From Colonial Tool to a Nation-Building Instrument: The “Service de l’urbanisme” in Morocco

The Other Battle of Algiers

This article presents a historical and anthropological approach to mixed marriages in Morocco, tracking the continuities and changes between the French colonial period and contemporary experiences to see how attitudes towards mixed couples changed in Morocco throughout the French protectorate, in the post-independence period and the increasingly globalised world of the 21st century. This interdisciplinary approach combines historic data (primarily from a 1949 study into mixed marriages conducted by the colonial government as well as magazines, novels and memoirs) with 52 anthropological semi-structured interviews (conducted in Morocco between 2018 and 2022) with children of mixed couples and some of their parents.We examine first how the demographic make-up of mixed couples and where they choose to settle has shifted, looking at their gender split, their countries of origin, their occupations and where they met. This has diversified considerably throughout the 20th century: the individuals come from a much larger number of countries (no longer primarily Moroccan soldiers who returned from France with French women) and Moroccan women are now more likely to travel abroad. But gender still impacts mobility as the country of settlement is still often linked to the husband’s job. We then compare how in some cases legal and religious restraints have affected which mixed couples can marry. Although European men could marry Moroccan women, the French colonial authorities sought to ban European wives or partners of Moroccan men from entering Morocco because they believed these relationships would threaten the hierarchies of colonial rules. However, in contemporary Morocco migration is considerably easier for individuals from the Global North. Today the Moroccan family law (Mudawana) states that a foreign man has to convert to Islam if he wishes to marry a Moroccan Muslim woman. What is forbidden has changed, but women’s freedom remains subject to external pressures to maintain social cohesion. Finally, we examine the emotional motivations behind choosing mixed marriages, often overlooked by studies of migration, arguing that mixed marriage in Morocco has always shown a “desire for elsewhereness” and offered a space of freedom, a way to embrace new possibilities and turn away from certain social norms. In the 20th century, in the colonial and post-independence period, many Moroccan men used mixed marriage as a way to escape traditional pressures to pay a bride price (sdaq) to a Moroccan woman’s family. Some Moroccan men also expressed colonialist ideas that European women were more “evolved” and would make better partners than Moroccan women as they were more educated because of gender inequalities in access to education. This has changed due to Moroccan women’s improved access to education. But emotions are still at the heart of these experiences of intimacy across racial, national and religious borders. Contemporary and historical couples see mixedness as imbued with new opportunities to express their desire for change, for a new way of living and for creativity. Mixed marriages provide a change to re-evaluate customs and lifestyles, but these are also deeply intimate relationships born out of emotional attachment. This article reminds readers that marriage migration is, at heart, a migration for love. This love, and the feeling of possibility it offers, can be considered a threat to existing power structures. We argue that in post-independence Morocco, mixed marriages are no longer considered a threat to political power but that they still reveal the existence of persistent racial and gender symbolic boundaries. Indeed, social perception of mixed couples has shifted from a fear of neo-imperialism to a feeling of opportunities in a globalized world, but gender and racial hierarchies still prevail as significant symbolic boundaries that shape mixed couples and attitudes towards them.

Jean Renaudie was an French architect who designed many urban social housing in France, especially in the city of Ivry-sur-Seine, near Paris, with Renee Gailhoustet, co-responsible as the architect of this city, communist city from long time. He was formed as an architect by the influence of Auguste Perret and Marcel Lods, two french architects, great specialist of the structure of concrete. He formed the Atelier Montrouge with Pierre Riboulet, Gerard Thurnauer, Jean-Louis Verret, and proposed many innovative projects, based on geometrically pure forms and masses. After he joined Renee Gailhoustet, the architect of the City of Ivry-sur-Seine, as a co-responsible for the redevelopment of this ideologically communist city. His urban housing concept approached to take the function as a space to welcome the urban life of the resident, not to offer the physical provision of housing repeating the simple housing unity. He accentuated the social role of Housing project not only as the level of a personal home but also as that of an urbanism. He offered divers choice opportunity to the citizen by the urban functional complex through his efforts to make characteristic complex of urban housing, and by the consequence, the innovative result was done which ameliorated the quality of life for resident. This is an exceptional example, not only in France but even in whole over the world. But the maintenance of building against the oldness and the closing shop of inside commercial zone of Jeanne Hachette became a problem, not only that of physical amelioration but also that of spiritual conservation of the works of Jean Renaudie.

