User talk:ClareParlett/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/Seminar Group 10/Urban Planning and Imperialism

Introduction to Imperialism and Urban Planning
(Merged Intro) In 2007, the percentage of the world’s population living in urban areas passed 50% and this number has been increasing steadily. (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS) Many cities facing this influx of people lack the infrastructure, housing, waste management and governance necessary to safely accommodate their populations. (http://ejbe.org/EJBE2012Vol05No10p99OZDEN-ENWERE.pdf) Throughout the history of urban planning, urban planning has often been utilized by political authorities to consolidate their power in various aspects, and such an inherent power relationship is more evident during colonial and post-colonial periods. (Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucalt and Geography) Dominant urban planning theories around those times were largely based on European models, which still have profound consequences for present-day cities and the overall development of their economies, societies and politics. It is therefore crucial to study the imperialistic nature inside the field of urban planning in order to decolonize relevant fields more thoroughly. (https://urbanisation.econ.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/137/colonial-legacies-shapingfinal301017.pdf) (http://ejbe.org/EJBE2012Vol05No10p99OZDEN-ENWERE.pdf)

(intro 1) In 2007, the percentage of the world’s population living in urban areas passed 50% and this number has been increasing steadily. (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS) Many cities facing this influx of people lack the infrastructure, housing, waste management and governance necessary to safely accommodate their populations. (http://ejbe.org/EJBE2012Vol05No10p99OZDEN-ENWERE.pdf) In post-colonial regions, such as Latin America and Sub-Saharan, imperial urban planning has had profound consequences for the present city and the overall development of their economies, societies and politics. (https://urbanisation.econ.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/137/colonial-legacies-shapingfinal301017.pdf) (http://ejbe.org/EJBE2012Vol05No10p99OZDEN-ENWERE.pdf)

(intro 2, i added something here) In 2007, the percentage of the world’s population living in urban areas passed 50% and this number has been increasing steadily.1 Throughout the history of urban planning, urban planning has often been utilized by political authorities to consolidate their power in various aspects, and such an inherent power relationship is more evident during colonial and post-colonial periods. Dominant urban planning theories around those times were largely based on European models, which still have profound consequences for present-day cities and the overall development of their economies, societies and politics. It is therefore crucial to study the imperialistic nature inside the field of urban planning in order to decolonize relevant fields more thoroughly.

1(https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS)

History of Urban Planning
City planning has been a key feature of communal living for millenniums. The field of urban planning has been around an equally long time, with the oldest known urban planner being Hippodamus of Miletus, credited with first writing about zoning and the Gridiron system which would become so wide spread throughout the world. However this is not to say that Hippodamus was the inventor of the gridiron system, with remnants of cities dating back to 2500 BCE showing examples of grid like design, such as Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley. Greek ideas of city planning were spread through their colonisation of the Mediterranean. This planning was further built upon by the Romans, a decidedly more imperialistic people. Imperialism can be seen to have shaped their urban planning in many ways, from the numerous viae built with the intention of supporting troop movements to further the strength of the empire to the absence of walls in most new cities due to the widespread Pax Romana. Such imperialism can be seen to have continued throughout the next 2 millennia, seen not only to affect the subjects of the empire but the very core of the empires itself, an example being the Hausmannisation of Paris where large swathes of Paris were demolished to build new wide boulevards. This set the precedent for the modern city in the 19th and 20th century with many cities following this example. (see Cairo)

Another example of imperialism shaping Roman urban planning is the construction of cities to house war veterans, who were promised land as part of their service in the army. An example of this being Aosta a city built in the rigid Gridiron system over the remains of a destroyed city to house 3,000 veterans.

Colonial Cities
Colonial cities can largely be grouped into cities in which imperialist urban planning was used in order to oppress local people's settlements and colonial cities which grew naturally as ports and near mines, where imperialist urban planning was used in order to maintain the power dynamics of the colonial empire.

Addis Ababa
Though Ethiopia is often considered to never have been colonised, it was occupied by Italy in the run up to and during the 2nd world war. At the end of the 1930s planners attempted to move Addis Ababa's centre away from the palace in the city’s then centre. Though upon coming to power, Emperor Haile Selassie attempted to shift the urban centre north but ended up following Italian planning principles and moved the urban centre back to where the Italians had initially planned. (Rifkind, David (2015). Nunes Silva, Carlos, ed. Colonial Cities at the Crossroads: Italy and Ethiopia. Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa. New York: Routledge. pp. 145–164. ISBN 9780415632300.)

