After an introductory video on slums, we are now going to take a look,

by way of a case study, at the restructuring of a slum.

This slum is the Kebba of El Mina in Nouakchott,

a restructuring process that took place in the lat 15 years.

So there are different types of irregularities.

I'm talking about land irregularities.

Two scenarios.

The first is when the residents

squat lands which are owned by the State.

Second scenario, when the residents

squat lands which are are privately owned.

We can realize that the degree of instability is not quite the same.

And we are dealing with a much more

significant instability when there is squatting of lands

which are private, which are owned by people

who can the claim them at one point.

Meanwhile, when we are dealing with lands belonging to the State,

we know that there is a leeway

which is a little bit bigger and that we will be able to

deal with the State and maybe we will stabilize the situation.

The example we are going to use, we were talking about

private lands, so dealing with instability on a very large scale,

meaning that the "hardening process" of housing

that goes from housing made from excessively unstable materials,

made from planks and sheets, to housing which is done by hard cement blocks,

this hardening process, which is a neologism,

this process doesn't take place while the land is

an exclusively private land.

On State lands, we will see that this process takes place

much more rapidly because the residents

almost have the guarantee of never being driven out.

So here, in a normal urban fabric we can clearly see the slum areas.

So we are already in a period of restructuring.

We see that we are dealing with a framework here

while we are dealing with another type of blueprint which is lower.

Second scenario, also compared to unstable neighborhoods, why?

Because they are largely under-equipped.

So indeed have a screening,

of lots, of roads, a regular framework,

but we have all the other characteristics,

aside from the land ones, which are the characteristics of a slum.

So the lack of infrastructure, poverty, housing instability ,

all these indicators which we have previously seen,

we find them once again, the only one that we do not is

the land issue since the resident is the owner of his plot of land.

All the other criteria, we also assimilate it to the slum.

A photo of a slum that is a little bit bigger.

It matters little where it is located.

We see that it is quite characteristic of housing

which is scattered or dispersed here and there.

And we are dealing with housing that is relatively dense.

So if we do the density we will be more

at 350, 400 residents per hectare, which is relatively high.

Two images of this type of density.

The top one, in the fringes of the city.

The second, about the slum that we are going to look at,

the Kebba of El Mina,

where we see that there are two types of materials,

firstly there are units, which are metal canisters,

which are unfolded, we find, which form the units, and then there are also

the old wooden port crates

which are now replaced, little by little by containers,

but which have allowed the building of shanties that are passable.

So we have shanties that are in very precise units,

which are the metal canisters, or the wooden crates.

So let's get to the heart of the matter with this slum in Nouakchott

and make an inventory of the current situation.

So for the moment, before the project, of course, we were dealing with

a powerless voluntarism to resolve the issues of slums.

There was a will but it wasn't enough, and a total powerlessness

in the face of this situation, given the magnitude

of slums in the city of Nouakchott.

Here we are in 2000, 2002.

And we are going to see that we will need 10, 12, 14 years in order to, little by little,

like this, make this slum a full-fledged part of the city.

Another thing, there was also a sort of acceptance of informal practices.

Really, we let it happen and we watch what happens.

Everything we let happen, it's everything the State does not have to manage.

So that situation in which we found ourselves in 2000,

is a situation in which we let informal issues happen.

And at this time also, we found ourselves in a situation where

we had tried to resolve some

problems of precarious housing more by supression.

So we had the people flee manu militari.

The context of the city.

It's important to know that there was a deficit of land,

of housing, of infrastructure.

and support for the local economy.

What we are going to try to do with this project, it's exactly

to allow the stabilizing of land tenure, it's exactly

the upgrading of housing, meaning to raise standards.

And we are also going to see a reinforcement of facilities

and infrastructures, which really structures the space,

as we already saw, with the establishment, at the same time,

of a number of activities which can generate revenue.

It's perhaps the greatest difficulty,

this one, it's often a pious hope,

but it is extremely hard to develop income generating activities

in the poorest of neighborhoods.

The main principles of restructuring.

Above all, it's keeping a maximum of populations in place,

that is without a doubt, the number one principle.

Then, we try to adapt the norms and standards

that we are going to put in place to the financial capacity of the residents.

This is very important.

Otherwise this means that the residents are then going to,

after the restructuring of the slum, find themselves in

an even more difficult, more restrictive situation than before.