In this article, I review the language’s development as an instrument of political action from the time of Spain’s colonial expansion and the post-independence period – in which various nation-building projects were undertaken – through the more recent processes of regional integration. More precisely I focus on panhispanism and the linguistic ideology – hispanofonía – in which it has attempted to construct a culturally, economically, and politically operative community.

This article investigates rural resettlement schemes implemented by the French colonial administration in the light of the relationship between major economic, social and demographic dynamics in the Protectorate of Morocco. It explores the ways in which the French colonisers transformed the rural landscape of the Gharb valley in Morocco’s Rabat region. I depict the spatial configuration of the several stages by which rural colonisation and agricultural modernisation took place in the region, in relation to the patterns of human settlement they produced. The initial spatial configuration of the Gharb, determined by French colonial policies through the official colonisation programme and its orientation toward extensive agriculture, was subverted by the massive introduction of water drainage and irrigation infrastructure. The construction of reservoir dams and the establishment of drainage and irrigation perimeters across the valley induced a concentration of private and public investments that led to rural modernisation in certain, delimited areas. To compensate for a rural exodus that was overcrowding the outskirts of major Moroccan urban centres and for the lack of a local workforce available for employment on colonists’ farms, the French architect and urban planner Michel Écochard and his collaborators at the Service de l’Urbanisme conceived an ambitious programme of rural resettlements in the Gharb valley.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into urban planning represents a transformative shift, offering unprecedented opportunities for data-driven decision-making, enhanced citizen engagement, and more efficient urban governance. However, this technological advancement also poses significant challenges to democratic principles, public participation, and social equity. This article explores the intersection of democratic theory, urban planning ideology, and public participation in the era of AI, examining how AI reshapes traditional paradigms and impacts the inclusivity and fairness of urban development. Drawing on classical and contemporary political theories, the article critically analyzes the ethical and ideological implications of AI in urban planning, highlighting issues such as algorithmic bias, data privacy, and the digital divide. Through case studies and theoretical frameworks, the article argues that the successful integration of AI into urban planning must be guided by a commitment to transparency, equity, and active citizen participation. By addressing these challenges, AI can serve as a tool for empowerment, fostering more inclusive, resilient, and democratic urban environments.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the conditions for the formation of the new concepts of urban planning and the process of searching for new types of habitation in pre-revolutionary Russia. The author investigates the prerevolutionary theoretical and practical experience in the urban planning and housing policy of the first years of Soviet power. The article examines aspects of urbanization in Russia and analyzes the complex of problems that arose in the field of urban development and housing planning by the beginning of the XX century. In the context of the problem, the specificity of the living conditions of the urban population in the capital and provincial cities of the Russian Empire, types of housing and projects for solving the housing problem are investigated. The article touches upon the problems of the hierarchy of urban space and the revolutionary redistribution of housing in the first years of Soviet power. The article considers the key concepts that influenced the development of domestic urban planning ideas: the idea of a garden city, housing cooperatives, low-rise types of habitation, and communal houses. Based on specific examples from the history of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl, the experience of the development and implementation of these concepts in pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as the experience of their transformation and adaptation in the soviet urban planning policy of the first years of Soviet power, is investigated. The experience of the domestic theory and practice of urban planning is studied in the aspect of socio-economic and socio-political factors that determine the trends and tasks of developing new forms of settlement, types of housing and methods for solving the housing problem in pre-revolutionary and Soviet Russia in the first quarter of the XX century. The factors of the emergence of the phenomenon of a communal apartment as a type of housing specific for Soviet Russia and its relationship with sociocultural practices of the previous period are investigated.

This paper interrogates the persistence of urban master planning in African cities. Critiques of master planning in Africa label it as a stifling product of colonial legacies, an inappropriate imposition of external ideas, or a device to achieve the goals of global actors, all seen as being at odds with the rapidly changing settlement patterns and needs of many African urban contexts. This paper instead focuses on the role of local planning actors in the demand for and the production of master plans and proposes a different analytical perspective on the role of master planning in African urban contexts. Notably, we point to the weak presence of master planning in colonial contexts, in contrast with the strong activation of master plans to shape the ambitions of newly independent governments. We observe also the nuanced interactions between local actors and transnational circuits and influences in devising and implementing plans. The paper presents three case studies which demonstrate the persistence of master planning practices through the post-independence period and their proliferation in contemporary moments. We document the diverse range of local actors who have chosen to retain or revise colonial planning legacies, initiate new city-wide master planning, or solicit, shape and assume responsibility for master planning promoted by transnational circuits of development and planning. We find that actors embedded in local or national institutions, and a wide variety of transnational actors, are driven by a range of, at times conflicting, interests and ideas about what planning is and is meant to do. Historical surveys and in-depth interviews with current actors, as well as those from the recent past in Accra (Ghana), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Lilongwe (Malawi), help us to identify three aspects of urban master planning which challenge existing interpretations. We observe that master planning has been a persistent presence, although often taking a more ephemeral form in extended “silent” periods when outdated but valued plans remained operative. We note that complex political tensions and institutional landscapes shape enthusiasm for, and control over the nature, preparation, adoption and implementation of master plans, including their being side-lined or resisted – local-national dynamics are crucial here. This leads to a pragmatic engagement with transnational actors to bring forward different kinds of plans. The prolific production of master plans supported by multiple transnational actors in poorly resourced contexts constitutes a dynamic, although at times counterproductive, terrain of visioning and practical planning initiatives seeking to grapple with the pace and unpredictability of urbanisation. Our analysis provides an opening for considering the politics of urban planning from an African-centric perspective and as an active part of African urbanization.

