Moroccan Sociocultural Practices of Space: Coping with Marginalization in Bidonvilles and Social Housing

Abstract

This article examines the everyday adaptation practices of marginalized inhabitants in present-day Morocco as they respond to their urban domestic environments and resist recent slum relocation projects. We first address urban policies implemented during the French protectorate era (1912–56), many of which have continued to impact Moroccan cities in the twenty-first century. Our research emphasizes the inadequacy of current urban policies and architectural designs, as well as their incompatibility with inhabitants’ ways of living and spatial needs. We explore how different socio-spatial practices in traditional medina cities, shantytowns, and social housing complexes illustrate marginalized social groups’ adaptation to official policies and sociocultural changes. Acknowledging that the built environment expresses the beliefs, cultures, and social backgrounds of inhabitants, we aim to illustrate their ways of living through case studies of two marginalized communities in the Douar El-Garaa shantytown in Rabat and a social housing complex in the suburbs of Casablanca. Our findings identify socio-spatial appropriation and adaptation practices that are rooted in sociocultural habits codified by Islamic customs and other Moroccan cultural norms.