Liora Bigon
Biographic Data
| ID | 90114 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Liora Bigon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Liora |
| FAMILY NAME | Bigon |
| SIGNATURE | BIGON L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Holon Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0697-117X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 173 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 5 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Urban regeneration through a genealogy of infrastructural deprivation in Tel Aviv
This article intersects seemingly oxymoronic fields in urban studies scholarship, that is, urban regeneration plans and the politics of infrastructure manifest as infrastructural deprivation. Using the case of Givat Amal, a forcibly evicted neighbourhood in Tel Aviv, the article traces close to eight decades of infrastructural neglect by municipal authorities in the name of urban renewal. While its retrospective analysis scrutinises a variety of …
Tree-related urban designs in western Senegal
This study explores the multifaceted expressions of tree-related urban designs in the western Senegalese region in diversified scales and contexts, from religious and secular settlements via ceremonious and mundane situations to public and private spaces.It crisscrosses between environmental and cultural sustainability aspects in view of these arboreal designs, pointing to the long-term affinity of these designs on the one hand and their adaptabi…
Urban social sustainability and arboreal lived heritage in a West African capital city
Osogbo profile
Revisiting Transnational Garden City Histories
Embracing a critical retrospective view, this article examines the ideological and actual developments of Garden City concepts in the northern (North-West) and southern (South-East) hemispheres. It elaborates on the transnational histories and contemporary manifestations of the Garden City phenomenon in a variety of urban planning cultures, with a particular emphasis on Asia, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. In an effort to de-Eurocentrize …
Tirailleurs Sénégalais in Modern Hebrew Poetry
This article expands on a poem written by one of the central figures in modern Hebrew literature, Nathan Alterman (1910–1970), entitled “About a Senegalese Soldier” (1945). Providing the first English translation of this poem and its first (academic) discussion in any language, the article analyzes the poem against contemporary geopolitical, historical, and literary backgrounds. The article’s transdisciplinary approach brings together imperial an…
Urban Renewals
Against the background of urban redevelopment programs through the lens of varied, country-related planning cultures, this article sets the stage for learning from one country’s recent experience. In this article, we focus on two Israeli urban regeneration programs operating since 2000: the ‘Integrated National Planning Scheme’ (TAMA 38) and ‘Evacuate and Build’ (Pinuy Binuy) programs. This article aims to examine the governmental agenda behind t…
Tracing Trade and Settlement Infrastructures in the Judaic Material Culture of Tafilalt, Southeastern Morocco
This article traces the history of the medieval oasis city of Sijilmassa, southeastern Morocco, and that of its modern, continuation city of metropolitan Rissani in the Tafilalt region. Elements of mobility and transition are discussed in light of the prominent historical role of the urban settlement in Tafilalt in long-distance trans-Saharan trade infrastructure. These elements are developed with a focus on the region’s Jewish communities, their…
Place Making' and 'Place Attachment' as Key Concepts in Understanding and Confronting Contemporary Urban Evictions
This article expands on the usability of the concepts of 'place making' and 'place attachment' as recently developed in urban studies research in the context of housing insecurity of marginalized communities in today's neo-liberal city. Particularly, against the growing threat of urban evictions, the article utilizes a transdisciplinary approach, showing the relevance of both concepts for (a) a better understanding of bottom-up processes of spati…
Street-Naming Cultures in Africa and Israel
This book is focused on the street-naming politics, policies and practices that have been shaping and reshaping the semantic, textual and visual environments of urban Africa and Israel. Its chapters expand on prominent issues, such as the importance of extra-formal processes, naming reception and unofficial toponymies, naming decolonisation, place attachment, place-making and the materiality of street signage. By this, the book directly contribut…
Gender-biased Street Naming in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa
This article explores the present-day problematic of gender-biased street names as prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa's cityscapes. That is, the abundance of masculine street names as opposed to feminine ones in the urban environments of this region. The article first provides a comparative view on the scope of this toponymic phenomenon in other geographic regions with relation to sub-Saharan Africa. It also identifies few decisive factors in the cr…
