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1 Introduction
My interest in Marrakesh began in the spring of 2004 when my wife and I visited the city for the first time together hoping to immerse ourselves in the “tourist experience”. Instead, during our stay, we had a first-hand encounter with money and power. I recall the friendly Pizza Hut waiter who warned me that the “tourism police” were rounding up les faux-guides (unauthorized tour guides) because I was in the company of a white tourist. We nevertheless succumbed to the lure of luxury and extravagance in a city where precarity and pauperization were ubiquitous. We set out to visit the famed Churchill Suite, still preserved in one of the city’s historic hotels. As we walked across the hotel’s parking lot, which was heavily guarded and full of luxury cars, our excitement came to an abrupt end. The guards denied us entry on the grounds of our “improper” casual attire. To the hotel staff, our jeans and tennis shoes spoke volumes about who we “truly” were: a young Moroccan faux-guide and a white, fresh-out-of-college woman posing as his partner. We immediately left the premises, realizing that, with or without proper attire, we did not fit the hotel’s desired guest profile. Back in Chicago, we shared the story with our Moroccan friends, one of whom happened to be from Marrakesh. In a show of solidarity, Jamal’s response had a rather chiding tone – “wesh ma-ăraftīsh?” (Didn’t you know?) – as if he were stating the obvious: “Marrakesh will soon impose a travel visa on poor Moroccans”. Jamal’s assertion was meant to be a joke; while no one was amused, I felt a sense of validation. The joke was subversive in nature, a “tiny revolution”, in the Orwellian sense, whereby Marrakeshis console each other, in jest, whenever confronted with the increasingly high cost of living and the “Hogra” (contempt, oppression and injustice) they endure in their city. The joke, indeed, had a potent redemptive value for the subaltern; Hogra is not due to one’s inadequacy but rather to the incongruities inherent to touristic rituals when they intersect with longstanding relations of power and money.
A decade later, I found myself back in Marrakesh (as a doctoral researcher) to further understand those power dynamics. While no travel visa had been imposed on the locals, I found out that Hogra persisted, as did Marrakeshi satire. Indeed, Marrakesh continues to be a site of various forms of exclusionary practices resulting from attempts to reorient the city toward the global market.
Since the mid-1990s, Marrakesh has evolved as a “world-class destination” by attracting flows of capital devoted to building a tourism sector and creating a diverse real estate market. The construction of tourist and entertainment facilities, large-scale housing projects and gated communities, as well as the marketization of a large area of gentrifiable houses in the historic quarters of the city, have become the modus operandi for the state and its private partners to respond to the “economic imperative” of growth.
The economic imperative, alone, is hard to attend to if not invigorated by a political logic and an institutional and ideological practice. For instance, in order to meet the expectations of a world-class clientele, Marrakesh’s elite prioritize “modernization” as a strategy. The official storyline about the new Marrakesh unfolds in the following manner: in a country whose monarch is a descendent of Islam’s Arabian prophet, the Commander of the Faithful and guarantor of its stability, tradition has much political and symbolic capital. In addition to tradition, Morocco is also a territory (and perhaps the only one) where tradition and modernity can be “sighted” together, and since the two (it is assumed) are mutually exclusive categories, Morocco becomes a unique destination, a land of magic.1 Marrakesh is a microcosm of the country, by virtue of its status in history, and hence the best possible site for government policies to create a space for modernity and tradition to “cohabit”. Ultimately, this rhetoric relegates the marginal “Other” and the space they occupy to the status of “traditional” against which a “modern” vision for the city emerges. On the ground, the modernization strategy, a reoccurring theme in Moroccan politics, creates an urban spatial structure that is highly segmented between areas of development and “islands” of marginality. As a result, the Marrakeshi communities who prize the “use value” of their space experience further marginalization in the process.
Marrakesh is strategically situated on the flat plane of the Haouz region, between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert, at about 150 miles south of the coastal city of Casablanca (see Figure 1.1). Marrakesh is currently the nation’s fourth largest and slowest-growing city in its league with an average population growth of 5.7% between 1950 and 2010 compared to 116.9% in Agadir, 19% in the capital Rabat and 7% in Casablanca (see Figure 1.2). Between 1950 and 1960, Marrakesh was the second most populated city in the country (Kamal, 2010). Compared to its North African counterparts, Marrakesh has the largest medina; it covers an area of 1,656 acres and houses over 20% of the Marrakeshi population (Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement Urbain, 2008, p. 85).
