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This book explores the entanglement of African and Western cultures of grid planning in urban Senegal from pre-colonial times up to the present. The most important and significant urban centers of historic Senegambia and modern Senegal, a mostly Muslim country of West Africa, are examined. What is revealed is a continuous deployment of grid planning in the configuration of towns, villages, neighborhoods and cities since the sixteenth century. Both endogenous African and exogenous colonial traditions of grid planning have been used, simultaneously but often quite separately, to lay out settlements. The indigenous Senegambia grid plan first characterized elite pre-colonial settlements, such as royal capitals and centers of Islamic instruction, before it was popularized and mass-produced by Senegals mystical Sufi orders during the colonial era. This autochthonous tradition culminated in the mid-twentieth century design of the great shrine city of Touba. The French grid plan, for its part, characterized nearly every type of colonial settlement, from mercantilist ports like Saint Louis to the prestigious colonial spaces of Dakar, capital of a French empire in Africa, to enumerable peanut marketing rail-towns (escales). Though the two grid-planning traditions were initially quite distinct in origin and symbolic significance - royal prerogative, Islamic propriety or efficient exploitation of the land and control of its people - they have become inextricably entangled with each other over the course of history. This book explores this entanglement in order to: (a) create a truly global urban history to replace the otherwise Eurocentric meta-narrative of urban planning and design; (b) enhance Islamic Studies by situating sub-Saharan Africas urbanism within mainstream research on the Muslim World; (c) shift the discussion from a determinist genealogy of vernacular versus Western urban patterns towards a more dia lectic, entangled and processual approach to the production of space; and (d) highlight the role of African agents in shaping the continents cities, even at the height of formal colonialism. The book is primarily intended for scholars engaged in the fields of urban history, architectural and urban planning history, world history, African studies, Islamic studies, urban geography, cultural studies and art history.

City planning. --- Grid plans (City planning) --- Chessboard plans (City planning) --- Grid street plans --- Gridiron plans (City planning) --- Orthogonal plans --- Urban grids --- City planning --- Streets --- Cities and towns --- Civic planning --- Land use, Urban --- Model cities --- Redevelopment, Urban --- Slum clearance --- Town planning --- Urban design --- Urban development --- Urban planning --- Land use --- Planning --- Art, Municipal --- Civic improvement --- Regional planning --- Urban policy --- Urban renewal --- Design and construction --- Government policy --- Management --- Africa, Sub-Saharan—History. --- Urban geography. --- Cities and towns—History. --- Human geography. --- Sociology, Urban. --- History of Sub-Saharan Africa. --- Urban Geography / Urbanism (inc. megacities, cities, towns). --- Urban History. --- Human Geography. --- Urban Studies/Sociology. --- Urban sociology --- Anthropo-geography --- Anthropogeography --- Geographical distribution of humans --- Social geography --- Anthropology --- Geography --- Human ecology --- Grid plans (City planning) - Senegal

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This book is the first edited collection to bring together classic and contemporary writings on the urban grid in a single volume. The contributions showcased in this book examine the spatial histories of the grid from multiple perspectives in a variety of urban contexts. They explore the grid as both an indigenous urban form and a colonial imposition, a symbol of Confucian ideals and a spatial manifestation of the Protestant ethic, a replicable model for real estate speculation within capitalist societies and a spatial framework for the design of socialist cities. By examining the entangled histories of the grid, Gridded Worlds considers the variegated associations of gridded urban space with different political ideologies, economic systems, and cosmological orientations in comparative historical perspective. In doing so, this interdisciplinary anthology seeks to inspire new avenues of research on the past, present, and future of the gridded worlds of urban life. Gridded Worlds is primarily tailored to scholars working in the fields of urban history, world history, urban historical geography, architectural history, urban design, and the history of urban planning, and it will also be of interest to art historians, area studies scholars, and the urban studies community more generally.

Cities and towns --- Human geography. --- Social sciences. --- Sociology, Urban. --- History. --- Cities and towns-History. --- Human Geography. --- Urban Studies/Sociology. --- Urban History. --- Anthropo-geography --- Anthropogeography --- Geographical distribution of humans --- Social geography --- Anthropology --- Geography --- Human ecology --- Urban sociology --- Cities and towns—History.