Saaba — Saaba Map Poster

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Saaba Map Poster

Saaba sits just beyond the eastern outskirts of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso's Centre region. For much of the past two decades it has grown as the capital's neighbour rather than a separate world. On a map the town reads as a series of rectangular subdivisions laid out on almost level ground. Their blocks are cut by straight earth roads that meet at right angles and stretch outward in every direction.

The land here is open savanna, so there are no dramatic contours to shape the plan. What the map shows instead is intent: parcels drawn before houses arrive, a main road carrying traffic towards the city, and patches of older settlement where lanes bend around compounds instead of following a ruler. The contrast between these two patterns gives the drawing its character.

A Saaba map poster works well in monochrome because that pattern is so graphic. Dense black lines gather near the road, then thin into a lighter lattice at the edges where the grid is still filling in. It is a picture of a place in the middle of becoming, captured at one moment in its growth.