Vertical Exclusions: Slum Resettlement in the New City of Tamesna, Morocco

In Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, Stephen Graham calls for a new emphasis on the three-dimensional aspects of marginalization and inequality. In this spirit, this paper examines the development of social... [ view full abstract ]

In Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers, Stephen Graham calls for a new emphasis on the three-dimensional aspects of marginalization and inequality. In this spirit, this paper examines the development of social housing in the new city of Tamesna as the resettlement site for residents of the informal settlements in Sidi Yahya Zaer, Morocco. The resettlement plans call for 3,000 households to be relocated from Sidi Yahya Zaer, a rural commune, to state-subsidized housing in mid-rise apartment buildings in Tamesna. Interviews with local residents reveal that the housing solutions offered in the new city are poorly suited to meet the spatial, social, and economic needs of residents. This paper explores the question of why authorities chose to construct a new city as a resettlement site when local residents express clear preferences for other housing solutions, most notably self-constructed homes on equipped plots of land. In interviews, local authorities describe the goal of building a modern new city that will project Morocco’s social progress to the world and attract private investment. Local residents, however, insist that the new city was not designed for them, but for a middle class that can afford an urban lifestyle. Based on three months of ethnographic work in Tamesna and Sidi Yahya Zaer, this paper argues that authorities’ vision of a vertical city creates a housing policy that systemically excludes the very people it is designed to serve.