A project on the territory. Responding to a particular logic of production

The non regulatory periphery of Tangier calls for a re-founding project. Continuing to regard these
areas as a problematic or defective share of the city will only extend and accentuate an approach which only focuses on remediating contingencies. While the introduction of basic services and community programmes is a necessary objective, the emphasis should rather be placed on what these interventions can generate in a larger sense. The state has the opportunity of granting a more permanent sense of citizenship than through the mechanical resolution of sanitation and transportation problems, or than the construction of sparse educational, health or administrative facilities. Without undermining the importance of these actions, engaging with a territory of this magnitude obliges to undertake further ambitions regarding the role that these represent within the communities they relate with.

So the question arises as how to address the matter of sprawl in a positive manner, proposing mechanisms that move away from standard – and standardised – procedures. Rather than considering the urban conditions of these areas as a problem that needs to be resolved, how can this territory be problematised?

It is important to stress the fact that the areas in question have been produced through very different political, economic and social processes, and are built over different topographic and terrain conditions than the rest of the city. These particularities allow to recognise them as a territory in themselves, contiguous but different from the pre-existing Tangier. This territory can easily be distinguished from
the rest of the urban footprint, resulting in a polarisation between a more compact centre and a more dispersed (but nonetheless dense) periphery. This relationship can be better articulated as Tangier actually being composed of three different “cities”: the Medina (with its traditional courtyard houses), the French planned city (composed of boulevards and 8 floor buildings), and the non-regulated domain. Each of

these cities has a particular prevailing typology and cultural specificity, while coexisting under a same administrative body. In this regard, Tangier’s recently created Urban Agency published in 2011 a document showing the areas which are “open for urbanization or development” for the entire country. For the Tangier region, the development area reaches up to the urban limit, envisioning large areas for housing and infrastructure projects.

This document however disregards the vacant land contiguous to the non regulatory neighbourhoods, this “middle territory” made up of self-built housing and strong slopes (except for some indications regarding the future restructuring of some areas). The superposition of the existing footprint and the areas destined for development leaves an area of uncertainty that could eventually serve the expansion or continuation of an undifferentiated housing development. Considering the possible expansion areas, what are

today territories in the margins of the city will become the gravitational centre of the formerly peripheral territories. What project can be drawn over such a territory?

Observing the way in which the territory is organised, it is important to note how in a context where there were no planned orientations, the resulting condition is a non oriented, undifferentiated sprawl whose main system of reference is the actual terrain over which it is built. Terrain conditions, together with simple and low cost building techniques, become the main urban guidelines and constraints. At the same time, the scale and density of the non-regulated areas allow to think of them as a separate reality, and

by doing so, imagine a new underlying order for it. Rather than attempting to link them and understand them in relation to the more structured parts of city, what is proposed is a procedure that would allow for a certain autonomy. Whereas the peripheral areas of Tangier appear as a difficult and fragmented area to the inhabitants of the plains, the logic of the topography sheds light on how to approach any kind of intervention within it.

We can look at the existing developments together with the available land around them, and consider the entire resulting surface as material for project, as the problematic itself. When doing this, the particular conditions present in the territory in question become evident. It consists of a collection of hills, of soft but repeating slopes, that host a series of more cohesive settlements. At the same time, the entire area has very little flat land, and any intervention necessarily should deal with the slope as a condition.

A Delaunay projection of the territory (triangulation of the topography) allows breaking it down to its planar components and selecting areas of intervention which are of different surfaces and slopes. The project should be capable of proliferating over the territory, following the growth and densification of housing clusters.

The intention is to propose a new possibility for these areas. The project seeks to create a new scenario where scale and geometry are used in order to generate spaces for the community. Given the real necessity of incorporating elements of civility so to make the area effectively manageable, the action of
the state is reoriented towards providing the basic programmes and services in a more strategic way. Thus, the state not only provides the structures, but also an infra-structure, a new way of understanding the territory and of orienting future development, which is based on the idea of citizenship and allows for spaces of representation to arise. These interventions would represent an anomaly, a moment of exception within the homogeneous fabric, inherently attracting activity and creating points of gravitation.