Precarious Modernities: Assembling State, Space and Society on the Urban Margins in Morocco by Cristiana Strava

Author:Cristiana Strava [Strava, Cristiana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, African, Social Services & Welfare, Discrimination, Social Science, Political Science, World, Social Classes & Economic Disparity
ISBN: 9781350232556
Google: wYZIEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 57916963
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2021-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

5

The future on/of the margins

Relocations, aspirations and emergent mobilities

Throughout the period of my fieldwork, it became increasingly evident that the transformations affecting both Casablanca’s margins and its wider urban landscape were intimately linked in the lives of my interlocutors with a process of imaging and imagining the future. This future seemed to always be just around the corner, and could often be glimpsed from a position of physical movement. Riding the bus or sitting in the crowded backseat of a shared taxi, Casablancans were confronted with it daily. Adorning the tops and sides of buildings, large advertisements announced the next phase of the most recent ‘dream home’ real-estate project (Figure 5.1). Accompanied by a rising number of ‘megaprojects’ designed by starchitects like Christian de Portzamparc (Casablanca’s new Grand Theatre) or Zaha Hadid (Rabat’s new Opera House), these visions were meant to signal the city’s aspiration of establishing itself as a global business and financial hub (Aljem and Strava 2020). Closer to home, glossy renderings of future shopping malls and amusement parks greeted passers-by from construction site fences, while behind these Potemkin displays of ‘not-yet’ places, construction stagnated in a post-2008 world. Portable versions of these images were also inescapable. Amina began collecting the flyers handed to her daily on the street, amassing in this way a small archive of the most recent affordable-housing projects dotting Casablanca’s growing periphery (Figure 5.2). At mealtimes with Asma’s family, while we were seated in front of the TV or listening along to the radio, Arabic and French-language jingles asked their audiences if they were finally ready to escape the noise of the city and live in the luxurious peace and quiet of a new, gated suburban community.

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