Urban planning in Africa

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Urban planning in Africa results from indigenous aesthetics and conceptions of form and function as well as the changes brought on by industrialization, modernization, and colonialism.^[1] Before the Berlin Conference of 1884 – 1885, which formalized colonialism in many parts of Africa, indigenous African cities and villages had ordered structures that varied along ethnic and religious lines and according to geography. All land-uses necessary for functioning––markets, religious sites, farms, communal assembly spaces––existed in ordered, rational ways, as did land property practices and laws, many of which changed under colonial control.^[2] Urbanity changed significantly from pre-colonial to colonial times, as slavery, Christianity, and a host of other forces caused a change in the population of indigenous urban dwellers.^[3]