Transitory Courtyards as a Feature of Sustainable Urbanism on the East African Coast

Monika Baumanova
Additional contact information
Monika Baumanova: Centre for African Studies, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of West Bohemia, 301 00 Pilsen, Czech Republic

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: The tropical urbanism of coastal East Africa has a thousand-year-long history, making it a recognized example of sustainable urbanism. Although economically dependent on trade, the precolonial Islamic towns of the so-called Swahili coast did not feature markets or other public buildings dedicated to mercantile activities before the European colonial involvement. In this regard, Swahili urban tradition differed from other tropical Islamic cities, such as in Morocco, Mali, Egypt or the Middle East, where markets fulfilled the role of social and economic hubs and, in terms of movement, major transitory/meeting spaces in the trading towns. Yet, the Swahili urban tradition thrived for centuries as a well-connected cosmopolitan type of tropical urbanism. As research has suggested, the public role of spaces associated with trade might have been fulfilled by houses. Using approaches of space syntax and network analysis, this article studies the morphology of the houses considering whether it could have been the courtyards that simulated the role of markets thanks to their transitory spatial configuration. The results are discussed reflecting on other models of houses with courtyards, especially the modern Swahili house appearing later in the colonial era when markets began to be established, and Islamic houses known from elsewhere.

Keywords: sustainable urbanism; precolonial; tropical urbanism; Swahili house; courtyard; trade; markets; transitory spaces; space syntax; Islamic house (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1759/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1759/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1759-:d:741614

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().