CDC Company Towns in Cameroon
The article analyzes company towns with particular emphasis on the workers’ camps of the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) in Cameroon. The avowed purpose of the camps from their inception during the colonial era has always been to meet the housing needs of workers. However, the article contends that the camps were designed to accomplish two principal, albeit unstated, objectives, namely, 1) to articulate power and maintain social order in b…
An infrastructure of light and darkness
This article owes its inspiration to a series of photos that poetically documents the street lighting conditions in Brazzaville and which was taken by the Congolese photographer Baudouin Mouanda (born 1981). The first section reviews the provision of electricity and street lighting systems in sub-Saharan Africa as an expression of state power and weakness through infrastructural visibility and invisibility. Its aim is to provide a qualitative bac…
Urban Pulse - Gendered urban toponyms in the global South
This short commentary scrutinizes the contemporary toponymic phenomenon of gendered street naming in the global South with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa’s cities. It reveals the problematic prevalence of masculine street names in comparison to feminine names in the region’s urban spatialities and provides a comparative glimpse into similar realities in the global North. The paper offers explanations for this phenomenon as a consequence of the…
Towards Creating a Global Urban Toponymy—A Comment
This commentary points to the problems inherent in critical place names studies in terms of classic research topics, methodologies and geographies. It expounds the limits of the official “index”, that is, the variety of traditional urban inscriptions on which critical toponymy scholars rely in interpreting modern urban spatialities—e.g., lists of street names, official street signage, gazetteers, archival materials, etc. The argument is that in S…
Garden Cities
Ebenezer Howard, in contrast to other early‐nineteenth‐century planners of ideal societies, proposed a garden city that did not remain just a theoretical vision. Howard's concept became a widely disseminated practical contribution to twentieth‐century urban planning and represents one of the most influential ideas in the profession. His ideas, in one version or another, spread quickly throughout Britain, giving rise to actual social and physical …
L agos
With a projected population of 18.9 million residents for 2025, Lagos, Nigeria, is the largest urban agglomeration on the African continent. This primate coastal city is located in Western Africa, which is the second most rapidly urbanizing subregion in Africa. In light of the city's history in the precolonial, colonial, and postindependence eras and its present infrastructure crisis, current challenges and new perspectives in urban studies resea…
Gridded Worlds
Gridded Worlds
Beneath the Cityʼs Grid
Institutional, economic and socio-cultural factors accounting for gender-based inequalities in land title procurement in Cameroon
A Tale of Two Brazzas
This article brings together and analyzes two toponyms: Brazzaville Street in Holon, Israel, and Quay of Brazza in Bordeaux, France. In the light of historical and contemporary developments at different points of time, geographies and socio-political contexts, the crisscrossing between both Brazza-related toponyms is useful in promoting a critical and more nuanced interpretation of space and nomenclature. In exploring the varied flows of power, a…
The urban grid and entangled planning cultures in Senegal
In Western (Eurocentric) research traditions of urban and planning histories, sub-Saharan Africa is generally denied an urban past, an urban settlement design culture, and especially an indigenous practice of grid planning. It is against this historiographic background that indigenous grid pattern settlements in Senegal are analysed, with relation to the gridded tradition of colonial settlement design. In light of both cultural sensitivities inhe…
Power and Social Control in Settler and Exploitation Colonies
This paper analyzes strategies for articulating power and effectuating social control in the built environment by French colonial authorities in New France and colonial Africa. The former was a settler colony while the latter comprised colonies of economic exploitation. Despite their different colonial status, they shared much in common. In this regard, French colonial authorities recycled spatial control strategies they had employed in New Franc…
Beneath the city’s grid
Names, norms and forms
