we run an urban planning and urban
design firm in dar Salam when we say
that to people people say wow there sure
is a great need for a plan in the city
and then we start talking about the
future prospects of this of Dar and well
most people are pretty grim about that
and words like development and progress
our words the crop up probably quite
quickly and now when I sat down to think
about this talk and the overarching
theme of that yes in my lifetime those
three things sort of melded together
because yes in my lifetime is about the
future development and progress those
three things match and they are in fact
a lot of what urban planning is about we
need to deal with a future plan for how
not to make buildings collapse for how
not to let kids grow up in insalubrious
conditions and how to deal with I think
people’s two favorite topics and our
traffic and flooding now what we do with
urban planners is that we basically we
dream up a future that might not look
like this hopefully not but be more
precise urban planning is about creating
strategies and plans for getting
somewhere in the future and the idea of
the future is very strong in our field
but I’m here to tell you that it’s a
simple thing really and it’s one that
we’re all think aware of and I think it
applies to a lot of fields and that is
that sometimes progress is defined by
history what about union by that is that
if we want to get somewhere in the
future we need to know where we’re at
present
me and if we want to know where we’re at
presently we need to be able to analyze
our past and the point of urban planning
is sometimes to allow for plans and
strategies to get to somewhere else in
the future somewhere that is not on the
current trajectory that we’re on and
while we’re talking of multiple futures
we can also talk about multiple pasts
because who writes history what is
history history is written by people in
power what about the powerless who gets
to write their history how are they
represented and how are they represented
presently and while all of these ideas
are well and good there things that
unfortunately planners and dar Salam
have to deal with on their spare time
because during work hours the problem is
this we really don’t have a plan for the
future this is the current master plan
and it does say 1979 and that was the
year I was born it’s obsolete here’s
another problem facing planners during
work hours dar Salam doesn’t exist this
doesn’t really exist this is just a map
this is what exists three municipalities
and no overarching structure so if you
want to do an overarching urban
development project and are you have to
go through three planning municipalities
you have to do three times the paperwork
three times the hassle three times the
setbacks and three times the frustration
but if we start looking into history and
the history of this city we find that
maybe this isn’t really the crux of the
problem maybe the problem is this that
this is dar Salam dar Salam is a lot of
villages villages that became very urban
very quickly and are now a metropolis we
all know this story this history of dar
Salam it’s the history of the harbor
it’s the history of Arabic and
influence it’s the history of the
Germans and the European the European
quarters the Asian quarters here and
also the African settlements another
history that we don’t know that much
about is the history of the villages
that surrounded our that became what dar
is today if you go outside of the city
core and the city corridor is quite
small compared to the rest of da r you
will inadvertently be in what used to be
a village and those structures are still
there I mean the buildings have changed
they become modern people have changed
their cars but the structure the
baseline structure is still that of a
village and we know very little about
this we know very little about this
development and if we knew more about
that development it would change the way
we perceive this city and it would
change the way we as urban planners deal
with urban planning and are so not only
does history allow us to rethink the
structure of the city it also allows us
to question the logic of the current
building strategy in the city there are
a lot of buildings coming up and they’re
tall and they’ve glass facades and they
are basically just green houses that
need electric cooling in order to be
habitable and that is completely
unsustainable because for a lot of the
time this city is running on diesel
fumes and we’re only building more and
more of these buildings now the
Tanzanian government has they’ve decided
to become a middle-income country and a
few years and that’s great that’s
wonderful that’s what we all should be
striving for it’s it’s more power to
them but that will entail that a lot of
poor people and a lot of those poor
people live in dar Salam a lot of poor
people will be less poor in the future
and those people will not want to live
the way that they’re living now they
will want to change their lifestyles for
the better and changing their lifestyles
for the better means that they will want
a car it will mean that they want a
better and a bigger house for themselves
and their families and right now ladies
and gentlemen these are the bigger
better houses and that is a very
frightening thought but we just need to
go few years back into history we can
see a whole different style of
architecture that was emerging in the
60s and 70s and dar that we just forgot
it’s an architecture that is contextual
that really owns up to the fact that
this is a hot and humid climate it
allows for cross-ventilation it allows
for ample Sun shading it allows for
stack effects to bring in cool air and
blow out hot air so what I’m here to
tell you is that when we say that when I
say that progress is defined through
history I mean to say that we have been
here before we just forgot and I think
we shouldn’t be so good at forgetting
because there are some great solutions
to the urban problems that we’re facing
today and in the future for the city yet
now when I say that I also mean another
thing and it ties in with the idea of
history I also mean that we need to look
at the city from a more cross vocational
perspective now this is what we think
about when we think about cities this is
KOCO you all know it it’s dense it’s
full of buildings it’s full of
infrastructure and technical stuff it’s
what architects planners and engineers
deal with that is the city wrong this is
also the city these ladies and gentlemen
our people these are social relations
these are economic transactions and
these are
cultural expressions this is also
Carioca it’s the only place in in africa
that i know of an urban africa where the
city becomes or these streets become de
facto pedestrianised just so many people
it pushes out the cars it’s amazing we
shout out more of that but these are
soft assets and we need to understand
these people in order to create better
future cities we just we can’t just deal
with buildings I need to understand you
guys in order for me to do my job not
I’m doing no I’m not doing it and in
order for us to do that we need to bring
in sociologists we need to bring in
historians we need to bring in
anthropologists and we need to bring in
geographers and we need to plan those
cities together and it’s not what I’m
saying now the interdisciplinary part is
again something we can learn from
history there’s something there in
history for us to learn because we have
been there before as well the 1960’s and
1970’s we did some great I say we but
obviously not me but hey there was some
great work done on urban issues in
African cities this is from Nairobi
ether tins study from 1972 of Mathare
Valley you’re welcome to try to find it
it’s very hard to find but it’s a damn
good study sorry it’s really great and
it is an interdisciplinary piece of work
here’s another one even harder to find
Janet butcher’s perwani the politics of
property probably hands down the best
piece of writing i have ever read on an
urban area in Africa period and she is
not an architecture he’s not an urban
planner she is a social scientist and if
we really want to go there we can go as
far back as 1948 and the colonial master
plan for Nairobi now we can obviously
discuss the contents of that plan and we
can discuss the merits and the ideas
behind it but it
as shaped the Nairobi that we now know
today and it is the basis for the two
plans that have succeeded it and it was
done as an interdisciplinary piece of
work architects and sociologists and
planners now the point of this talk is
very simple progress is sometimes
defined through history but we just tend
to forget to go back and remember and in
terms of the question of well we
absolutely need to bring in all of this
the history and the social science is
the interdisciplinarity into making our
cities better than they are today that
is the future for cities that is the
only way to create a better dar Salam
and in terms of the question of whether
or not this is achievable in our
lifetimes I say we have already done it
we just forgot and with that ladies and
gentlemen it’s about high time that we start remembering thank you very much