Designing power: forms and purposes of colonial model neighborhoods in British Africa

This paper examines two model neighborhood programs in different British colonies in Africa, during two different time periods: Pumwani, Nairobiʹs first planned “Native Location” from the 1920s, and the model neighborhoods developed in Zanzibar between 1945 and 1958. I employ research findings from the last decade to assess the attempts by these two colonial states to use urban planning to shape the physical spaces of city life as a way to create consent as well as domination—or, in the words of the career colonialist who had a hand in designing both, Eric Dutton, Goodwill and Rule. What we see by this comparison is how the physical forms and the forms of goodwill and rule changed, but also how many elements of the workings of colonial power remained the same. Ultimately, the comparison shows how intrinsic residential spatiality was to the designs of colonial power, and how unsuccessful these colonial designs were, literally and figuratively.