Cairo
Cairo’s initial settlements stem back to the Persian fort of the Heliopolite Nome. The oldest structure in the city today is the Roman fortress of Babylon and since, the city has been ruled by different Muslim caliphates and the Ottoman Empire. While French forces (led by Napolean) only held the city for 3 years, in the mid-1800s Khedive Pasha Ismail redesigned Downtown Cairo to look like Paris (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tdLALt9AbQQC&pg=PA328&lpg=PA328&dq=haussmannisation+of+cairo&source=bl&ots=nfAO9F2c-r&sig=8QNeYgRgHqGcXgGvQjleGV1IfHE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqh4_s7YvfAhUyMewKHY4cAPgQ6AEwBHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=haussmannisation%20of%20cairo&f=false) as at the time, it was believed that modernity was synonymous with European-ness. (http://www.academia.edu/2715557/REVOLUTIONARY_CAIRO_AND_URBAN_MODERNITY_LESSONS_FROM_THE_SIXTIES)

Johannesburg
Colonial powers didn’t just take over preexisting cities but also built cities in areas of interest such as near mineral reserves and on sea fronts. The modern city of Johannesburg was formed next to the Witwatersrand Gold reef in order help South Africa’s extractive mining economy. While the city developed in a fairly unplanned and disorderly fashion, the "Whites" continual appropriation and division of land priorly owned by African and other coloured peoples, removed the means for these people to participate in the economic markets and helped colonial powers to oppress them. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00196325)

Rio de Janiero
The “January River” was first encountered by Europeans on 1 January 1502 and the city itself was founded 1565. The region had prior been inhabited by the Tupi, Puri, Botocudo and Maxakali peoples. When gold and diamonds were found nearby in the late-1600s, Rio became Brazil’s primary port. In 1763 the colonial administration was moved to Rio and in 1808 it became the capital of the Portugese Empire as the Portugese royal family fled Napoleon’s invasion. (check wiki sources) While the developed centre of city housed the Church and some nobles, settlements for the poor and indigenous communities were known to sprawl out over the neighbouring hillsides.(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/009614428100800102)

Symbolic
Religious symbolism with church as centre of city. "white" neighbourhoods situated next to symbols of power. Ethnic segregation (post-apartheid SA)

Social/Economic
While large-scale capitalist urban industrial development often causes boundaries between social classes to blur, this can have a lesser effect in post-colonial cities due to spacial segregation dating back to colonial rule. Across South Africa, apartheid and the focussing of urban development and industry in the traditionally “White” areas of the city have largely prevented “coloured” peoples from accessing tertiary sector employment. In Rio, favela residents have limited political representation with ramifications for the infrastructure and economic development, thus inducing cycles of poverty.

(References: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/009614428100800102,

Urban Planning
Rapid urbanisation often causes infrastructure to be put under massive pressure, particularly in the already less developed and less “cared for” parts of the city. The Brazilian Favelas in cities such as Rio date back to the original disorderly hillside settlements. While the city centre was supported and developed by colonial powers as the centre for economic growth, migration into the outskirts of the cities caused favelas to grow uncontrollably. In the 20th century Latin America saw a faster rate of urbanisation than anywhere else on the planet causing spatial segregation to further deepen.

The Problematic Concept of Modernity in Urban Planning
The idea of modernity has been largely developed since the 17th century, and its core philosophy is about breaking from the past and the traditional. This “emergence of historically specific social formations” is tied to another concept: progress.1 Such a connection is particularly problematic when coming to fields like urban planning, because it celebrates only specific ways of development while considering the others as backward. The imperialistic nature of modernity and its impact on both the way people construct cities and the way they analyze cities will likely lead to unfair evaluation of value.

The Colonial Japan and Seoul
Japan has a unique role in terms of strengthening the artificial link between modernity and progress in urban planning. After the Iwakura Mission, the Meiji government initiated a series of plans to modernize Tokyo, such as the Ginza Bricktown project and the Tokyo Improvement Projects. With both the first-hand evidence gained during the mission and consultancy from European urban planners, the Meiji government “framed everyday urban space with what they identified as the tangible elements of urban modernity: the Western architecture, sidewalks, sewers, roadside trees, and paved streets of the modern cityscape.”2 After becoming an imperial nation themselves, the Japanese colonial government imposed a similar set of modes of modernizing cities which they learned from European countries on Korea: straightening and widening streets, adding sidewalks and roadside tree, etc. These are among the series of plans Japanese colonial government took to both demonstrate and in a sense, legitimize their hegemony over Korea by contrasting a Japanese modern city and a Korean “primitive” one.3

1 "Ordinary Cities"

2 and 3 “Paving Power: Western Urban Planning and Imperial Space from the Streets of Meiji Tokyo to Colonial Seoul”

Urban Planning and the environment
The Suburbs Lawns Golf Courses Skyscrapers in Japan (Architects to Europe 1600s) Dams - a ticking timebomb

Sub Saharan Africa
While the urban grid is seen by many as having ancient greek roots (through hippodamus), many capital cities of old West African cities Senegal (grid structure before european settlers)

The Spatial Formation of the South African City -