, indeed, is not a slum, but the consequence of housing shortage in Abidjan. Adjame , just other the other dense municipalities such as Abobo and Yopougon has a crime rate
Abidjan- Waste Deposit and Poor Sanitary Conditions
1. VICTORIAN ABIDJAN (UNDERSTANDING OF ABIDJAN, AND ITS SImILARITY TO NINETEENTh CENTURY EUROPE)
WASTE DISPOSAL
The city of Abidjan has thousands of these waste deposits . They are the consequence of the City’s inability to provide sanitary system of waste disposal.
c hxbckjb 1. Victorian Abidjan
(Understanding of Abidjan, and its similarity to nineteenth century Europe)
Water Supply and Drainage
Similarly to victorian Europe, Abidjan ‘s water canals quite underdevelopped and open at the street level. Most of the waste deposit in the streets end up in the water canals of the city, eventually producin stagnant waters, a source of malaria. The city of Abidjan, after the independence, started to drain 100% of its water waste in the Ebrie lagune, and ironically uses the same lagune as a water ressource. Major infectious diseases: degree of risk: very high food or waterborne diseases: bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever vectorborne diseases: malaria and yellow fever water contact: schistosomiasis (CIA, FactBook)
Water waste next to Koumassi communal food market
2. Implementation of western urban methods
For the architects of the early twentieth century, the appropriateness of the act of intervening clinically in the city’s historical and natural evolution was beyond question. Supported by the enormous moral impetus of social and technological necessity (which had replaced the model of natural evolution), they attempted from the stronghold of their “castle of purity� to storm the bastion of evils identified with the nineteenth- century city. To them the stakes appeared higher than they had ever been. In this heroic climate of modernism the city of modern architecture, supposedly born out of rupture of history, was progressively propelled by that very history toward the vision of a sanitized utopia.
Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City
Welwyn Garden City Ad, 1919
2. ImPLEmENTATION OF WESTERN URBAN mEThODS
The City Beautiful : Beautification & Social Control Yields Peace and health to City Dwellers moral and Civic Virtue
AxIAL PLAN OF ThE mALL, WAShINGTON, D.C.: ThE REFLECTING POOL AND LINCOLN mEmORIAL ExTEND ThE CENTRAL AxIS
2. Implementation of western urban methods
African Beautification_ A Return to the Traditional Aesthetics The City Beautiful is borrowed heavily from both the contemporary Beaux-Arts movement, which emphasized the necessity of order, dignity, and harmony, and from classical monumental planning. In the case of Abidjan, the beautification of the city can certainly not be subject of a classical monumentality. Civic virtue in an African city can be obtain through the introduction of a new concept of beauty- a beauty carrying characteristics of the culture and its aesthetics. Urban issues are certainly the result of economic reasons, however a particular general detachment of the public to its environment leads to further problems.
Traditional Monumentality
2. Implementation of western urban methods
Liana Bridge in the cemter of the Cote D’Ivoire
Aesthetic Zoom In
Senoufo Village
Aesthetic Zoom Out
communal scale:
Adaptation, responsiveness, and flexibilty are essentail; traits, and humans must relearn to live within nature, and perhaps, through design, to reinterpret our relationship with it.
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2. Implementation of western urban methods
Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire
connectivity/circulation network
density landscape
waters
green-belt = sustainable The City Beautiful
ecosystem dynamics
URBAN INTERVENTION
new maritime pathways
garden city
empty land=informal
present condition
With uncontrollable informal economy, cities such as Abidjan need to be considered as a ecosystem. The ability of ecosystems to recover, reorganize and adapt in the face of regular change, rather than stability, is critical to their survival. An ecosystem reorganizes to renew itself or regenerate to a similar or perhaps different state. C.S Holling
Treichville: Phasing and Development Sequence
Phase 1: seeding
Phase 2: infrastucture
Phase 3: programming
Phase 4: adaptation
sections
LIMITS:
Abidjan
Rio’s Favelas of Tijuca Park
1. PUBLIC CONFLICT AND EROSION 2. ECONOMY