Which is absolutely not the aim of the game, of course.

Another principle, is to give

visibility to the interventions that are made.

It's not about sprinkling some interventions here and there,

but it's about being systematic, and above all

being pragmatic in the way of doing things.

And finally, often a pious hope,

since it is rare that this works, but the idea is to always use

the HILO method, High Intensity Labor Force,

to put to work a maximum of people in the restructuring of the road.

So we will choose as in certain cities, notably in Porto-Novo,

we will choose paving rather than asphalt for the road

since we know that for the labor force to do the paving

is much more important than when we are asphalting an entire street.

So it's not always possible to do cement paving,

rock paving, the conditions that must be met

so as to be able to get to this, but the aim of the game would be

that all these rehabilitation programs benefit the greatest number of people.

Let's now go to the neighborhood, in the Kebba of El Mina,

located in the Moughataa of El Mina, Moughataa is a municipality of Nouakchott.

Surface area of the neighborhood which was looked at was 128 hectares.

An estimated population between 36 and 50 thousand residents.

An estimated density between 280 and 390 residents per hectare.

Unstable living conditions, of course

since it's the neighborhood that's going to be restructured,

so it's left to be assumed that it fulfilled a certain number

of criteria which made it a slum.

And a total absence of structure and internal organisation,

internal organisation, meaning, official, public, this does not mean

that there were no interest groups, tontines, and these kinds of things,

as can be found in all neighborhoods.

Finally, one of the characteristics,

was the very strong land occupation by the residents.

The role players.

In such a restructuring project

of the slums, we always have a contractor,

a delegated contractor, financing, technical studies,

meaning a consulting firm that will do that.

We will make a resettlement action plan,

there needs to be a specialist in action plan resettlement.

A social impact study, there needs to be an specialist in social impact studies.

A census of the entire population, and supervision of the census.

So the main role players were, at the time,

the City Hall of Nouakchott, the Commissioner of Human Rights,

of Poverty Reduction and Integration,

the World Bank which was financing via the PUD,

the Project of Urban Development, was financing the neighborhood,

the restructuring of the neighborhood, a consulting firm, URBAPLAN,

which did all the technical studies,

and a certain number of experts who intervened,

throughout the process for particular input.

What is interesting to see here, is the number of players.

It must be said that there is not just one City Hall that mandates an office,

but that there are many, many players which are all partners, with whom

there must be discussion, who must be convinced and one must articulate all

of these opinions and all these partners so as to succeed in developing a project.

Quickly, a few images of the diagnosis of the situation.

On the right, an image of the neighborhood already restructured

since we have opened here, the roads, we have the presence of

utility poles, which show the presence of electricity.

And then here, an image, it's a well with carters

who go to get water from the well and then go and sell it.

So there is little or no network of internal roads,

no network of water distribution,

no sewage system, no public lighting,

no waste pickup service, very few primary and secondary classrooms,

no structured market,

no recreation space or other types of developments.

So we are really dealing with unstable situations.

Here we see carters who are waiting, around the well, to go and deliver

or mainly fill their canisters to then

go and deliver them to the neighborhood.

The example of spreading in a non-structured market is that

we see extreme poverty and instability of installations in front of the product.

Same conclusion on the issue of housing: extreme poverty.

A few images.

So we see that the materials used are mostly

sheet metal and wood, as we have said previously.

Here we see a latrine, but most of the dwellings,

of the concessions, the groups of shanties

have absolutely no latrine, nor do they have fences,

nor foundations, nor hard materials.

And so we have an omnipresence of materials like wood, sheet metal,

or as we can see here, even tissues or sheets.

The principles of restructuring which will be put in place,

we are going to create a road network,

a drinkable water supply system, an electricity system.

We are going to build classes, classrooms,

primary schools, secondary schools and a little market.

The principles of restructuring which will be retained: is that we are going to

create a road network, a drinkable water supply system, electricity.

We are going to build classrooms, health centers.

We are going to build little structured markets, put in place public lighting.

That is the restructuring piece.

Then for the regrouping of lands in situ,

we are going to have to, inevitably, displace some people to

a resettlement area, which is just next to the area that we are going to deal with.

The idea here is that we're going to minimize the impact of the displacement.

The goal is to keep everyone in place.

