Assignment, Week 5

1. Upload and rectify an early plan of your city. Analyze core differences between this early plan and the current city plan. Mark these differences and provide related screenshots. What, if anything do these changes convey about difference and identity in your city?
2. Select one article from an early newspaper addressing your city and discuss its main themes. Source: Historical Newspaper Project.
3. Begin to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (2–3 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.
4. Discuss briefly the subject(s) you would like to address in your final paper on your city.

A plan of Bangui from 1930 looks much like a plan of central Bangui today (Villien 41). To some extent, this is to be expected, as streets are generally stationary. What is unexpected is that, looking at Bangui then and now, it becomes clear that very little urban planning has taken place since that map was drawn.

Bangui’s city center has hardly changed at all since 1930. Images: Villien 41, Google Maps

In 1930, Bangui consisted of a European city with spacious boulevards and soundly constructed buildings, and several African “feeder” villages which sprang up around it to provide workers for European households and enterprises—or simply because people thought they had more of a chance in the city than in the country.

The feeders grew and grew over time. Soon, they dwarfed the planned city and butted right up against it. The French response was minimal: a map from 1963 shows a few more thoroughfares extending out into the urban sprawl, but no planning within the villages, which quickly became squatter settlements (Zarhy 25). Since 1963, aside from the construction of a civilian airport, there appears to have been no planned development in Bangui whatsoever. Meanwhile, the sprawl has continued unchecked, spilling over into the neighboring province as what paved roads existed fall into disrepair, building up to a planner’s perfect storm.

The white spaces to the north and west of the city center on this 1963 map were and are filled by unplanned squatter settlements.

Consistent with the de facto French policy of ignoring Equatorial Africa to the extent possible, Bangui received minimal coverage in newspapers before independence, except when mentioned as a stopover for daring explorers or as the end of multiple promised French railways that never materialized. Two events, however, did receive some amount of coverage.

The first was a widely reproduced letter from French explorer Pierre Sauvorgnan de Brazza, who had been appointed to assess conditions in various parts of French Equatorial Africa in 1905, in response to criticisms of rubber-harvesting in the Congo Free State. He visited Bangui and the region, and “found the conditions … intolerable,” though “[e]verything was done to hide the true state of affairs” (The Colorado Springs Gazette).

The accusations against the French administration—that local populations were forced to gather rubber at gunpoint, frequently flogged to death and imprisoned until they starved—were similar to those leveled against King Léopold in the Congo, and similarly true. One particularly distressing study has found a direct correlation between rubber production and bullets used on harvesters in one part of the Equatorial Africa. Luckily for the French, de Brazza died on his way back to France, and his complaints were forgotten (Hochschild 280–281).

So-called “red rubber,” however, did go out of style after its devastating effects in the Congo Free State were documented. It was reinstituted, however, when World War II necessitated a surge in production of raw materials. Mandatory gathering resumed, much to the chagrin of the victimized populations (Villien 42). An article in The New York Times from 1942 reports that “ ‘the 1942 rubber output is three times as large as last year’s,’ ” and connects this to the leadership of Charles de Gaulle without so much as mentioning that the rubber harvesters had no choice in the matter (The New York Times).

French Equatorial Africa as a whole spent its entire existence being ignored, and even after independence its component states have only managed to make headlines because of famines, civil wars or especially repressive dictators. For my final paper, I plan to address that neglect and its consequences. In particular, the most troublesome legacy of the colonial era in Bangui is the dichotomy between the planned city and the proliferation of unplanned slums. Good urban planning could have softened the impact of this “rural exodus,” as the French called it, but nothing of the sort materialized. In my paper, I will tentatively address the successes and failures of any French responses to this problem, and how urban sprawl continues to threaten Bangui today.

Maps I’ve Rectified

In addition to this blog, I have been assigned some maps to upload and warp over satellite imagery. We then put them on a cool web app called WorldMap, where they will be aggregated with other maps. I have been maintaining a section with maps of Bangui, which I don’t think I have mentioned here yet. I encourage you to have a look; the U.R.L. is http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/oubangui.

The maps which I have been assigned are as follows: four of Douala (Cameroon), one of Yaoundé (Cameroon), three of Libreville (Gabon), one of Brazzaville (Rep. of Congo) and three of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). These are to be rectified and uploaded throughout the semester. So far I have done two of Douala, screenshots of which appear below. With the first one, I am very satisfied, but weird stuff started happening with the second.

I’ll have to redo that second one later. To see these maps in all their interactive glory, go to http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/oubangui and scroll over to Douala, Cameroon.

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References

“Economic Gains Sharp in Africa: Sees Free French Gain.” The New York Times, sec. News: 12. Print. 10 May 1942.

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.

“Mission to French Congo Finds Bad State of Affairs.” Colorado Springs Gazette: 2. Print. 27 Sep 1905.

Villien, François, et al. Bangui, Capitale d’un Pays Enclavé d’Afrique Centrale : Étude Historique et Géographique. 4 Vol. Talence: Centre de Recherches sur les Espaces Tropicaux, Institut de Géographie, Université de Bordeaux III, 1990. Print.