ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand the complex interaction of actors and factors that pushed contradictions and contrasts to the greatest extent, especially when Western expertise was called to shape new strategies for planning the African continent. It explores how experts in architecture and planning approached the African continent and its modernization. In an era that appeared to solidify a dichotomy between East and West, the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa emerged as the terrain on which to experiment global theories and practices of architecture and planning. Students enrolled in the planning and ekistics programmes were encouraged to follow classes in sociology, demography, economics, geography, history, transportation, housing, administration, architecture, and landscape architecture. “Regional Development Through Transport in Africa” was the first attempt to put the conclusions of Hassan Fathy into a design-oriented perspective. The evolutionary discourse of Fathy stemmed from the Darwinian ideas of natural selection and species conservation.
