Journal of Engineering and Architecture

Informalities as Resistance: Case Study of a Middle-Class Housing Neighborhood in Rabat, Morocco
Rim Mrani, Jérôme Chenal, Hassan Radoine

Abstract
The urban landscape of housing in Africa generally and Morocco specifically is largely affected by informalities of housing. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact and drivers of these informalities on the architectural-urban scale. To achieve that, we investigate a private neighborhood comprising single-family row houses each with a private courtyard/garden located in Harhoura, Rabat. Accordingly, the paper investigates three different Spatio-temporalities - authorization, construction, and contemporary periods. Therefore, the implemented mixed research method is a descriptive-normative one employed through an overlay of the urban facades of three periods analyzed by the use of a morphological analysis grid establishing technical outcomes further explained by a questionnaire-based ethnographic study. Hence, in addition to a plain unconformity between the three temporalities articulating institutional level, individual level, and combined informalities, the results express materialized needs of the residents through common, homogenous, and symmetrical patterns of informalities. Henceforward, this paper empirically sheds light on the informal urban dynamics of Morocco beyond the urban poor by stressing the aspects of spatial resistance towards the formal limitations.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jea.v10n2a5