The number of foreign residents in Marrakesh reached 3,500 in 2004 at a growth rate of 71% since 1994 compared to 2.5% nationally and an estimated 5,000 and 6,764 in 2007 and 2014 respectively (Haut Commissariat au Plan, 2009, 2015). The majority of foreign residents (60% in 2004) live in the district of Gueliz outside the medina. In its 2008 Schéma Directeur, the city’s Urban Agency warns that “a strong social and spatial disparity…, which is more apparent between the rehabilitated quarter and others, [is] reinforced by turning traditional homes into guest houses” (ibid, p. 85).
Figure 1.1Marrakesh location
In 1985 Marrakesh made the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s World Heritage List of cities with “outstanding universal value” (UNESCO, 2005). The imperial city of the Moroccan south was said to “represent a masterpiece of human creative genius and exhibit an important interchange of human values” (ibid). In particular, Marrakesh’s old medina was hailed for its exceptional architectural feat exemplifying a distinct epoch in human history. In the ensuing decades, Marrakesh set out on a path to turn itself into a major destination for European tourists, conventioneers and real estate pioneers. In 2001, UNESCO classified the city’s most iconic square (Jamaa el-Fna) as a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity”.
The medina (the city’s old quarters) has become the subject of a private-led gentrification to mitigate the effect of centuries-old official neglect. The most valuable, and controversial, commodity in the city’s plan to revitalize its medina has been the traditional houses known as riads. According to the city’s unofficial web portal, the “fashionable” riads “resurrect an art of living that Moroccans themselves had almost forgotten”.2 The riads, built as early as the sixteenth century, are located in the narrow labyrinths of the old medina. This type of traditional dwelling is popular among Western expatriates who purchase and renovate them and then convert them into business ventures or second homes. For the European nouveau resident, the riad experience is a cultural immersion among the locals – one that is more authentic than the conventional tourist product. The European riad owner is no longer experiencing the city as if she were Marrakeshi; she is one. The nouveau resident’s claim of status as a “real Marrakeshi” is correlative with a set of assumptions about the “nature” of the host population (easy-going, welcoming, tolerant, cosmopolitan and so on). Such a claim also speaks to the particular characteristics of the commodity in question, the socially -constituted dispositions of their consumers and the kind of promises made (either in advertising campaigns or in policy formulations) in order to gratify such dispositions (Bourdieu, 2005, pp. 15, 23). This form of gentrification is controversial as many original riad owners belong to the poor and disenfranchised classes – the city’s elites moved to the ville nouvelle after Morocco’s independence. In the absence of government initiatives to maintain the medina, these dwellings are significantly dilapidated. As a result, many of the families have been persuaded to sell their homes at prices which, in global market standards, remain low.
Figure 1.2Morocco’s urban population in six largest cities in thousands (1950–2025)
The medina is not the only urban space that is transformed by capital; other residential and industrial areas are also subjected to such transformations. Those extended families who sold their riads are scattered in government-subsidized apartments in new suburbs such as Tamansourt, Azzouzia and M’hamid (see Figure 1.3). Under the monarch’s command3 and with governmental collaboration providing land, the private sector built and marketed 200,000 social housing units in Tamansourt, located 10 miles northwest of the city. Halfway between the medina and Tamansourt, a two-mile strip of workshops, showrooms, garages and art galleries, Quartier Industriel Sidi Ghanem, is where the local government seeks to attract offshoring investments by foreign expatriates. Already saturated in 2008, an extension project was initiated by al-Omrane Group, the powerful semi-public land development and construction holding, annexing an additional 185 acres (45 land parcels) to the existing 432 acres (500 parcels).
Figure 1.3 The Marrakesh-Tamansourt axis
These urban transformations have serious implications at the social level. In the absence of government regulations to organize the market and determine its long-term objectives within a vision of sustainable development for the city, the economic gains are concentrated in the hands of the few. Further, the socio-economic gap between the locals and the newcomers exacerbates the sense of powerlessness of the former group and the presumed “superiority” of the latter, thereby recreating and refashioning colonial hierarchies. Meanwhile, Marrakeshis are bombarded with messages stressing the necessity of maintaining their image as “tolerant, hospitable and friendly” and the image of Marrakesh as a city where “modernity and authenticity” live side by side and where “the senses feast”. One of the earliest media campaigns targeting the local population in the mid-1990s was a TV advertisement which aimed to “raise awareness” about the harms of informal services on the tourism-based economy. The TV advertisement taught that practices such as non-authorized guided tours, pick-pocketing and overcharging tourists were bad for the economy – since they would drive the tourists, and their hard currencies, away.