And when it's not possible, we are going to put them

on plots in the vicinity, and not displace them in resettlement areas,

as we see in numerous cities,

which are kilometers away from the primary area where the people live.

And so, the people that are going to be displaced will have a land security

which people being displaced don't always have.

So, finally, the fact of displacing people

will allow them to have a plot with a land title.

So there is the perimeter, here, circled in black that interests us.

And then, we have this area which

will become the resettlement area for the population.

So we are going to create a system here, of roads, very simple.

And then, all the people who will not be

on these roads, will stay in these parts here.

On the other hand, all these dwellings here,

all these concessions here, are going to have to migrate, then, in this zone here

which will also become a subdivision,

as we will see consequently.

The road network put in place,

we see the real right of ways better here,

we see that all the concessions will have to eventually leave

little by little so as to settle in this area here.

If I take my right of way roads,

it is possible that this shanty here belongs

to the same group, it's a family who has a concession with three shanties.

And here if I am on a right of way,

this one here, this part should go, this one here also.

Finally it's all three that are going to have to move since we are not going to

let just one and move the other two on another plot.

So we are going to have to, the impact is not just on this road,

these right of way roads, but maybe also much greater since we are going to

look to the left, to the right, each time other shanties which belong

to the same people who are themselves on the right of way roads.

Some will be paved, some exist.

Typically we have here the existing ones.

All of this is paved, of course, this also and this one also.

What has been done, in this case here, is that we have tried to minimize

the impacts and be able to reattach this to the existing urban fabric.

So we have a number of routes that

we have simply prolonged here, which are roads which almost existed.

Then, we subdivided, in large parts, so as to find the routes,

and then subdivided in two these same routes, each time in two,

by large frameworks with compacted pathways.

So what was in green, the pathways which

were not paved, and the large pathways were paved.

Water system: there is a stand-post here, joined with another.

We have a tertiary system which comes to a much larger system here,

in a loop, which ensures the water supply in all cases, which is grafted on

a larger system, which is a primary system,

which was already existing since the water left for the port,

so we have a system which existed previously.

Same goes for electricity.

We review that it is, somehow, the roads framework.

Inevitably we will use the primary, secondary and tertiary roads

to put in the public lighting system, this appears logical.

To put in the water system, it simpler to create a drinkable water network

on the roads network rather than have to go from the interior of the neighborhoods.

And then, the restructuring plan, that's for when we open the road network.

The resettlement plan is a plan of subdivisions

for the area which we are creating.

So, all of the people that are here, on the road network,

are going to find themselves in this area here, where we created,

we see each time blocks with plots and then there is a number of other types

of plots which are stand-posts,

facilities, latrines, commercial activities.

In brown, what we see most,

is of course, the plots for the dwellings.

So if I find myself here, I would have without a doubt a plot somewhere here.

There you have it, the overall restructuring plan.

We have the opening of the road networks.

We have our facilities, our stand-posts and our electric transformers.

We have the greatest facilities, for example schools,

a market which will be here, a health center, schools.

We have a range of facilities and infrastructure to implement,

that is grouped in a synthesis plan which is the restructuring plan.

With each time, do not forget,

the legend and of course the title block since we need visas

and these plans have to be, at one point given,

approved by the authority in charge of restructuring.

Here we have an example where this is a new route,

this is a road opening, a school that has been built in the neighborhood

and we see that, little by little, the people settled in these areas

which are this time, parceled with plots that are rectangular plots.

And then, there is again the presence of a certain number of shanties,

the people having clearly moved their shanties.

We see that, in this area here, there is a big difference

with what was there before, which is the area that was really the slum.

Some images, quickly.

We are on the edge of the neighborhood.

A resettlement area, completely unoccupied, completely flat.

A plan, which is an old plan since we have shown the most recent plan.

But we see that we are going trough various phases, the plan doesn't happen

at once but it is the object of numerous negotiations and discussions.

And then, once we have defined the plan,

that we have defined what we were going to do, we are then

going to begin the restructuring by opening the roads.

Each person finding themselves on the road will have to be displaced

and go in the area of resettlement, as we say.

Previously to this, the census must be done of all of the households

which are in the neighborhood, before even being able to displace them.

It seems logical, to displace people, we must know who they are beforehand.

Quartiers précaires: restructuration

Villes africaines I: Introduction à la planification urbaine

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