Research on street naming systems in general and on colonial street names in particular is not abundant. This article examines the French colonial policy regarding street names in Dakar, as well as the accompanying colonial terminology that was applied in Dakar’s quarters. With occasional references to the pre‐colonial and the post‐colonial periods, the main focus of this article is on street names in early colonial Dakar, as they were designated…
The Toponymic Inscription Problematic in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa
We examine a variety of problems relating to toponymic inscription processes in urban sub-Saharan Africa. The objective is to promote understanding of: the origins, evolution, nature, extent and social implications of these problems in an era of globalization; the vocabularies of built space; and the navigation techniques of inhabitants of supposedly nondescript built space in this region. We employed primary data based on in situ experiences and…
Bubonic plague, colonial ideologies, and urban planning policies
The Third Plague Pandemic originated in Southwest China in the mid-nineteenth century, reached Africa's shores around 1900, and spread globally for about a century. This article examines three plague loci in colonial Senegal (Dakar, 1914), Nigeria (Lagos, 1924), and the Gold Coast (today's Ghana; Kumasi, 1924). A tripartite comparative analysis is made of French and British doctrines of colonial rule, colonial urban planning policies, and anti-pl…
An Anatomy of Symbolic Power
Perceived as mundane and experienced as mere informative images, innocent and undisputable, road signs can constitute part of a highly invested political strategy for producing a linguistic landscape. This is especially true in multiethnic or multinational states, such as Israel, where the linguistic landscape is being constituted in a contested context. The focus of this paper is on the visual and linguistic representations of Arabic and Hebrew …
A History of Urban Planning and Infectious Diseases
This paper deals with the spatial implications of the French sanitary policies in early colonial urban Senegal. It focuses on the French politics of residential segregation following the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Dakar in 1914, and their precedents in Saint Louis. These policies can be conceived as most dramatic, resulting in a displacement of a considerable portion of the indigenous population, who did not want or could not afford to bui…
Gender-biased Street Naming in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa
This article explores the present-day problematic of gender-biased street names as prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa's cityscapes. That is, the abundance of masculine street names as opposed to feminine ones in the urban environments of this region. The article first provides a comparative view on the scope of this toponymic phenomenon in other geographic regions with relation to sub-Saharan Africa. It also identifies few decisive factors in the cr…
Garden cities in colonial Africa
While there is an abundance of published literature on the diffusion of planning modes and garden city notions in the western world, the corresponding literature on colonial (sub-Saharan) Africa is rather sparse. This brief paper, dealing with major historiographic trends in urban space and segregation in light of garden city literature proposes new directions for critical research on garden cities in colonial Africa. Both thematically and method…
Towards Creating a Global Urban Toponymy—A Comment
This commentary points to the problems inherent in critical place names studies in terms of classic research topics, methodologies and geographies. It expounds the limits of the official “index”, that is, the variety of traditional urban inscriptions on which critical toponymy scholars rely in interpreting modern urban spatialities—e.g., lists of street names, official street signage, gazetteers, archival materials, etc. The argument is that in S…
French colonial Dakar
This book deals with the planning culture and architectural endeavours that shaped the model space of French colonial Dakar, a prominent city in West Africa. The extra-European planning history of Europe is a burgeoning field in scholarly study and literature, particularly in the last few decades, but there has been a clear tendency to focus on the more privileged colonies in the contemporary colonial order, such as British India and the French c…
Institutional, economic and socio-cultural factors accounting for gender-based inequalities in land title procurement in Cameroon
The making of the central markets of Dakar and Kinshasa
This article traces the planning history of two central marketplaces in sub-Saharan Africa, in Dakar and Kinshasa, from their French and Belgian colonial origins until the post-colonial period. In the (post-)colonial city, the marketplace has always been at the centre of contemporary debates on urban identity and spatial production. Using a rich variety of sources, this article makes a contribution to a neglected area of scholarship, as comparati…
Place Making' and 'Place Attachment' as Key Concepts in Understanding and Confronting Contemporary Urban Evictions
