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SUMMARY: “If there were no black people wandering about\, you might thin
 k you were finding yourself in a European port.” Urban Space\, race and 
 society in the colonial port city of Matadi\, DR Congo - Professor Johan L
 agae (Ghent University) 
DTSTART:20160215T170000Z
DTEND:20160215T183000Z
UID:TALK63745@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:\n\nMatadi constitutes a prime example of a colonial city whos
 e raison d’être was generated by a colonial project of economic exploit
 ation. As the farthest navigable point on the Congo River sailing upriver 
 from the Atlantic Ocean\, Matadi became a key transfer node between export
  and import from Europe to the Belgian colony. From the 1920s onwards\, th
 e small existing trading post quickly developed into a modern harbour city
  situated amid an uninviting\, rocky landscape.\n\nIn this paper\, we will
  argue that because of its challenging landscape setting\, the case of Mat
 adi offers a particular insight into the underlying logics of Belgian colo
 nial urban planning and its rationale of spatially segregating the “Euro
 pean town” from the residential quarters for the African population. Due
  to its function as a port city and a gateway of the railroad network\, Ma
 tadi needed increasingly important numbers of African workers\, creating m
 ajor challenges in terms of housing\, urban hygiene and policing. By visua
 lizing the development of Matadi’s urban form over time via an explorati
 ve cartography that combines historical maps\, images\, documents and cont
 emporary views\, we will demonstrate to what extent generic colonial plann
 ing models –including such elements as the “cordon sanitaire” or the
  orthogonal grid of the “native town”— which were common characteris
 tic of interwar urban planning practice in sub-Saharan Africa—\, clashed
  with the complex topography of the site. As such\, Matadi provides a powe
 rful case to discuss the limits of spatial colonial governmentality. The m
 aking and shaping of Matadi was an often troublesome process\, testifying 
 of the growing importance of a bureaucratic apparatus as well as of confli
 cts and misunderstandings between a multitude of actors\, both European an
 d African.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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