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Foreign aid for rural development: village design and planning in post-independence Morocco

par Tenzon, Michele ;Fisher, Axel
Référence Planning perspectives, 37, 5, page (949-971)
Publication Publié, 2022-09-05

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

During the late colonial era and after independence, different international organisations engaged in donating foreign aid to Morocco. The United Nations’ technical assistance initiatives were not limited to tackling urban issues, but also engaged in ambitious schemes targeting the rural realm. Among them, the Lalla Mimouna community development project (1957–65), the Projet Sebou (1963–80), and the Programme dʼhabitat rural (1967–72). All three projects showed a concern for the physicality of the rural environment, which is read in this article through a common theme: the village as a rural development and planning unit.Given that they each focus on the geographical area of the Gharb plain, these projects offer a cross-section over the entanglements between their supporting international organizationsʼ underlying development policies and the disciplinary expertise of village planning and design. After providing an overview of the shifting and competing development agendas of the aforementioned UN bodies, we discuss each of the case studies on the basis of unpublished archival material. Then, we discuss the overlaps in the UN bodies’ development ideologies in relation to the persisting ideologies inherited from the colonial era, and their selective appropriation by Moroccan polities. Finally, we argue that whereas planning practices were highly sensitive to the shifting paradigms of international aid organizations, village and rural architectural design remained relatively autonomous. This raises questions concerning the capacity of the disciplines of planning and development studies to carry out their emancipatory missions.