Coen Beeker’s Approach to Participation in Ouagadougou
Text by Philippe Genois-Lefrançois
Upon opening the boxes of the African Architecture Matter Collections at the CCA, researchers may immerse themselves in a multitude of documents pertaining to the work carried out by Dutch urban planner Coen Beeker across Africa, particularly in Burkina Faso. These documents include various studies and reports conceived by Burkinese administrative authorities on a number of urban projects initiated by Beeker; communiqués on the smooth running of field operations; numerous hand-drawn or printed maps produced by non-governmental firms or local authorities; dated aerial photographs and anonymous photographic prints; several contracts; and finally, a small sampling of books from Beeker’s personal library.
Although Beeker had participated in international cooperation programs focused on spontaneous settlements in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Tunisia, the urban planner had his most significant professional experience in Ouagadougou, in the late 1970s. This is where he developed the Méthode d’Aménagement Progressif (MAP),1 a progressive approach to redeveloping spontaneous settlements based on community participation, which had a significant impact on the Burkinese capital until the 1990s.
Beeker’s professional involvement in the Global South2 was grounded in a participatory approach,3 notably in the context of the subdivision program for spontaneous settlements in Ouagadougou. Beeker’s goal was to democratize urban living, through a process of advance consultation with residents who would be directly affected by this development, giving them a voice in the conceptualization and planning process. Beneficiaries were also invited to participate in the implementation of the subdivision program by developing their own private plots. The idea of self-development stemmed from a change, in the mid-1970s, in the discourse within major international development institutions, such as the World Bank and Habitat, which identified land insecurity as the primary obstacle to improving housing conditions.4
Coen Beeker’s MAP and his approach to spontaneous settlements in urban areas were part of a trend toward participatory urban planning, which first began to be theorized and standardized in the mid-1960s. Beeker’s archives demonstrate how the concept of public participation was articulated in Ouagadougou’s urban redevelopment project, at a time when Thomas Sankara’s Conseil National de la Révolution (National Revolutionary Council, CNR) was coming into power, in August 1983. The Sankarist regime seemed to signal a break with previous approaches to urban renewal in Burkina Faso, and coincided with Beeker’s growing involvement in the region.5
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