Urbanization and urban planning are both important for sustainable socio-economic development and nowadays urbanization has attracted the attention of various scholars. This paper aims to study the reasons for urbanization, urban planning, pattern and process of urbanization, urban governance, urban economic development, urban housing, urban transportation, urban land management and planning, infrastructure, urban poverty, and urban environment. This paper seeks a general understanding of urban development. Cities are considered a complex social fact because cities represent the future of global living. This paper tries to understand how economic factors are valuable behind urbanization. Rural-to-urban migration has happened widely in Bangladesh. There are push and pull factors of urbanization behind this migration. The study aims to outline the role of Pourashava, the people's work department, and non-government organizations that work for city planning and development. This study tries to find out the problems in slum areas their sufferings and social and economic exclusion. The main goal of my paper is to view the planned and balanced urban development across the Sadar, Noakhali.

Seismic micro-zoning is an important tool to reduce seismic risk, if adequately incorporated in urban planning and control. In Venezuela, urban management is a responsibility shared between national and local authorities, who establish regulations which are generally followed by the formal sector. In the case of the informal sector, which represents an important portion of Venezuelan urban areas, homes have been constructed without rules that establish where and how to build. However in this case, national and local urban planning and housing authorities, with the participation of NGOs, have introduced urban improvement plans, in order to incorporate these settlements to the formal city. Seismic vulnerability data and other studies on natural risks have minor consideration and incidence in urban planning and management in Venezuela, due to: the lack of preparation of most professionals in the planning field in this type of criteria, limited funding for seismic studies of vulnerable areas, and the lack of specific regulations and procedures to effectively incorporate results. In addition, it is necessary to provide the public with proper information than will let them respond effectively. This article briefly describes how urban management is practiced in Venezuela and its main trends, in order to appropriately incorporate seismic microzoning in urban planning and control.

There is little research-based evidence regarding the similarities and differences in urban plans and urban forms, regarding urban planning and design, between planned capital cities in Africa and Asia. In recognition of the establishment of planned capital cities on these continents, this article limited its case studies to six planned capital cities of the Global South, in the post-independence and post-crisis period. By using bibliometric analysis, snowballing technique, and content analysis approaches, this study determines data sources, including books, journals, city reports, and internet blogs. The results show that these planned capital cities are similar in their urban plans: geographical, socio-cultural and demographic dimensions (location, size, and population densities), historical context of societies, and their goals and aspirations. Meanwhile, urban forms have similarities and differences based on paradigms, organization and spatial formation, spatial arrangement of activities, and architectural artefacts. This study suggests a conceptual and phasal framework, which combines planning history and theory in the first phase, and urban planning and design implementations in the second phase. The results demonstrate how considering our framework can limit similarities in the urban plans and urban forms of planned capital cities. This framework can guide urban planners and designers in academia and professional practice.

