Entangled Grids: Vernacular and (Post-)Colonial Planning Interactions in Contemporary Senegalese Cities

In this chapter, a variety of formalistic correspondences between indigenous grid-pattern settlements and their colonial and post-colonial counterparts are analyzed in five important contemporary Senegalese cities: Dakar, Touba, Diourbel, Tivaouane and Kaolack. By showing the reciprocal relations, co-habitation and hybridization between the two initially distinct urban design traditions, our discussion will break free from any morphological or chronological essentialism regarding the genealogy of the grid (which has been critiqued in Chap. 1). Instead, we present the more synchronic, interactive and processual approach of “entangled histories” to connect the indigenous grid planning culture (Chap. 2), to the exogenous one (Chap. 3). This “entanglement” approach – useful in cases where a strict, neat and well-balanced comparison is not always possible – provides valuable insights into how the two planning cultures have crisscrossed and become entangled. Two types of civil institutions in particular, the Lebou penc and the Sufi order, have been consistently “tangling” with the official state-centered planning process since the late nineteenth century. In the case of Dakar, ancient indigenous spatial practices have, remarkably, survived in the very center of the city – a gridded area which, since its creation, has been considered in both academic and popular discourses as the most Westernized site in West Africa. The entanglement of grids in Touba, Diourbel, Kaolack and Tivaouane stems from the urbanization strategies of the Sufi orders, both during the colonial era and since independence. On the methodological level, we utilize a variety of secondary and primary sources, including archival material, an analysis of recent maps, satellite imagery and direct observation.