ABSTRACT
This essay considers the African Riviera project in Abidjan in the 1960s and 1970s in the context of tourism, infrastructure, and regional development in Ivory Coast. Envisioned originally as an extension of a luxury hotel that would utilize the adjacent Ébrié lagoons for mass tourism and housing, this coastal metropolitan development reflects a more general trend toward using tourism to stimulate regional investments in infrastructure and other industries in the country. Designed by the American William Pereira and his Israeli intern Tommy Leitersdorf, the Riviera drew from the American planning concepts of the neighborhood unit and parkway. Analyzing governmental attempts to develop tourism in other parts of the country, specifically as part of the regional development of the Southwest, this essay argues that these techniques were employed to reframe perceptions of landscapes and populations as consumable tourist attractions before these could be reconstituted as productive resources by foreign investors.
