The Other Side: Zanzibar

Few people visiting Stone Town know that there’s another side of Zanzibar Town. Ng’ambo, which literally translated means the ‘other side’, has always received far less attention than Stone Town. The colonial division of the city caused an unjust partition between a perceived historically relevant town and its ‘irrelevant’ half, set in stone by the listing of Stone Town as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000, leaving Ng’ambo to fend for itself.

However, for a few years now, the tide seems to be turning. Ng’ambo has been earmarked to become the future city centre of Zanzibar Town. The pressure on Ng’ambo, caused by demographic and economic growth, has led to the replacement of the old building stock at an increasing pace.

One of the key challenges for the Department of Urban and Rural Planning (DoURP) is to protect the historic urban areas in this rapid growth. Indeed, against all odds, Ng’ambo’s historical relevance is finally being acknowledged. Which leads to the most pressing question today: how to manage its heritage in such a rapidly changing urban environment.

Making monuments come alive

One thing was clear for the DoURP in Zanzibar: the way forward was not as it was done in Stone Town. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is being managed by the Stone Town Conservation and Development Authority since the 1980s, when the old city had gradually fallen into decay. Although improvements have been made since, the struggle to maintain and manage historic buildings continues. The conservation and design guidelines are particularly restrictive, making their implementation difficult, for both inhabitants and the authorities. It was only recently that Stone Town witnessed a partial collapse of one of its most iconic monuments: the House of Wonders. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first incident with the House of Wonders, nor with several other historic buildings. This makes you wonder where the fault line exists in the system. A new strategy was to be developed to let historic structures and monuments become part of everyday life and make them ‘alive’.

A persistent split

Being treated as a separate entity, having its own authority and guidelines since the 1980s, the divide between Stone Town and the rest of Zanzibar Town dates way back. Zanzibar Town is the capital of Zanzibar, an island nation that with the mainland Tanganyika forms the federal republic of Tanzania. Until the mid-20th century, Stone Town was separated by a tidal creek from the rest of the island. The part of the town on the opposite side of the creek was referred to as Ng’ambo. Although the division was only physical at first, with the declaration of the British Protectorate in 1891, the natural segregation became a derogatory one. Ng’ambo was designated for the Swahili Africans living in temporary ‘huts’, whilst Stone Town was reserved for the Europeans, wealthy Asians and Arabs who lived in permanent ‘houses’. Ng’ambo was perceived by the colonial administration as a slum in need of upgrading. It was under the Revolution of President Karume that Ng’ambo became the place where the dream of the modern and clean city could be realised. Karume, the first president of independent Zanzibar in 1964, projected Ng’ambo as a New Town and designed the Michenzani apartment blocks cutting right through the heart of Ng’ambo.

Several master plans have been designed for Ng’ambo but the only time that substantial rebuilding effectively took place in Ng’ambo was under Karume in the late 1960s. It needed a Revolution and an authoritarian and charismatic president to do so. Other initiatives to redevelop Ng’ambo into a ‘formal’ or official plan had so far failed to materialise. The Michenzani project was continued after Karume’s death in 1972, with the completion of Blocks 11 and 12 as late as in 2008. But Michenzani was also the swansong of Karume’s New Town. The rebuilding of Ng’ambo, though energetically commenced, came to a standstill due to the high costs of the investment and the little return in rent, as most of the citizens of Zanzibar were not able to afford this type of housing.

Restore connectivity

The continuity of the image of a ‘modern Ng’ambo’ today is telling. Once again, Ng’ambo is the focus of new planning initiatives. Within the new structure plan of Zanzibar, called the ZanPlan, Ng’ambo is earmarked to be the future city centre. But in the minds of people, there seems to be a persistent split. Ng’ambo is currently developing its own template for modernisation. New multi-storey buildings are popping up all over the area – often highly appreciated by the locals – replacing the old single-storied Swahili houses. References to Dubai and Singapore as the desired look are not uncommon. It ties in with the prevailing line of thought: Ng’ambo should be ‘new’, while Stone Town may remain ‘old’.

