“How far is it from, how far is it from,
Walk through the storms, go through the storms.”
— Storms in Africa, Enya
Urban Patterns | El Tikkawin, Sudan
by Dr. Mark David Major, AICP, CNU-A
El Tikkawin is a settlement located on the Upper Nile River in Sudan at 18°13’12” north of the equator and 33°55’12” east of the Greenwich Prime Meridian. Demographic and population data is not readily available but it appears to be a large town. The town is located adjacent to rich agricultural lands associated with the seasonal flooding of the Nile River. A large-scale (in relative terms) regular grid characterizes the largest area of the town, probably reflective of thousands of years of Egyptian influence in the Upper Nile region. Within the interstitial areas of the regular grid are the more intricate street networks more commonly associated with Middle Eastern settlements. This is a similar model to American suburban sprawl in the 20th century with the important exception that the interstitial street networks in El Tikkawin do not eliminate almost entirely connections at the periphery of the interstitial area, which is the case in the worst examples of American suburban sprawl.
This suggests a more sustainable and compact spatio-functional model in El Tikkawin compared to the dysfunction associated with American suburbs (being almost entirely auto-dependent). The regular grid is mostly absent in what appears to be the oldest section of El Tikkawin (to the right, immediately adjacent to Upper Nile agricultural lands). This oldest part of town is mostly characterized by a deformed grid layout. Finally, for anyone who ever criticized space syntax by asking to be shown an axial line… well, here they are… marked in the landscape. Tracks mark the path through large (undeveloped) open spaces to-and-from the surrounding agricultural lands and other parts of El Tikkawin as people linearized their use of space during their everyday activities.
(Updated: March 24, 2017)
Urban Patterns is a series of posts from The Outlaw Urbanist presenting interesting examples of terrestrial patterns shaped by human intervention in the urban landscape over time.
The circus of Senate confirmation hearings for the Secretary of Cities, brought to you by National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and Community Organizations International, just as soon as the Senator from Montana releases his hold on the nomination! Stay tuned! More pigs feeding at the Federal trough would inevitably populate Florida’s Department of Cities. That is fine for the pigs but what about the rest of us?
The only way a Federal Department of Cities could alter the prevailing development paradigm in this country for the last century is if we are willing to place Smart Growth for our cities at the top of the agenda by subsuming the Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, and other disparate Federal agencies and offices (Office of Urban Affairs, and so on) under one roof. Incidentally, this is probably the only way a new Department of Cities could generate bipartisan support by allowing the left and the right to explicitly address their key constituencies (urban interests on one hand, reducing and streamlining government on the other). It would also require both parties adopting an united front to take on other special interests threatened by such reform (most obviously, radical environmentalists). In the absence of such radical thinking, our cities are safer as “laboratories for pragmatic bipartisan policy innovation, pioneering new approaches on everything from schools, crime and gun control to economic development” at the local and State level.
Why would we expect our citizens (and their representatives) to ever trust us and put us in charge when we have demonstratively failed our cities time and time again during their lifetime, their parents’ lifetime, and their grandparents’ lifetime? Instead of searching for magic bullets (like Florida’s idea), let us dedicate ourselves to leading for our cities. The irony is, if we truly did this, we would probably find the perceived need for Florida’s proposal and others like them would disappear. Unless, of course, the point is to become one of the fattest pigs at the trough. If this is the case, then never mind…