The Lost Cities of Africa

Abstract

A widespread misconception that Africa did not produce any significant cities south of the Sahara before the arrival of Europeans persists even today. This misconception was initially the result of the denial of African history by the colonialists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to the generally accepted view of the period, Africans remained rooted in the Stone Age, and everything which challenged this view had been created not by the Africans themselves, but had been introduced by outsiders, in particular Europeans. For this reason, research into the history of the African continent was not thought relevant, with the exception of research into subjects directly associated with the expansion of European civilization. It was not until the 1950s that African cities were first subjected to scientific study. William Bascom in particular refuted the assertion that cities did not exist in Africa south of the Sahara, before the arrival of Europeans. He referred to Louis Wirth, who distinguished a city from a 'settlement' 1 in terms of size (more than 5000 residents), density, durability, and heterogeneity. 2 The concept of 'heterogeneity', according to Bascom, refers to the social stratification within a society or the degree of integration of different ethnic groups within the population. Bascom added the notion of an 'informal social administration' as a criterion to Wirth's definition. According to these criteria, for instance, Yoruba settlements, which already existed in the early medieval times, can certainly be seen as cities. Bascom himself, but also his contemporaries and successors, viewed African urban developments from an anthropo-logical perspective. The debates of this time are theoretical and hardly examine the morphology and other urban planning aspects of the city. Moreover, anthropologists did the fieldwork regarding architecture and building technology in the twentieth century. This was exceptionally important work, because a considerable amount of African architecture has since disappeared. However, it is also a work that will have a stronger foundation after closer study from the perspective of architectural theorists, building experts, and urban planners. Bascom's research was carried out at a time when the western city still looked like a medieval city with suburbs. Meanwhile, western cities have evolved into polycentric metropoles, segmented districts, or dormitory cities. We still call these settlement structures and tissues cities, although they no longer conform to Wirth's criteria.