However, this image of a division is not in line with the historical reality. One of the great recent findings is that Zanzibar Town was by far the largest city in East Africa around 1900, outcompeting cities like Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, including both Stone Town and Ng’ambo. The oldest urban structure from Ng’ambo dates back from this time, demonstrating that both parts made up the city as a whole more than 100 years ago. It is this connectivity that has to be restored and is the main objective for the DoURP in the development of the local area plan for Ng’ambo.

In the architecture of the new buildings, reference is made to the traditional Zanzibari architecture. Zanzibar doors, barazas, arches, roof edges and other decorative or spatial elements reappear in a combination with tinted glass curtain walls, precast banisters and cement roof tiles to form a modern hybridised architecture that may not always meet the appreciation of the academically trained architect, but does certainly pay homage to Zanzibar’s past.

Ng’ambo has been earmarked to become the future city centre of Zanzibar Town

Time for a different approach

Recognising that today’s planning tools of Zanzibar are not adapted to find solutions for heritage-based approaches to urban development, the Government of Zanzibar saw light in the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach. For decades now there has been a growing concern about the threat of development or regeneration projects to those sites inscribed on the World Heritage List. Naturally, the issue of development was not a new topic; however the size of the world’s population living in urban areas continued to increase at an enormous rate. Since the last UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Safeguarding and Contemporary Role of Historic Areas stems from 1976, there was a pressing need for an update. The HUL-approach addresses the need to frame urban heritage conservation strategies within the larger goals of development. Although probably common sense for many heritage practitioners, it is not always adopted by relevant authorities.

The DoURP was ready for this innovative practice and teamed up with African Architecture Matters and the City of Amsterdam to explore if successful heritage policies in Amsterdam could be adapted. A sensible collaboration since Amsterdam is an outstanding example of a well-managed HUL. This modern, liveable city shows how its cultural and built heritage forms the basis of the development of the city, maintaining its mixed-use character by seeking a healthy balance of both visitors and locals. With this in mind, the project ‘Ng’ambo Tuitakayo’ (‘the Ng’ambo we want’), was established with the main goal to develop an alternative redevelopment for Ng’ambo through a HUL-based methodology.

Creating the ‘Ng’ambo we want’

Following all steps outlined in the HUL-approach deemed challenging, a lack of capacity and financial resources forced the project team to be creative. Actually, the strength of the project has been its strategy of deriving policies from concrete actions and pilot projects. The HUL-approach needed first to be adapted to the local context through a pilot. In early 2014, a mapping exercise was realised in a pilot area in Ng’ambo, including desktop research and fieldwork, resulting in a visioning event. Community engagement was crucial for raising awareness and developing visions together with the local stakeholders about the future development. The mapping exercise increased our understanding that the threats to the cultural heritage of Ng’ambo as perceived may have to be redefined. To date, an additional mapping of 4700 buildings, according to various criteria including style, typology and building condition, and several preliminary design plans, have been carried out.

The HUL-methodology outlines six steps that involve the mapping of natural, cultural and human resources, reaching consensus on what to protect and how to integrate these resources in an urban development framework. It subsequently prescribes prioritising actions for conservation and development as well as establishing local partnerships to achieve these actions.

A good start to achieve this goal is to create a greater awareness among the people

The other side of World Heritage

The preliminary findings of this stage of the project reveal Ng’ambo as a vibrant and dynamic place with layers upon layers of history. The organic, semi-planned and planned urban tissue of the area creates an exciting urban landscape and an architectural mosaic that deserves far more attention than it has been awarded so far. This rapidly modernising area needs to be steered by a set of flexible planning guidelines that will at once accommodate change and secure the continuity of its spatial development by reusing the existing social and urban patterns and structures where possible. A good start to achieve this goal is to create a greater awareness among the people and promote a new image of the area that does away with the antagonistic and binary relation between Stone Town and Ng’ambo that has been constructed over the years. By affording Ng’ambo the same historical importance as Stone Town, attention can be drawn to its past and the two halves can be reconnected again. Ng’ambo is no longer just the buffer zone, but an equally important half of the World Heritage Site and that’s the Ng’ambo ‘we want’.

All Photos: Marie Morel, Iga Perzyna and Antoni Folkers