To be sure, the media – often the state’s mouthpiece – propagate the problematic understanding of citizenship as “le vivre ensemble” (living together), which seems to have been uncritically imported from the French political scene.4 The discourse of citizenship-as-cohabitation exhibits a set of inconsistencies: first, it presupposes that the state has already dispensed, and is protecting, the rights and protections of its citizenry. Second, it contradicts the aspirations of marginalized communities who insist that citizenship is, primarily, the capacity to claim those rights and protections under the new constitutional mandate to further involve civil society in political life. Third, this discourse is imbricated with the biopolitical techniques – that is, interventions to control, discipline and manage the population by way of scientific means – aiming to produce the “modern” Moroccan citizen: one who is no longer a recipient of rights but must “realize and actualize” herself through action in her own self-management in a highly competitive market (Murray, 2008, p. 27). While there is no consensus on whether this spatial practice is “a good thing” for the city, a sense of loss of the locals’ lived space is clearly expressed in popular consciousness and humor. It was rumored that the new neighbors in gentrified areas celebrated “the last Moroccan out” in an upscale party. Marrakeshis often joke about the unaffordability of living in their city. Whether these stories are fictitious, they nonetheless contest the new forms of citizenship that result from the commodification of space.
When I returned to Marrakesh in the spring of 2014, my research goal was to learn more about the spatial practices and discursive formations shaping this assemblage of proximities and the potentially troublesome voisinage between subordinate and superordinate, locals and newcomers, state and citizenry, capital and working class. I knew well that narrowing the physical distance among socially distant communities does not go unnoticed or unexamined. Certainly, the subaltern cast their gaze, observe, interpret and, most importantly, speak about the changes underway in their city. What I learned was the degree to which these spatial practices were imbued with historically and ideologically motivated power structures.
This book grows out of my dissertation research and is a qualitative examination of the processes of urban restructuring operating in Marrakesh and their implications on the local population. It is structured around two coterminous modalities of power: control and resistance. To that end, this study puts forward the following propositions: first, I propose that institutions of the national state, private actors who invest in real estate and local enterprises and media institutions are attempting to turn Marrakesh into a world destination for tourists and capital investment. To do so, they endeavor to construct, or “brand”, Marrakesh as a city that offers both a unique patrimony and heritage and a cosmopolitan culture of consumption. Second, I propose that Marrakesh has become a “contested terrain” in which local residents attempt to modify or resist policies and practices that favor external investment and gentrification over local priorities, social practices and urban culture.
The book intersects with the recent literature exemplifying the relationship between political economy and the formation of new subjectivities5 in a way hitherto rarely studied – particularly in the context of cities of the Arab world currently experiencing significant political transitions. This book has the ambitious goal of arranging in one analytic framework questions of (post)coloniality, ideology, heritage-commodification, subjectivity and counter-conduct in the shade of global capitalism. I argue that the state and corporate spatial practices (i.e., gentrification, housing mega-projects, tourism infrastructure), legitimized by a hegemonic discursive structure, instantiate a range of shifting subjectivities which, in turn, shape the ways in which Marrakeshis engage in counter-conduct.
An immediate goal of this study is to understand the degree to which city branding practices square with the often conflicting dynamics of state practice, real estate capital, media and advertising discourses and the residents’ responses. It is therefore necessary to delineate the main actors involved in these dynamics: institutions of the national state, the local government, private actors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. On the one hand, the state orchestrates the depopulation of the historic neighborhoods deemed essential for the branding of the city; it then opens the field to the NGOs and the media to construct a marketable and consumable “patrimony”. On the other hand, private actors who invest in real estate and tourism benefit from favorable policies and sprawl into peripheral land.
Gentrification is central to this study only insofar as it facilitates an analysis of power relations, which arise from some elements unique to Marrakesh. First, it brings together all kinds of actors: the locals, the state, capitalist interests, NGOs, Western gentrifiers and real estate promoters. These various actors use Marrakesh as a space to interact, negotiate and form alliances which determine the city’s future. For instance, much of Marrakesh’s old quarters depend on international NGOs to maintain their patrimonial value and on market-centered economic policies to attract and accommodate international capital, but the city in general suffers resource limitations. Second, gentrification exemplifies, more tha...