This article expands on the usability of the concepts of 'place making' and 'place attachment' as recently developed in urban studies research in the context of housing insecurity of marginalized communities in today's neo-liberal city. Particularly, against the growing threat of urban evictions, the article utilizes a transdisciplinary approach, showing the relevance of both concepts for (a) a better understanding of bottom-up processes of spati…
The urban grid and entangled planning cultures in Senegal
In Western (Eurocentric) research traditions of urban and planning histories, sub-Saharan Africa is generally denied an urban past, an urban settlement design culture, and especially an indigenous practice of grid planning. It is against this historiographic background that indigenous grid pattern settlements in Senegal are analysed, with relation to the gridded tradition of colonial settlement design. In light of both cultural sensitivities inhe…
Beneath the city’s grid
French colonial Dakar
This book deals with the planning culture and architectural endeavours that shaped the model space of French colonial Dakar, a prominent city in West Africa. With a focus on the period from the establishment of the city in the mid-nineteenth century until the interwar years, our involvement with the design of Dakar as a regional capital reveals a multiplicity of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ dynamics. These include a variety of urban politics, polic…
Garden cities and colonial planning
Introduction: Garden cities and colonial planning: transnationality and urban ideas in Africa and Palestine - Liora Bigon and Yossi Katz PART I: Garden cities and colonial Africa 1. Symbolic usage in the 'garden city' concept during the French Protectorate in Morocco: from the Howardian model to garden housing-estates - Charlotte Jelidi 2. From metropolitan to colonial planning: Dakar between garden city and cite-jardin - Liora Bigon 3. The 'plat…
Garden City’ in the tropics? French Dakar in comparative perspective
Between Local and Colonial Perceptions
Following the establishment of the British rule in Lagos in the mid-19th century, the pre-colonial settlement became most central in West Africa, economically and administratively. Yet, scarce resources at the disposal of the colonial government and its exploitive nature prevented any serious remedy for the increasingly pressing residential needs. This article examines slum clearances in Lagos from the early 20th century until the de-colonization…
Tracking ethno-cultural differences
Street-Naming Cultures in Africa and Israel
This book is focused on the street-naming politics, policies and practices that have been shaping and reshaping the semantic, textual and visual environments of urban Africa and Israel. Its chapters expand on prominent issues, such as the importance of extra-formal processes, naming reception and unofficial toponymies, naming decolonisation, place attachment, place-making and the materiality of street signage. By this, the book directly contribut…
Power and Social Control in Settler and Exploitation Colonies
This paper analyzes strategies for articulating power and effectuating social control in the built environment by French colonial authorities in New France and colonial Africa. The former was a settler colony while the latter comprised colonies of economic exploitation. Despite their different colonial status, they shared much in common. In this regard, French colonial authorities recycled spatial control strategies they had employed in New Franc…
Urban planning, colonial doctrines and street naming in French Dakar and British Lagos, c. 1850–1930
The published literature that has thoroughly treated the history of European planning in sub-Saharan Africa is still rather scanty. This article examines French and British colonial policies for town planning and street naming in Dakar and Lagos, their chief lieux de colonisation in West Africa. It will trace the relationships between the physical and conceptual aspects of town planning and the colonial doctrines that produced these plans from th…
Urban Pulse - Gendered urban toponyms in the global South
This short commentary scrutinizes the contemporary toponymic phenomenon of gendered street naming in the global South with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa’s cities. It reveals the problematic prevalence of masculine street names in comparison to feminine names in the region’s urban spatialities and provides a comparative glimpse into similar realities in the global North. The paper offers explanations for this phenomenon as a consequence of the…
Tracing Trade and Settlement Infrastructures in the Judaic Material Culture of Tafilalt, Southeastern Morocco
This article traces the history of the medieval oasis city of Sijilmassa, southeastern Morocco, and that of its modern, continuation city of metropolitan Rissani in the Tafilalt region. Elements of mobility and transition are discussed in light of the prominent historical role of the urban settlement in Tafilalt in long-distance trans-Saharan trade infrastructure. These elements are developed with a focus on the region’s Jewish communities, their…
