“Green Cities”: A New Urban Paradigm in Senegal

Senegal's population is now predominantly urban, with over 50 percent of the population living in urban areas. Half of this population lives in the capital, Dakar. However, this rate of urbanization conceals huge regional disparities, in a context strongly marked by climate change.

Senegal is marked by a double pattern of uneven development, with unbalanced territorial development on the one hand, and haphazard, poorly managed urban development on the other. The long absence of spatial planning has resulted in urban management difficulties, environmental problems and a resurgence of flooding in irregular settlements. This situation has worsened over time, deepening regional inequalities and aggravating mobility problems. This is true of the Senegalese capital, whose socio-economic development has long been severely hampered by the lack of interconnections facilitating access to and from Dakar, as well as travel within the city itself.

Senegalese cities have been confronted with a lack of strategic planning, which today is reflected in anarchic and uneven urban development.

For a long time, Senegalese cities have been confronted with a lack of strategic planning, which today is reflected in anarchic and uneven urban development, with its corollaries of unsanitary conditions and overcrowding, the dangerous cohabitation of industrial activities and housing, and an inappropriate urban morphology due to the many urban divides. These issues are inadequately accounted for in planning documents and their management is fraught with conflict.

No town has succeeded in controlling land use, and the state has been unable to enforce the Town Planning Code. These ‘outlaw towns’ are developing in defiance of town planning regulations, as if they were beyond the state's control in terms of urban legislation. There are hundreds of illegal housing estates. Unregulated settlements account for 25 percent of urbanized areas nationwide and 35 percent in the Dakar region. Added to this is the uncontrolled occupation of public space by economic activities. The management of public space has become a strategic concern in major cities, particularly Dakar, where economic activity occurs everywhere.

There is a huge gap to be filled in terms of infrastructure. Cities are suffering from a shortage of facilities, infrastructure and affordable housing at a time when demand is constantly growing. This situation leaves people vulnerable to flooding and diseases such as malaria, affects economic productivity and increases urban inequalities. Sanitation services are non-existent in many localities and there are recurrent failures in waste management.

Urban Policies Need to Promote an Ecological Transition

To provide a framework for urbanization, the country has a fairly extensive but insufficient body of legislation and regulations, a set of voluntary policies and programs and operational mechanisms to control urban development and facilitate access to decent housing for as many people as possible. These policies are mainly based on the Town Planning Code and the building code. However, little account is taken of environmental and energy concerns, as well as climate change and gender issues.

The Town Planning Code sets out the guiding principles for drawing up town plans, which every town should have. However, it has to be said that only 20 percent of towns in Senegal have an urban development master plan, and those that do have one are having difficulty implementing the strategic guidelines, channeling their urban development and finding the funding to make these plans operational. The existing urban planning documents have many shortcomings that make them difficult to apply. These shortcomings are the result of cities' poor capacity for anticipation, planning and urban management, the causes of which are to be found in the lack of coordination between sectoral policies and the lack of democratization of planning tools. In addition, climate concerns are rarely accounted for in urban planning documents and urban operations to create a new urban fabric or renovate the old one.

Added to this is the failure of the local authorities themselves and of the local population, which is often poorly informed, to respect the strategic guidelines. Hence, the need to encourage the democratization of urban planning tools and greater participation by young people and women.

Green Cities: New Paradigms for Urban Sustainability

Green cities refer to the cities of the future. The green city is a new way of healing the city of today and thinking about the city of tomorrow to make it more efficient and resilient. Consequently, green city development strategies are a forward-looking approach based on today's possibilities of making rational use of current potential and natural resources. This is achieved by transforming the functional and environmental constraints of all sectors into economic opportunities.

In this sense, green city strategies seek to drive a sustainable transformation of cities through urban development models that are likely to increase green investment and promote circular economies to maximize business opportunities and job creation. It is an ecosystem-based model for compact, resilient, low-carbon cities that use fewer resources and generate less waste. The process requires a strong commitment from municipalities and community leaders.

The green city is a new way of healing the city of today and thinking about the city of tomorrow to make it more efficient and resilient.

Building green cities means adapting to local realities while focusing on six key areas where progress is most urgent: shifting to renewable energy and efficient systems, promoting cleaner and more accessible urban transport, rethinking how cities are planned and built, ensuring affordable housing, improving water and sanitation services, and turning waste into opportunity through circular economy solutions.

The City of Tivaouane: A Blueprint for Green City Initiative?

