ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the interpolation of vision informed the planning of Asmara to consider the exigencies of the Italian colonial city in East Africa. The earliest Italian settlement of present-day Asmara was based on the exercises of a new military presence on the Hamasien Plateau. Years of exploration by Italian and European travelers had proven the presence of mineral and agricultural resources found on the Plateau, but the cost and the unknown threats of danger kept individuals and corporations suspect. The coastal city of Assab superseded as a strategic port on the Red Sea for the movement of goods into the Horn after the completion of the Suez Canal, was replaced by Massawa. A nascent colonial government in Eritrea moved the capital from Massawa to Asmara in 1898. Asmara began to show signs of its rapid transformation with the reintroduction of local and regionally construed technologies as well as the generation of public spaces in the existing fabric.
