On the Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism

This is a really important contribution to French colonial history. Although her argument is a bit more subtle than other, comparative texts, Wright argues here that French colonial cities were intentionally engineered to combine “traditionalism” with modernism—the juxtaposition of local art styles with modernist urban planning and architectural styles. In doing so, French administrators sought to persuade local peoples that the French respected and defended their cultures. By combining the political (French dominance of their colonies while simultaneously “respecting natives”) with the cultural (art, architecture, urban planning, etc.), the French sought to solidify their control over colonized regions.

Yet, it didn’t work. Although colonial cities were an impressive show of domination (and segregation), that domination engendered nationalist politics, and the cities that were most heavily engineered were also the cities that faced the largest nationalist movements as anti-colonial grievances became more prominent and organized in urban areas throughout the 1920s and, especially, the 1930s (before that, a lot of anticolonialism took place as isolated incidents in rural areas).

At the same time, colonial cities were laboratories where administrators were able to attempt large-scale social reforms that they wanted to do in France but could not due to political or structural reasons. Ultimately, the sort of urbanism that the French developed in its colonies would not occur in metropolitan France until the postwar years, when reconstruction gripped the country.

Interesting stuff. This is a classic in the literature on French colonial history.