The afterlife of the Lanchester Plan: Zanzibar as the garden city of tomorrow

Abstract

Dealing with British colonial Zanzibar, this chapter bridges between the preceding chapters on French colonial Africa and the following ones, on British Mandate Palestine. It was the renowned British architect Henry Vaughan Lanchester who, in 1923, wrote the first comprehensive town planning scheme for Zanzibar, the capital of the British Protectorate of Zanzibar. With Geddesian and garden city influences, Lanchester's plan has cast a shadow over planning policies there – a shadow which is exposed in this chapter with viewing contemporary planning in Zanzibar as well. It argues that there are significant similarities in land management and planning policies between Lanchester's ideas and those being implemented in present day Zanzibar, especially planning associated with the ongoing Sustainable Management of Lands and Environment (SMOLE) Programme. They also contend that from Lanchester's time until contemporary era, planning reforms have continued to be developed within a system that lacks the sort of communicative social dialogue that might allow for genuinely participatory and integrated planning.