RGP Cycle Three Grantees and Projects
Mona Atia: The Limits of the "City without Slums" Program in Morocco: When Slum-dwellers Resist
Over 1 billion people or nearly 1/3 of the world’s urban population live in slums, mostly located in the Global South (UN Habitat 2003). Morocco has witnessed the growth of its slum population since the 1950s as result of a rural exodus. Since 2003, largely in response to the Casablanca bombings, the Moroccan government declared a war on slums with its flagship “Ville Sans Bidonville” (VSB) or "Cities without Slums" program. Earlier this year the Kingdom declared 51 cities as slum-free; however despite the celebrated success, the program failed to meet its declared goal of rendering Morocco slum-free by 2012 and continues to face serious obstacles, resistance and limitations. This research project examines the VSB program through a case study of how slum-dwellers actively resist the government’s attempts to eradicate their built environment and inculcate them into proper neoliberal development subjects. What are the successes, limits and failures of the VSB initiative? How and why does the population resist the VSB policies, and what are the spatial patterns associated with this resistance? In order to answer these research questions, the researchers employ a case-study approach of two slums in Rabat and Casablanca. The methodology includes in-depth interviews with relevant authorities, community associations and slum-dwellers in addition to archival research and the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Mona Atia is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the George Washington University. She is a critical development geographer whose areas of expertise include poverty, philanthropy, human development and the spatial politics of marginalization. She is author of Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Her work has also appeared in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Social and Cultural Geography, the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, and Middle East Report. She currently holds an NSF CAREER award for a project that examines the production, use and impact of poverty mapping in Egypt and Morocco. She is also engaged in a project on the Moroccan “City Without Slums” Program, funded by the Arab Council of Social Sciences.
