boost: Urban Planners Create Segregation in Africa via Nursing Clio

[jesse_the_k]

Reliably, nursingclio_feed expands my knowledge about the intersection of public health and oppressive systems:

Architecting a “New Normal”? Past Pandemics and the Medicine of Urban Planning

by TONY YEBOAH, JENNIFER HART, and NATE PLAGEMAN

We are historians of the West African nation of Ghana, each currently writing a history of urbanism in a different major city (Kumasi, Accra, and Sekondi-Takoradi, respectively). In our research efforts – and in those of many other urban scholars examining African contexts – we’ve repeatedly seen how medical experts and modernist urban planners exploited outbreaks of disease to legitimize their emerging systems of technical expertise and advance white supremacy, global capitalism, and imperial order. In the late 19th century, colonial governments often gave segregationist-minded medical authorities wide latitude as the de facto architects of urban space, inspired by outdated scientific theories of contagion and disease. As urban planning emerged as a distinct field in the 20th century, its practitioners built on these earlier models, reinforcing existing patterns of racial segregation and economic inequality. As they did so, they insisted that they were making cities safer and better.

Take the example of Accra, Ghana’s current capital city, which became the capital of the country then called Gold Coast in 1877. After 1877, British officials sought to decongest the city center so that they could better control populations and create space for their own administrative and economic activities. Their efforts, however, only gained significant traction in the aftermath of epidemics and natural disasters: occasions when urgent public health needs emboldened official action and left local communities vulnerable and in need of assistance. Following the city’s first plague outbreak in 1908, colonial officials evacuated the most congested districts and relocated residents to “safe” peripheral areas, a move that marked the beginning of 20th-century suburbanization. An earthquake in 1939 inspired additional relocations, allowing the government to seize large tracts of land needed for its own administrative purposes.

https://nursingclio.org/2020/08/18/architecting-a-new-normal-past-pandemics-and-the-medicine-of-urban-planning/

Comments

[delight]

We had an elective on this in public health school - colonialism taking advantage of health disasters, that is, not this specific topic - and everyone was pretty elated that the lecture hall didn't fit everyone. The entire school wanted to take it.

I think that, 3 years later, the course is now mandatory. If it's not it might as well be, because everyone is there; making it mandatory gets funding for more sections though!

[jesse_the_k]

I'm glad that folks studying public health are interested -- I'd assumed a higher percentage of Nice White-Hat Ladies.

The moral of the story is: politics is everywhere.

[tarasacon]

Ooooh, thank you! Reading it now.

[jesse_the_k]

:)

(Their Sunday roundups provide a week's worth of reading.)