Requiem for a Rural Hinterland

Morocco provides an interesting framework for re-examining planetary urbanisation in relation to planning policies, which shape spaces that were considered “rural” until now. In Morocco, a country deeply affected by metropolitanisation, the agricultural areas on the periphery of major cities are undergoing rapid economic, social and landscape transformations. City growth is silently disrupting ways of life and economic activities, as well as rural-based social organisations. These changes are critical because Morocco is a country where agriculture and, more generally, “rurality”, is still vitally important. This explains why the relations between the city and the country are deeply affected by the regime’s contradictory new policies. These include: a neoliberal approach, which is undermining the political order for the sake of accumulation, draining the countryside and pursuing urban sprawl; and an authoritarian approach that is designed to preserve the social and political order and involves keeping a tight rein on the rural community, which traditionally supported the regime. To explore these contradictions, we examine the periphery on the east of the Rabat-Salé-Témara region, where the control of urban sprawl provides a particularly interesting perspective when analysing how the authoritarian state has developed in a context of laissez-faire regulation. When urban sprawl interferes with the limits between town and country and fragments peri-urban “grey spaces”, it becomes the focus of bitter negotiation between public and private actors, between social groups and between use value (for the rural population) and exchange value (for state-supported urban investors). The first part examines the power relations between the main actors involved in the urbanisation of Rabat’s grey spaces. The second part explores their impact on rural and farming communities in three successive phases. The first phase examines the recomposition of the state, with the new city model, using the case of Tamesna. The second phase examines the recentralisation of public action to consolidate the metropolitan influence, which involves the agency responsible for developing the Bouregreg Valley in a municipality on the outskirts of Salé. Finally, the third phase focuses on the challenges of reconfiguring state policies in response to the changes caused by urban spread. Here, we examine the case of two rural municipalities in the second ring: Shoul and Sidi Yahya des Zaers.