Urban models, building types and estate transformations: an analysis of the public housing estates of Nairobi, Accra, Douala and Lomé

The thesis deals with a series of public housing estates planned between 1910 and 1980 in the sub-Saharan cities Nairobi, Accra, Douala and Lomé. These cities became the objects of planning initiatives in the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. In all four case-study cities, this made public housing for Africans a serious planning and design issue. In the period studied here, significant political, economic and cultural changes took place that impacted the way the government and the city administrations conceived housing for Africans. The views on how and where Africans should live, the urban models and house typologies deemed most suitable for them, the visions of the administrative bodies and the composition of the ruling elites – these factors proved dynamic. The most crucial transformation in this period was likely the end of colonial rule. Although this did not have a direct effect on the cities’ planning ideals, it opened the doors for planning experts from nations other than the colonising powers that had dominated the field before. The four cities are presented as exemplary cases: as cities where the evolution of public housing estates for Africans, their layouts and built forms, is representative for what happened in other sub-Saharan countries. Foreign urban models and house typologies were adopted and modified to make them suitable for local conditions. The results depended on if and how these external models and typologies met with local resistance and merged with local practices. After construction, the estates mutated further.