The title ‘Seditious Spaces’ is derived from one aspect of Britain’s colonial legacy in Malaysia (formerly Malaya): the Sedition Act 1948. While colonial rule may seem like it was a long time ago, Malaysia has only been independent for sixty-one years, after 446 years of colonial rule. The things that we take for granted today, such as democracy and all the rights it implies, are some of the more ironic legacies of colonialism that some societies, such as Malaysia, have had to figure out after centuries of subjugation. While not suggesting that post-colonial regimes should not be held accountable for their actions, it is ironic to see a BBC commentator grilling the leader of a Commonwealth state about repressive laws and regulations inherited from the colonial era. (Even the term ‘Commonwealth’ is itself ironic, implying shared wealth, in reality it commonly meant a colonised country was contributing to the wealth of the metropolitan centre). This research sought to understand how the trajectory of urban development, which is shaped by the colonial legacy, has produced the contemporary geography of contention in Malaysia. Given that public space is shaped by the colonial legacy, how does it facilitate or hinder street protests as a function of democracy, which is also a vestige of colonialism? To do this, rather than going into a long discussion about notions of public sphere and public space, much of which originated from Western traditions, I used postcoloniality as a lens for the topic1. By taking the concepts as a given, the postcolonial gaze allowed me to contextualise particular Malaysian conditions. In this thesis I argued that the postcolonial narrative (democracy, modernisation, development) is ambivalent precisely because the colonial narrative itself is ambivalent; there was no real break between colonisation and the present condition. I examined three aspects in particular. Firstly, colonial architecture as a subversive ‘third space’, where independence amplified the subversive quality of colonial architecture because of the power vacuum left after the colonisers had left. Secondly, postcolonial ‘amnesia’, where certain aspects of history were conveniently forgotten or others selectively remembered in the production of space to build a hegemonic vision of society. Finally, I looked at postcolonial mimicry, where the post-colonial society imitated either the former colonial master or some other references that fit within its narrative. These notions were mapped onto public space which not only provided the backdrop for dissent but also shaped its form and practices. Protest provided a direct line for the interrogation of just how democratic postcolonial public space actually is. The mobilisations, negotiations, and potential conflicts that arise from the moment a street protest is announced reveal a lot about the politics of space as much as the event itself. Public space comprises material and discursive spaces and, at the time of writing, included social media which has become part of the infrastructure of protest. The empirical part of this research came from the Bersih 4 protest in Kuala Lumpur, which took place from 29-30 August 2015. To ground the somewhat abstract postcolonial discussion, methods (outlined below) were used to collect and analyse data. Firstly, to understand the logic behind the control and surveillance of public space I reviewed literature on how architecture and public space are produced and governed in Malaysia. Secondly, I observed protest in both digital and material public space, which means I harvested social-media data about the protest but also observed street protests in Kuala Lumpur. This informed me how protest produces space within which protesters could foster a collective identity, something that is necessary for the continuity of the protest. I then conducted a thematic analysis on a large number of tweets collected during the protest to understand how information about their places were communicated. Other protests that have taken place in Kuala Lumpur since 1998, when new media started playing a role, were also mapped; this was crucial for the understanding of the spatial patterns of the protests. By tracing the production of architecture in Malaysia we can see how the nation-building project was an ambivalent one, evidenced by how the state mapped their aspirations onto the built environment. Postcolonial amnesia is exhibited in how the Malay-Muslim identity is amplified in architecture while other identities were suppressed and only utilised when it seemed productive. Mimicry, on the other hand, can be seen in how certain architecture is created based on an imagined past, and how visions of modernity fluctuate between Occidental and Orientalist visual cues. Malaysian public space is not only a colonial legacy in terms of its material infrastructure and regulations, it also carries traces of colonial practice. Here, mimicry was manifested in how society imitated the erstwhile colonial masters in seeking to avoid the Other (due to the perception that public space is dangerous and uncomfortable, and showing that segregation had moved from one defined by ethnicity to one defined by class). The lack of a clear break between the colonial and the Neoliberal can also be seen in how public space is governed. Undesirable activity was always framed according to its potential for disrupting economic activity, indicating that public space was perceived as being useful only for production and consumption, not for the performance of citizenship. An urban-planning assessment of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya (the seat of the postcolonial government) was carried out to see which place could better support protest. Accessibility, land-use patterns, and urban form were all aspects of the city that were decided upon at the urban-planning level and throught to influence the probability of protest taking place. This indicates that a city can be designed to support or hinder the performance of democracy. I found that Kuala Lumpur, founded during the colonial era, was actually more supportive of protest activities than Putrajaya, a city purpose built by the newly independent democratic regime. Analysis based on data collected around Bersih 4 was organised into four themes. I first examined how protest produces space. I did this by tracing how the collective identity, already formed by previous Bersih protests, was cultivated on social media in order to mobilise protesters to take to the streets. The act of converging in the same space and performing these spatial choreographies (marching, knowledge-sharing, occupation) further enhanced the collective identity. Images and descriptions of what took place on the streets then travelled through social media which in turn propelled events in the public space. While protest is shaped by the materiality of the urban environment, protest also produces space. Secondly, a reading of the space revealed the interplay between symbolic places and the spaces of everyday life. Protests are shaped by the existing materiality of space, which the authorities could further control by putting up extra measures. Due to this, Bersih 4 ended up occupying the intersection between symbolic and institutional places and spaces of everyday life. The polite restraint shown by Bersih 4 (in not entering Dataran Merdeka – which was barred to them) served to amplify the distance between the state and the people, further magnified by the fact that the protest coincided with Independence Day (31 August). The junction that Bersih occupied was teeming with people throughout the occupation but Dataran Merdeka was left empty and silent on the eve of the Independence Day commemoration. On the other hand, a thematic analysis of tweets revealed that most of those that mentioned geographical places were inflammatory in nature, in the sense that they were urging people to join the protest. Therefore, while the state could construct the symbolism of the space, it does not mean that the space is viewed in a similar way by the people, which means, in turn, that it can be rewritten. This is one way in which the subversiveness of colonial architecture was manifested. Thirdly, I found that the control of digital and material space was symmetrical. This can be seen in three ways: One, how regulations of both spaces can be used to suppress dissent; Two, how access to space can be blocked, either by blocking certain websites or platforms, or by limiting the access to the material public space; and Three, bottom‑up disruptions – while the Red Shirts disrupted Bersih’s performativity in the material public space, cybertroopers were disrupting protest exchanges on Twitter. Finally, the digital and spatial divide between Bersih and its opponents. The digital divide was not defined by degrees of expertise, but, rather, it revealed a differing logic of operation based on norms shaped by what was available to these different parties. Geographically, it revealed the difference between experience of organising protests for a collective cause versus a lack of experience (compounded by racist motivations). What this indicated was that the cleavage does not only run along communal lines, is also political. The research showed how the production of the Malaysian built environment is ambivalent, as is evidenced by the traces of amnesia and mimicry found in the narrative, where identities are grafted onto projections of modernity. Putrajaya shows that there is a disconnect between what the regime claims itself to be, a democracy, and the city it builds. What Putrajaya seems to demonstrate (ironically, as the seat of a democratic government) is how urban planning can be used to design a city so that it does not support the performance of democracy. It is also ironic how Kuala Lumpur, a city founded during the colonial period, is now more accommodating to street protest, cem

