Pikine, Senegal: a Reading of a Contemporary African City Fatou

45 Pikine, Senegal: A Reading of a Contemporary African City Fatou Sow Reading a contemporary African city is a which the cultural values and symbols can because of the colonizer's wants. They are difficult and ambiguous undertaking. What easily be taken into consideration. created from nothing. They have over significance can we attach to it? Each The city is also an arena of conflicts of whelmed, or even destroyed physically, individual, depending on his sensitivity and power, the terms of which can be defined historically, politically, economically and his competence, has a different conception by the sociologists or the political scien culturally, the ancient capitals and the of this reading. tists. Social groupings and ethnic groups, important sites of Sudanese-Sahelian First of all, one can read a city the way one political forces and ideological currents, history, to speak only of our own histori cal-cultural area. holds a book. One does it with an exterior multiple interests oppose one another look full of indifference, often full of there. It is the scene of the exercise of the In three centuries, we have gone from the sympathy or even love, since one loves this power by the State and by the government, trading post to the colonial city, while open book. One can also cast an interior the power of capital, of money and of real physically wiping out or reducing to a look at this book, since the reader is a page estate speCUlation, the power of the inter symbolic role those landmark cities in our of it himself. When one has spread out his national division of labor, ethnic and reli national histories. The urban spaces con past, his present and probably his future gious power, and so on. The city is the stituted before the emergence of Atlantic there, each street, each neighborhood, reflection, the expression of these struggles trade were mOdified, displaced, or even each building is charged with meaning, of interests and of these power relation diverted. What happened to the tradi- , with emotion. ships. It is the object of pressures that tionally renowned political cities of Sene Reading the city means casting a look that make it difficult to solve its problems in a gambia, such as SiIla, Gede, Ngoy, Ndeer, varies according to abilities. The observa Senegal whose whole population is less Mbul, Lambaay or laxaaw? Yet they were tions of the architect and the city planner than that of Bogota, Bombay or New the seats of national power. They served as are not those of the specialists in the York. residences for the sovereigns holding political or social sciences. These readings, Recalling the colonial period of urban political power. They housed religious or intellectual centers. The internal and despite their differing content, converge in development here is not an indication of order to understand and explain. Describ touchy vindictiveness. It is a matter of trans-Sahara trade relationships had struc ing, interpreting, explaining the city scientifically demonstrating past and pre tured an urban network of which Aouda ghost, Djenne, Timbuctu and Gao are the means reading it aloud to understand it sent traces; it is a reminder of the origin of oneself, and to have it understood by the what is still an issue, namely, the ways of most prestigious examples in our collective others. distributing and controlling space. The memory of stop-over points. The architects, the city planners have an power of the independent State has not At that time, the urban phenomenon essential role that they tend to turn into a always challenged those ways, but for 20 developed under the control of the region's monopoly. They consider themselves the years the State has been making ever political and economic powers. The driving only builders of the city. To be sure, it greater efforts to master space - not just force in structuring space was basically happens that they design a city, that they urban space, but also national space. internal. It met economic criteria, to be suggest the creation and the arrangement Pikine is a symbol of this issue. sure But a whole art of dwelling and of of the spaces. They decide on the use of living was based on references that were ideological and symbolic, ontological and the materials They attempt to re-create or religious, esthetic and social On his own to imagine the symbols and values of the The Urban Question in Senegal local cultures Nevertheless, over and terms, the Sahelian built his neighbor above their own contradictions, they hoods in accordance with his cultural and participate in only part of the building and Urbanization: the Stakes Involved ethnic traditions. He constructed his the execution of the city. habitat and put up his mosques and other If we say that Black Africa's large modern religious buildings. He developed his Many of them have a tendency to forget cities are of colonial origin are essentially public areas and his markets for cereal that the city represents a field of conten colonial, we are repeating a well-known grains, cattle and artisan's goods tion. What is at stake limits Professor historical fact. The statement is obvious, Arkoun's freedom of imagination, Prince The ever closer contacts with Europe yet it is imperative that we recall this. The Aga Khan's freedom of dreaming, a through Atlantic trade, the slave trade, the colonial cities still bear the marked imprint dreaming that the architect Pierre gradual integration of Senegambia into the of a recent past. They are the conse Goudiaby translates into color, brightness world capitalistic system and colonization quences of a process and a specific logic of and noise. The city is not a neutral realm in caused considerable changes. They con development and extension. Dakar, which one can simply think of construction vulsed the region'S social and urban Bamako and Banjul sprang into being in terms of concrete and stabilized earth, in history. Reflecting its needs, the European Pikine, Senegal. A Redding of a Contemporary ~frican City 46 economy modeled a new living environ intended to control the economic space, creation of an international port and an ment that was to disturb a certain balance and above all the political system - that international airport gave it definitive in these societies. was what was at stake. "Malaw gisul raay access to the outside world. It benefited What would the urban face of Senegal hi - My horse Malaw has not seen the from administrative infrastructures and have been like without the colonial railroad" (and, by implication, will never from prestigeous school and university influence, without the growth of the see it), Lat Joor used to say He was quite structures, such as the Medical School and ground-nut (peanut) industry? The Atlan aware of the fact that the advance of the the School of Higher Studies, which tic coast or the ground-nut basin would rails would irremediably divert the activity became the University of Dakar in 1957 certainly have had a different appearance centers, while destroying the States The hospitals attracted patients from the They might not have developed unilate Thies, Mekke, Kaolack and Tamba region and from all of French West Africa. rally to the detriment of the older socio counda were important centers of the Due to the fact that colonial France placed economic spaces in the Senegal River railroad and ground-nut economy The such importance on it, Dakar, and hence basin, which, at the center of trans-Sahara great river communication routes such as Senegal, still have a special strategic place trade, played a historical and political role the Senegal, the Sine, the Saloum and in regional, African, French and world of unquestioned importance. A whole the Casamance saw the construction of geopolitics. process of urbanization, which would trading towns and administration centers The prestige and influence of Dakar probably have been quite original, fell by of the colonial power such as Dagana, siphoned - for its own benefit - the the wayside to make way for a different Podor, Matam, Foundiougne and Ziguin roles, the fruits of the activities and the scheme re-creating a living space in accor chor populations of the rural areas and of the dance with criteria, symbols and models other Senegalese cities, such as Saint that were firmly anchored in the relation Louis, the colony'S former capital, Rufis ships of political, economic and cultural que, the ground-nut port, and Goree, Dakar domination which has now become a "resort" For a The colonial power chose the sites, laid out long time, it eclipsed the other cities of the Dakar, the largest city of the French West Federation of French West Africa, of the habitat, established the hierarchies of African Empire and the bridgehead for the urban system and even delimited the which it was the capital. Only Abidjan colonial penetration, is exemplary, and and that only during these last ten years relationships. In the pre-colonial period, offers a good illustration of the history of when societies, powers and economies following independence - has been able dominated urbanization. It was created ex to compete with it, and even to surpass it were developing autonomously, the Sene nihilo in 1857, on land that was virtually gambian States turned inward. This was thanks to a prodigious economic and usurped from the Lebou community that financial boom the case of Tekrour, of Jolof, ofWaalo, of occupied Cape Verde. This creation was Fuuta, of Kayoor, of Sine, of Guidimakha based on the colonizer's political force. He The rapidity of Dakar's urban growth is a and of Gabou They all kept their backs was intent on making it, in the very characteristic shared by all of the cities of turned to the sea until the 16th century It language of the commandant of Goree, the African continent whose economies is no accident that the Lebous and Guet Mauleon, "the great commercial city and were dominated and extroverted.

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