Paper short abstract:

Drawing from fieldwork carried in Pikine, in Senegal, this paper shows how women owners and their families are transforming housing practices and developing innovative economic and building strategies to sustain their livelihoods and aspirations.

Paper long abstract:

Recent literature on African cities calls for a better understanding of how urban dwellers contribute to creating particular urban forms in order to grasp their complexity and devise more appropriate means to improve their conditions. This paper discusses how housing practices and built forms are transformed by women owners in the context of rapid urbanization in Senegal.

In Dakar, women's participation regarding the built environment is changing, notably as they become increasingly important actors of housing production. Women deal simultaneously with the opportunities and challenges of social expectations, but also with a complex urban situation allowing and sometimes even requiring innovative economic and building strategies.

Fieldwork was carried between 2009 and 2012 in Pikine, the largest city in Dakar's periphery. In-depth interviews with families were conducted in combination with architectural surveys of houses in order to uncover the practices, norms and relationships involved in the actual construction of a house. Although the underlying logics may not comply with formal visions of the city, they sustain these women's personal and family livelihoods.

The flexible nature of the built environment and its incremental construction, deeply rooted in housing traditions, are now reinterpreted by women to facilitate their access to resources and secure their assets. Furthermore, the networks women develop through this process might help them to gradually transform gender relations in their households and in everyday life. This examination opens up avenues for more equitable forms of planning and housing, avenues that draw upon the daily realities and adaptations of urban dwellers.