When the Cemetery Becomes Political: Dealing with the Religious Heritage in Multi-Ethnic Regions

This article studies the relationship between media experiments and embodied politics in the work of the Venezuelan pedagogue and savant Simon Rodriguez, a key figure in the transition from late colonial times to the early republican experience in Spanish America. The essay connects Rodriguez’s corporeal take on typographic innovations (which he termed “the art of painting words”) with his postcolonial rendition of Western republicanism (which he called the “the art of painting republics”). It argues that Rodriguez’s use of the term “gesture” served to create an experimental and performatic space for printing innovations and republican reforms, so as to imagine the post-Independence period as a new political beginning for Spanish American societies. The article reads Rodriguez’s texts and a rich collection of 19th-century pieces about writing reforms, typographic aesthetics, and republicanism through the lens of Giorgio Agamben’s theorization of the “gesture” as an open-ended mediality. “Gesture,” as conceptualized by Rodriguez and elucidated by Agamben, functions as a critical tool for proposing new connections between typography, education, and politics, and for highlighting the embodied dimension of Rodriguez’s work.

This research delves into the future housing theories of the 21st century, focusing on recent transformations in both urban planning and housing projects and models. Despite the world's anticipation of a vast sustainable transformation since the late 20th century, the first quarter of the 21st century was confronted with an unexpected event: humanity found itself amidst a pandemic that significantly transformed the world. The post-COVID-19 era has guided significant and enduring changes in various aspects from urban planning to living styles, working patterns, housing models, and typologies. This research presents renewed perspectives, based on theoretical dialogues, and discourses that aim to understand the transformation period with recent events specifically housing. The research also includes the perspective of housing in the past aims to contribute to comprehension of this new era and aid in shaping future urban and housing planning strategies. The theoretical basis is to investigate new methods and techniques in urban, and housing planning that have addressed climate-related issues since the 1980s and the subsequent pandemic period. According to the findings obtained in the research, COVID-19 and sustainability initially considered different phenomena, pandemic is essentially triggered and contributed to sustainable city planning, and housing design. While the public perception often distinguishes between COVID-19 and drivability as distinct design concepts, the research reveals a nuanced reality. Despite apparent differences, it is discerning that similar ideas and design principles aim for a healthier housing concept in airier, and greener areas both in terms of housing planning, and models. This intricates a close conceptual relationship between pandemic-induced design adaptations and sustainable concepts underscores the complexity of contemporary urban and housing planning paradigms.