برنامه‌ریزی شهری استعماری و عدالت فضایی در شهرهای پسااستعماری: مطالعه تطبیقی الجزیره، تونس و بمبئی از قرن نوزدهم تا امروز

A B S T R A C T
The enduring spatial legacies of colonial urban planning in Algiers, Tunis, and Bombay reveal that postcolonial cities remain structured by logics inherited from colonial domination. This study examines the continuity and transformation of colonial spatial rationalities in these cities between 1830 and 2020. It investigates how urban planning, originally deployed as an instrument of segregation, control, and spatial order under colonial rule, has been reproduced after independence through development, heritage preservation, and modernization policies. Employing a comparative historical approach and spatial discourse analysis of maps, planning documents, and historical visual data, the research identifies the mechanisms through which colonial power persists in infrastructures, zoning practices, and urban representations. The findings show that, despite political independence, spatial and epistemic structures established under colonial regimes continue to shape urban governance. In Algiers, the Haussmannian aesthetics of French planning have been rearticulated through heritage conservation programs; in Tunis, administrative centralization sustains the historic duality between the Medina and the Ville Nouvelle; and in Bombay, colonial hygienist discourses underpin the legal and material exclusion of informal settlements. Introducing the concept of the coloniality of infrastructure, the paper argues that spatial inequality in these postcolonial cities stems not from resource scarcity but from the persistence of colonial power logics embedded in planning institutions. Achieving spatial justice, therefore, requires the decolonization of institutional frameworks and a critical rethinking of dominant urban epistemologies.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
This article investigates the enduring spatial legacies of colonial urban planning in Algiers, Tunis, and Mumbai, revealing how postcolonial cities remain structured by logics of segregation, control, and hierarchy inherited from empire. Drawing on a comparative historical approach, the study analyzes urban planning as a political and epistemic technology through which colonial power was spatialized and later rearticulated under postcolonial regimes. The central question guiding this research is how colonial planning rationalities, originally designed to separate, discipline, and display, have persisted or been reconfigured in the post-independence era under the guise of development, modernization, and heritage preservation. By examining maps, planning documents, and visual materials from 1830 to 2020, this article exposes long-term mechanisms through which colonial infrastructures, zoning systems, and representational discourses continue to shape spatial injustice in postcolonial contexts.
Theoretically, the research situates itself at the intersection of Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, postcolonial urbanism (Homi Bhabha, Edward Said), and Edward Soja’s concept of spatial justice. From a Foucauldian perspective, urban planning in colonial contexts is understood as a subtle form of biopolitical spatial governance, a system that disciplines populations through hygiene, visibility, and order. These techniques of power materialized in the built environment of the colonial city, embedding racial and class hierarchies within its physical and symbolic structure. Postcolonial urbanism adds another layer by emphasizing hybridity and resistance as forms of spatial reappropriation by colonized subjects. Cities such as Algiers, Tunis, and Mumbai are thus conceptualized as arenas in which domination and resistance coexist, producing hybrid urban forms that blur the binaries between modern/traditional and order/disorder. Finally, spatial justice provides a normative lens through which these dynamics are assessed, reframing justice not as equal distribution but as the decolonization of space and knowledge.
 
Methodology
Methodologically, the study employs a comparative historical design that juxtaposes three port cities situated within different colonial regimes, French settler colonialism in Algiers, French protectorate governance in Tunis, and British mercantile colonialism in Mumbai. Despite their divergent administrative systems, these cities shared common spatial strategies of control, including segregation through zoning, sanitary interventions, and visual domination. Archival research was combined with discourse analysis of planning texts and visual-spatial analysis using GIS to trace how colonial infrastructures have persisted or transformed over time. Rather than producing new maps, GIS served as an analytical tool to reveal continuities in land use patterns, infrastructural inequalities, and the spatial marginalization of informal settlements.
 
Results and Discussion
Findings demonstrate that, across all three cases, colonial spatial hierarchies have survived independence through the institutional and epistemic inertia of planning systems. In Algiers, Haussmannian interventions imposed a logic of visual dominance that persists today through centralized heritage preservation policies that aestheticize rather than empower the Casbah’s residents. In Tunis, the colonial dichotomy between ville nouvelle and medina has endured, sustained by centralized planning and unequal investment that privilege the European quarter while marginalizing peripheral informal areas. In Mumbai, the colonial discourse of hygiene, crystallized during the 1896 plague and institutionalized through the Bombay Improvement Trust, continues to inform contemporary redevelopment schemes that justify the displacement of low-income communities such as Dharavi under neoliberal urban renewal.
The article introduces the concept of “infrastructural coloniality” to explain how material and institutional systems established under empire continue to reproduce inequality in postcolonial cities. Roads, sewage networks, zoning laws, and property regimes are not neutral technical systems; they encode and perpetuate colonial hierarchies of access, visibility, and legitimacy. Decolonizing space, therefore, requires more than redistributive reforms; it demands epistemic and institutional transformation of planning itself. This notion aligns with Soja’s call for spatialized justice that recognizes how power operates through built form and spatial governance.
At the same time, the research highlights diverse forms of local resistance and hybrid urbanism. In Algiers, the Casbah has functioned as a living site of cultural resilience, sustaining indigenous rhythms of space despite modernization pressures. In Tunis, residents of the medina have adapted historic spaces for contemporary uses, blending preservation with everyday practices of resistance. In Mumbai, informal settlements such as Dharavi and chawls represent not spaces of failure but alternative systems of collective governance, mutual aid, and spatial production that challenge the state’s monopoly on planning. These forms of bottom-up agency embody what Bhabha terms the “third space,” a domain of negotiation and redefinition where colonial binaries are subverted.
The comparative analysis reveals a paradox: postcolonial planning, while rhetorically committed to modernization and equity, often reenacts colonial spatial rationalities under new labels such as heritage, urban renewal, and public health. This discursive continuity transforms colonial segregation into postcolonial exclusion, rendering justice elusive. Yet, within this continuity, moments of rupture and creativity persist, manifested in participatory initiatives, community mapping, and localized heritage projects that seek to reclaim space as a common good.
 
Conclusion
In conclusion, the article argues that achieving spatial justice in postcolonial cities requires the decolonization of planning institutions and epistemologies. This involves recognizing colonial infrastructures as active agents in shaping inequality, questioning universalist models of urban modernity, and valorizing situated, Indigenous, and informal knowledges of space-making. The study’s contribution lies in linking historical urbanism with contemporary debates on justice, revealing how the material and epistemic legacies of empire continue to structure the urban present. By articulating the continuity between colonial power and postcolonial governance, it invites planners, historians, and policymakers to rethink the foundations of urban knowledge itself.
Ultimately, the comparative reading of Algiers, Tunis, and Mumbai demonstrates that the postcolonial city is neither a simple successor to empire nor a site of pure resistance, but rather a complex palimpsest where colonial infrastructures, hybrid practices, and struggles for justice coexist. Understanding this layered spatiality is essential for envisioning decolonial futures of planning, futures grounded in plural epistemologies, participatory governance, and equitable access to urban space.
 
Funding
There is no funding support.
 
Authors’ Contribution
Authors contributed equally to the conceptualization and writing of the article. All of the authors approved thecontent of the manuscript and agreed on all aspects of the work declaration of competing interest none.
 
Conflict of Interest
Authors declared no conflict of interest.
 
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all the scientific consultants of this paper.