Desert City Landscapes: At the Crossroads of Urbanization, Agricultural Intensification, and Trans-Saharan Connections

Abstract

The Sahara is not a desert wasteland but a location of thriving historical and contemporary towns and cities. Their recent developments reflect both revitalization of commerce along traditional trans-Saharan trade routes as well as state-planned interventions such as agricultural development around contemporary cities and routeways. The variable successes and failures of such recent interventions shows the fragility of Saharan towns and cities to resource exploitation, but also their resilience to sustain certain types of economic activities despite external intervention. These contradictory factors resulted in the making of today’s urban landscapes in the central Sahara.