MASSIF

Spring 2025 | UC Berkeley CED
MASS Design Abundant Futures Studio: Dakar Greenbelt

This studio is the second semester of a year-long investigation into the future of African Urbanism, focusing on Senegal’s capital city, Dakar.
These studios took inspiration from the Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) which was conceived in 2005 to halt the expansion of the Sahara and restore ecologies that sustain at-risk communities across the Sahel. Building upon that, the studio imagines how a Great Green Wall might look like in the fabric of Dakar — not as a barrier, but as a network of greenbelts woven into the city. It asks how restoration, conservation, and transformation might work together to support the communities that call Dakar home .

In the Fall of 2024, one planning and one landscape studio at University of Pennsylvania collaborated on envisioning this new future from the perspective of planning and landscape design. This semester, architecture was added to the equation to find locally sourced building methods that communicate identity, minimize carbon, and maximize community engaged & regenerative approaches to design housing, educational, and civic infrastructure that complements the planning and landscape approaches from the Fall ‘24 studio.

The “Little Coast” of Dakar is lined with sandy beaches, emerging resorts, and fishing communities

Further down, away from the city, are beachs, grasslands, and wetland habitats

all of which support a wide range of flora and fauna that define a growing industry of ecotourism and the livelihoods of coastal, fishing communities

However, these walks of life are underthreat by the relocation of Dakar’s industrial port from the city to a small town called Popenguine-Ndayane

Zooming in on the development zone of the port, the location is sandwiched between two small towns - popenguine-ndayane being the one to the south.
Red = port development boundaries. Green = protected reserves. Blue = watersheds

Despite the attempt to minimize reallocation of people’s homes, the port nevertheless will destroy 20% of the town’s watershed, cutting deeply into natural systems that support the town’s people.

This proposal focuses on protecting and amplifying what will be left: the in-tact waterway and two major protected landscapes: the Forest of Popenguine to the north and the Natural Reserve to the south.

One major organization already pushing back on port development is the Yoonu Xam Xam. Consisting of agroecologists, dancers, farmers, and educators, the Yoonu Xam Xam is an educational organization that teaches sustainable craft, management, and cultivation of natural resources.

Spaces highlighted in red are those that will be lost to port construction

This project is a proposal for the reallocation of the Yoonu Xam Xam to the peripheries of urban sprawl and the natural reserves.

Site vegetation

Increasing number of development lots are occuring near the road, hinting at the severance of these two major protected reserves.

Protection and amplification strategy by Joseph Bondi and Sandra Nwe (UPenn Landscape Studio)

Massing strategy: gradients, framed education spaces

Buffer strategy by Joseph Bondi and Sandra Nwe (UPenn Landscape Studio)