Last Saturday, at the invitation of the magazine “Architecture du Maroc” and the Institut Français of Casablanca, I attended a discussion on public space. I took part as a representative of the National Council…
Last Saturday, at the invitation of the magazine “Architecture du Maroc” and the Institut Français of Casablanca, I attended a discussion on public space. I took part as a representative of the National Council of the Order of Architects of Morocco. These gatherings, regularly organised by the Institut Français and AM magazine, are always interesting moments of exchange and sharing with the profession and with the public at large. Yesterday’s meeting was of a high standard and saw the participation of colleagues who presented their professional experiences as architects or as elected officials on the City Council.
Here I offer my personal point of view after this meeting — binding on no one but myself — on the theme of managing public space:
Public space, used daily by all citizens, is what brings them together, lets them meet, allows them to reconnect. It is also a shared space which, however, suffers the vicissitudes of a demanding, overabundant modern urbanity that devours even the most residual spaces, leaving little room to flourish fully outside one’s home…
In Morocco, the public authorities became aware some twenty years ago of the need to pay closer attention to public space. Public urban-upgrading policies have certainly changed the face of the Kingdom’s main cities. It began with the northern cities, Tangier and Tetouan. Then came the turn of Marrakech, Agadir, Rabat, Oujda and other cities thereafter. The budgets allocated — long meagre — became substantial, allowing a great urban facelift of these cities in terms of roads, green spaces, access, mass transit, sanitation…
These new budgets also enabled the construction of neighbourhood facilities, notably within the framework of the INDH, and the creation of recreational areas and local sports grounds. Slowly but surely, cities are beginning to become welcoming, offering more and more services that did not exist before…
But these proactive policies also come up against the heavy, tedious day-to-day management of this public space — and this is where local authorities are called upon. The share of municipal budgets allocated to managing public space, and more generally to investment, remains rather anecdotal, since these budgets are mostly devoted to running town halls and paying salaries…
The current model of urban development thus shows its limits, as it still does not allow these local authorities — absent the will of central government — to carry out long-term prospective strategies, for lack of sufficient means. For a very long time, the modern Moroccan city was content to develop by the addition of successive subdivisions, aimed mainly at mass housing, in order to catch up with the deficits accumulating year after year because of a galloping urban demography that seems impossible to overtake.
The concreting-over of cities through social-housing programmes, the absence of large recreational spaces, of large parks, of structuring facilities, add their share of doubt as to the efficiency of the current urban-development model. This model of expansion never took into account, in a concrete and reasoned way, the real needs of cities — content merely to apply the provisions of the development plans chosen by the state as tools for framing urban space. Through the weakness of budgets allocated to alignment decrees, to expropriations for public utility, through the absence of urban property-owners’ associations, through the non-existence of a genuine participatory urbanism carried out with residents, this model of urban management is today becoming obsolete, by the near-impossibility of implementing it.
Yet management models were put in place — such as city unification and the establishment of arrondissements — in order to unify the actions of town halls and thus rationalise the expenditure inherent to urban development. A fine idea, this unity of the city, which has proven itself elsewhere, but which, once applied under our skies, did not manage to reach the expected goals.
Local democracy being what it is — neither restrictive nor limiting — it follows de facto that the destinies of cities fall to weakly trained elites, incapable of producing ambitious or forward-looking development strategies. Faced with this situation, people with sufficient experience or of intellectual interest move away from municipal management, which becomes the haunt of under-trained decision-makers, and therefore incapable of managing cities as well as possible. And municipal management remains, unfortunately, for some time yet, the arena of worn-out political struggles that often sterilise any possibility of harmonious development.
So citizens raise questions about this situation, for they have the impression — often justified — that nothing is being done to make their cities pleasant to live in, safe and green, and that only the stormy debates that sometimes animate municipal councils are remembered. Yet many efforts have been undertaken in recent years, but citizens still feel it is insufficient, keeping in mind the endless rush-hour traffic jams left unresolved despite the many bypasses, junctions, tunnels and road widenings built. They also keep in mind the scant creation of large new urban parks — the existing parks are often those inherited from the Protectorate era. They have in mind the still-present difficulty of using public transport in complete peace and safety, given that it is not up to standard or often run-down. Buses and taxis, large and small, seem to come from another age: dirty, degraded and not regularly maintained. New means of transport such as the tramway, or the new taxis, are slow to fulfil their mission satisfactorily or to be visibly rolled out.
The very sharing of public space, used by a large pedestrian population — many of them women — poses problems, given the acts of vandalism that ruin what the community took so long to build; or as it becomes the theatre of harassment from which women suffer greatly in their daily lives.
So what future for this public space, the forum of any self-respecting urbanity? The solution lies, in my view, in the imperative need to involve the residents of the neighbourhoods bordering this shared public space. It is to them that municipal authorities should turn in future — no longer merely to canvass for votes, but above all to propose concrete solutions for improving public space, and also to listen to their suggestions and proposals.
We must resolve to give the floor back to those first concerned by the urban fact, namely the citizens of the cities. Even if it means setting up neighbourhood committees, or establishing local votes or referendums, which will allow city citizens to have their say on the projects that elected officials intend to carry out in this public space. City dwellers do not necessarily need the pavement and street lighting in front of their homes to be renewed every five years, but they would no doubt like to know what new cultural or sports facility is going to be built in their neighbourhood, to allow their children to occupy their free time otherwise than by doing nothing…
I believe we must move to a new model of urban development of the “City 2.0” type, one that takes into account the new challenges in urbanism, urban demography, municipal management and the real needs of citizens. Even if the policy of regionalisation is important, the fact remains that cities will continue to capture the lion’s share of the country’s development — for it is in cities that wealth and jobs are created on a large scale, and it is public space, whatever its quality, that will always be the reflection of that development…
Built during the 1990s on an exceptional natural site, the Royal Golf Club of Fez has…
The concept of sustainable development, Assia Lamzah tells us, certainly changes practices — no longer prompting…
The major projects launched across the national territory constitute a powerful engine, apt to foster the…
Projects, debates, competitions and new issues — once a week, in your inbox.