The municipality of Diamniadio, 35 km from Dakar in Senegal, is the focus of state urbanisation and social housing projects. These projects focus on rural areas in the process of urban conversion, and block village and families subdivision strategies aimed at maintaining control over urbanisation.
Paper long abstract:
In urban peripheries, the expansion of the city into rural areas is the result of a composite set of private and state housing and infrastructure projects, resulting in a mosaic of urbanisation, both 'from above' and 'from below'. Although they may concern different areas, these different urbanisation projects are often in competition for the control of the areas to be converted. In Senegal, the municipality of Diamniadio, 35 km from Dakar, has experienced a demographic explosion and has been the focus of state and private industrial and housing projects since the 2000s. This communication will draw on two case studies, one on an ambitious state project for a new town and the other on a social housing project carried out by a private company within the framework of a public programme. We will show that these two projects clash with village or families subdivision strategies, which aim to anticipate their absorption into the city while retaining control over the urbanisation process and the rent from land conversion. Consequently, the land dispossessions induced by these projects do not so much concern partly abandoned agricultural land, but rather subdivided land or land for construction, which is much more valuable.