A notable example, where the vision of a Senegalese green city has been put to test is Tivaouane’s Green City Initiative, which aims to transform the historic religious city into a model of sustainable and inclusive urban development. Located less than 100 kilometers from Dakar, the city of Tivaouane, a religious center, was one of the first Senegalese cities to launch a greening process with the support of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI). The Green City Action Plan resulting from this process aims to define the trajectory for the city's ecological transition, maximize its potential for green growth and increase the city's chances of mobilizing green financing to meet the challenges of climate change.

The Green City Action Plan, drawn up over five years (2018–2022), aimed to highlight the various actions to be taken over the period to achieve the desired results. The process required strong commitment from community leaders and local stakeholders. It was accompanied by a series of capacity-building activities, the networking of stakeholders and the definition of a concerted vision. The territorial analysis carried out at the start of the process identified the city's major issues and priorities, and its potential for green growth.

As the capital of the Tidiane brotherhood in Senegal, Tivaouane is one of the country's most influential and important religious centers and, therefore, of strategic interest to the government. Every year, it hosts one of the largest religious pilgrimages to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Mohammed. Given the dynamism of religious tourism, the city has great potential for developing a circular economy and promoting green jobs in the sanitation, transport and housing sectors.

Tivaouane has experienced socio-economic growth in recent years. This is illustrated by the continued growth of its population and the extension of the municipal boundaries to include outlying villages. Its population rose from 27,117 in 1988 to 71,482 in 2017. It is predicted to have 95,829 inhabitants in 2025 and could reach around 125,000 by 2035.

While increased urbanization is contributing to the destruction of natural vegetation and the reduction in fruit production on the urban fringe, the town's proximity to the chemical industries at Mboro, 23 kilometers away, is the main cause of several environmental problems, the effects of which are felt by the local population.

These effects range from the degradation of forest ecosystems to the increasing destruction of plant cover such as mango plantations, the infertility of arable land, the lowering of the water table and the risk of salinization of the water table as a result of submarine slides accentuated by the excessive pumping of water by the chemical industries.

The strategic vision for the development of Tivaouane as a green city is based on the principles of sustainable development, to extend the city's influence beyond the country's borders while consolidating its religious functions. The proposed vision statement that indicates the strengthening of the city's geostrategic positioning is as follows: "In 2035, the religious city of Tivaouane will be a model green and prosperous city with international influence, whose urban development is based on inclusive governance, rational management of water and solid waste, supported by high-performance technological and social innovations".

Making a city 'green' requires an ecosystem-based approach that considers the complex interplay between urban systems and territories.

As defined, the strategic guidelines, based on the strategic pillars for the development of green cities, make it possible to put this vision into practice while focusing on the city's priorities, which include the implementation of an integrated liquid and solid wastewater management system.

The working groups set up around the pillars of energy, transport, land use, water and sanitation, solid waste and governance have identified a portfolio of 26 projects, including 16 priority projects grouped around three major programs to drive the city's transition to green growth over five years (2018–2022) as part of the Green City Action Plan:

• Urban resilience and environmental protection program: this program aims to provide the city of Tivaouane with the tools and capacities it needs to implement its green city policy. This support will be provided through the implementation of projects aimed at building resilience to the effects of chemical pollution and improving the production conditions of the communities affected.
• Urban services management and energy recovery program: this program aims to optimize the operation and supply of urban services through technological innovation, to improve the sustainable management of municipal solid waste and its energy recovery.
• Program to promote good, green and inclusive governance: this program aims to strengthen the participation of different sections of the population and the diaspora in the management of urban services to establish inclusive governance and ensure better monitoring of environmental and energy performance. It includes setting up an institutional mechanism to monitor the implementation of the "Tivaouane ville verte" [Tivaouane as a green city] plan. In addition, technological innovations should be utilized to better position the religious city and provide the authorities with effective decision-making tools.

The Green City as a Governance Challenge

The example of Tivaouane shows that making a city 'green' goes far beyond cutting CO₂ emissions. It requires an ecosystem-based approach that considers the complex interplay between urban systems and territories, as well as stronger collaboration across all levels of government and stakeholders – both horizontal and vertical. Advocacy must, therefore, focus on the need to establish new forms of governance aimed at changing behavior, increasing the involvement of young people and women and setting up institutional and operational mechanisms for coordinating activities. With this in mind, one of the objectives will be to increase the leadership of decision-makers on issues relating to green growth, climate change and urban sustainability.