A Tale of Two Brazzas
This article brings together and analyzes two toponyms: Brazzaville Street in Holon, Israel, and Quay of Brazza in Bordeaux, France. In the light of historical and contemporary developments at different points of time, geographies and socio-political contexts, the crisscrossing between both Brazza-related toponyms is useful in promoting a critical and more nuanced interpretation of space and nomenclature. In exploring the varied flows of power, a…
Tracking ethno-cultural differences
Between Local and Colonial Perceptions
Following the establishment of the British rule in Lagos in the mid-19th century, the pre-colonial settlement became most central in West Africa, economically and administratively. Yet, scarce resources at the disposal of the colonial government and its exploitive nature prevented any serious remedy for the increasingly pressing residential needs. This article examines slum clearances in Lagos from the early 20th century until the de-colonization…
Names, norms and forms
Research on street naming systems in general and on colonial street names in particular is not abundant. This article examines the French colonial policy regarding street names in Dakar, as well as the accompanying colonial terminology that was applied in Dakar’s quarters. With occasional references to the pre‐colonial and the post‐colonial periods, the main focus of this article is on street names in early colonial Dakar, as they were designated…
Urban planning, colonial doctrines and street naming in French Dakar and British Lagos, c. 1850–1930
The published literature that has thoroughly treated the history of European planning in sub-Saharan Africa is still rather scanty. This article examines French and British colonial policies for town planning and street naming in Dakar and Lagos, their chief lieux de colonisation in West Africa. It will trace the relationships between the physical and conceptual aspects of town planning and the colonial doctrines that produced these plans from th…
A history of urban planning in two West African colonial capitals
Few published studies have thoroughly treated the history of European planning practices in the overseas colonial territories. This is especially true regarding the African continent in general and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Interest in the indigenous response to the formal organization of the colonial settlement has only been manifest in the last few decades. In addition, French and British colonial policies and practices in West Africa, …
The Former Names of Lagos (Nigeria) in Historical Perspective
This article traces Lagos's toponymy through the ages, from the original indigenous settlement to Nigeria's post-independence days. From Oko to Eko, from Curamo to Onim, and from Onim to Lagos, until its replacement by Abuja as the present federal capital — each name represents a layer in the city's rich and cosmopolitan past. Moving from the historical events to the related toponymic meanings and vice versa, the complexity of the simultaneous us…
Garden City’ in the tropics? French Dakar in comparative perspective
A History of Urban Planning and Infectious Diseases
This paper deals with the spatial implications of the French sanitary policies in early colonial urban Senegal. It focuses on the French politics of residential segregation following the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Dakar in 1914, and their precedents in Saint Louis. These policies can be conceived as most dramatic, resulting in a displacement of a considerable portion of the indigenous population, who did not want or could not afford to bui…
Transnational networks of administrating disease and urban planning in West Africa
The Quest for Colonial Style in French West Africa
Marché Kermel and Marché Sandaga were established at the beginning of the twentieth century in the contemporary heart of colonial Dakar, Senegal, the capital of French West Africa (AOF). In terms of general size and building techniques—both are based on prefabricated iron—they evoke the great covered markets and similar structures erected in France and other European countries in the late nineteenth century. Yet, in matters of style, each constit…
Garden cities in colonial Africa
While there is an abundance of published literature on the diffusion of planning modes and garden city notions in the western world, the corresponding literature on colonial (sub-Saharan) Africa is rather sparse. This brief paper, dealing with major historiographic trends in urban space and segregation in light of garden city literature proposes new directions for critical research on garden cities in colonial Africa. Both thematically and method…
Garden cities and colonial planning
