In today's video, we will take a quick look at a case study of the city of Nouakchott, from the first plans from 1957, to the master plans developed in 2002. To begin, some images. Seen from downtown, we can see the soccer stadium in the distance. Quickly, I hope that all of you know more or less where Mauritania is. But here's a little reminder, a map of Africa, its south cut off. We can see where Mauritania is situated. We zoom in a bit, and see that the city of Nouakchott is on its Atlantic coast. Here we have a map, a plan of the city of Nouakchott. Very quickly, we have the airport here, in the center. We have a main thoroughfare here, another which goes to Mali, Another here which goes to Senegal. The Atlantic side with its coastal dunes, here. We have the Sebkha area, ancient salt flats, below sea level. We have the historic center here, split in two by a boulevard, the administrative zone and the working-class neighborhoods. The residential neighborhoods which are developed. The working-class neighborhoods, here, the large shantytowns here, and here, and an urbanization which stretches out, lengthwise, along these axes. Here, a photo of one of the markets. This is the Socogim market, in a working-class neighborhood. A view of downtown, a bank under construction. Here a main road with some trees planted on the median. Here, another view of a working-class neighborhood. The images you see here were taken between 2000 and 2014. There aren't dates on each photo to bring us here to this one, which is that of the governor, whose name appears here, on a plan dated 1957. We must remember that 1958 was when ground was first broken. We can see here that a part of the plan is missing, but one thing is certain; this was a governor who wanted to urbanize. He tried, but didn't necessarily succeed in achieving much. All of these plans are from Pitte, "Nouakchott Capitale de la Mauritanie." like that of "Le Projet Hersch," 1957, and a series of plans which followed, but we can already see a large boulevard here, with residential areas and working-class neighborhoods. Same here, still the large boulevard. We finally see here the 3-meter curve, the working-class neighborhoods in the south, and the administrative area in the north. "Le Plan Lainville," will develop rapidly. There were truly seeking a form for this city. And we see here that we have a boulevard which separates, and which once again shows the working-class neighborhoods of the south, and the residential and administrative zones of the north. A diagram of the focus of the SMUH, from 1970. We recognize the same boulevard we saw before. We now see an airport here, working-class zones below, residential and administrative zones above, with the addition of the fishermen's beach and the fishing port. We are still using rather restrained dimensions for this city. Then, in 1983, once again we recognize the boulevard here. The airport is still there, and then the administrative and residential zones. The working-class neighborhood here, with its extensions to the south, and the residential spread to the north. And an idea... When we see the definitive city plan, one thing makes us smile, which is the addition of an enormous green space, here. This green space will eventually become an enormous shantytown. Another image, this of a street, the large boulevard which separated, long ago, the northern part from the southern part. The city outskirts with its livestock markets, markets for small livestock, and those for large livestock. But it is in the city's center where we find this type of activity. A typical street in a middle-class neighborhood. Again, a market. We have here a rather difficult situation, on an environmental level. View of a construction project. It's is a relatively recent phenomenon to construct high-rises in Nouakchott. A second-story addition. So we utilize the first level here, then soon we slowly build upwards, one, two, three stories, as income and finances allow, of course. A view from one of the more precarious neighborhoods, Elmina. We were speaking about shantytowns earlier. They make up a large part of the city, these precarious neighborhoods. A vast restructuring project in this neighborhood was begun in 2002. The demolition in the city center of a building, from around 1960, to make way for new ones, more densely built. There is then in this way a certain recycling of buildings, of land purchase, of demolition and reconstruction. And now let's look at the final plan, the master plan. We have a few maps which are the diagnostic plans made by the design firm Urbaplan for the Office of Urban Development of the city of Nouakchott. So under commission by the administration it is a private agency which prepares a diagnostic. As we've seen in the different phases, following the diagnostic it will prepare a master plan looking ahead 10, 20 years. This is a very classic plan, because it has an activity zone, and a commercial zone. The different city zones are marked in this way. We see the port, here. We see a certain number of main economic areas, and of course secondary ones. The administrative system. Nouakchott is divided in Murata in a way that each has autonomy, this relative, but autonomy nonetheless, with a central point which is the intersection of my grid which allows us to count the number of kilometers towards the South or the North. The city limit of Nouakchott is situated at 12 kilometers to the North, 18 to the South, and 13 to the East. Its western border is that of the Atlantic Ocean. Primary water systems. Here we see the major circuits, and according to these plans there is now another network which comes from the South, here. It was not taken into account then, because this dates from 2002. The stages of expansion. The plans are illustrative, I should say, for they are not fundamental. We won't go through them one after the other, but just to give you an idea of what was done in the city of Nouakchott. I'm not making any value judgements here, if it's good or bad, if it might have been done another way, or not. I simply wish to use them to illustrate a master plan for urban design and development, which exists, which is in progress, which is the case of the city of Nouakchott. There, the housing zones which were allotted but not yet built. Urban public transport services, the different bus routes which exist, and the existing roadway systems and those planned for the future. This is the result. We've seen all the diagnostic plans. The first result, Nouakchott in 2010, a 10-year plan, or 8 years, since this was begun in 2002. Next, the second plan, Nouakchott 2020. It's 20 years, with a more significant urban expansion. We won't go into much detail on these two plans. Instead we'll simply indicate and show the type of instruments put in place, and the form which each might take, to formulate a master plan of design and urban development. We've finished with the case study of Nouakchott. We moved very quickly. The documents are available as resources. We'll include a few things which will allow you to dig deeper, to read more about the city of Nouakchott, if you are interested. But I wanted to quickly show you what a planning tool looks like, what an urbanization plan looks like. To conclude, the URL's for two websites. The office which made the plan, the client who commissioned it, in this case the Agency for Urban Development of Mauritania. Go to these sites and you'll find lots of additional information.