The present collection is intended as a study of European planning ideas in the form of garden city concepts and practices in their broadest sense, and the ways these were transmitted, diffused and diverted in various colonial territories and situations. The socio-political, geographical and cultural implications of the processes are analysed here by means of cases from the global South, namely from French and British colonial territories in Afri…
Garden Cities and Colonial Planning
This title presents a study of European planning ideas in the form of garden city concepts and practices in their broadest sense, and the ways these were transmitted, diffused, and diverted in various colonial territories and situations
An Anatomy of Symbolic Power
Perceived as mundane and experienced as mere informative images, innocent and undisputable, road signs can constitute part of a highly invested political strategy for producing a linguistic landscape. This is especially true in multiethnic or multinational states, such as Israel, where the linguistic landscape is being constituted in a contested context. The focus of this paper is on the visual and linguistic representations of Arabic and Hebrew …
Germany and the deployment of urban planning to create, reinforce and maintain power in colonial Cameroon
The making of the central markets of Dakar and Kinshasa
This article traces the planning history of two central marketplaces in sub-Saharan Africa, in Dakar and Kinshasa, from their French and Belgian colonial origins until the post-colonial period. In the (post-)colonial city, the marketplace has always been at the centre of contemporary debates on urban identity and spatial production. Using a rich variety of sources, this article makes a contribution to a neglected area of scholarship, as comparati…
Bubonic plague, colonial ideologies, and urban planning policies
The Third Plague Pandemic originated in Southwest China in the mid-nineteenth century, reached Africa's shores around 1900, and spread globally for about a century. This article examines three plague loci in colonial Senegal (Dakar, 1914), Nigeria (Lagos, 1924), and the Gold Coast (today's Ghana; Kumasi, 1924). A tripartite comparative analysis is made of French and British doctrines of colonial rule, colonial urban planning policies, and anti-pl…
The Toponymic Inscription Problematic in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa
We examine a variety of problems relating to toponymic inscription processes in urban sub-Saharan Africa. The objective is to promote understanding of: the origins, evolution, nature, extent and social implications of these problems in an era of globalization; the vocabularies of built space; and the navigation techniques of inhabitants of supposedly nondescript built space in this region. We employed primary data based on in situ experiences and…
Transnational Aspects in the History of Lagos
Introduction
Place Names in Africa
French colonial Dakar
This book deals with the planning culture and architectural endeavours that shaped the model space of French colonial Dakar, a prominent city in West Africa. With a focus on the period from the establishment of the city in the mid-nineteenth century until the interwar years, our involvement with the design of Dakar as a regional capital reveals a multiplicity of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ dynamics. These include a variety of urban politics, polic…
Garden cities and colonial planning
Introduction: Garden cities and colonial planning: transnationality and urban ideas in Africa and Palestine - Liora Bigon and Yossi Katz PART I: Garden cities and colonial Africa 1. Symbolic usage in the 'garden city' concept during the French Protectorate in Morocco: from the Howardian model to garden housing-estates - Charlotte Jelidi 2. From metropolitan to colonial planning: Dakar between garden city and cite-jardin - Liora Bigon 3. The 'plat…
French colonial Dakar
This book deals with the planning culture and architectural endeavours that shaped the model space of French colonial Dakar, a prominent city in West Africa. The extra-European planning history of Europe is a burgeoning field in scholarly study and literature, particularly in the last few decades, but there has been a clear tendency to focus on the more privileged colonies in the contemporary colonial order, such as British India and the French c…
Military Settlement Forms in Colonial Dakar and Western Sudan
This historical essay critically examines the early military settlement projects realized by the French Engineering Corps in Senegal and the Western Sudan during the second half of the 19th century. The French were preoccupied with the establishment of official control over the hinterland, confronting a variety of challenges in situ. In striving to go beyond the prestigious image of the Corps and the discourse on colonial settlement forms as an i…
Geography (42 works) · Archaeology (35 works) · Colonialism (33 works) · History (31 works) · Political science (31 works) · History (25 works) · Sociology (25 works) · African history and culture studies (23 works) · Law (23 works) · Ethnology (20 works)