The results shown on this page are a summary of the first conclusions from the inter-collective research process undertaken. To dive into this historical reality, researchers from different cultural, professional and discipline were involved in. The research methodology was rigorous and consistent. It has been attended and worked on original sources; it has been created a database of referent information and it has been generated a body of knowledge.
The historical context of study: the modern colonial period in northern Morocco, covering 1912 to 1956, and the specific topic dealt: promoting official housing by the colonial administration, have yielded to the investigation into the origin of Moroccan modern city and the reflection of the rational housing. This period raised specific and unique features in the history of Morocco and Spain. The radical transformation of the phenomenon, the geographical proximity between the two protagonists and its proximity to the contemporary load value in the content which is the subject of this study.
“Cities are a set of memories, desires, signs of a language, are places of barter of words, desires, memories. What matters to me Marco Polo is to discover the secret reasons which have led men to live in them, reasons that may be worth more than all crises. ”
Invisible Cities . Madrid: Editorial Siruela, 2002. P.15
The circumstances described have been led to take a critical approach to research, from a cultural and materialistic approach. From this position, the concepts of modernity, progress or City are not premises, but require the definition of the different ways of modernizing existing ones.
The origin of modern Moroccan urban phenomenon and its link with the housing issue has been presented from ten invisible cities: the symbolic city, the city power, the Islamic political city, the modern political city, the city legislated, the peripheral city, the unexpectedly city, the cultural city, the city housing, and finally, the invented city.
The habitat city is formed by the different strategies to promote housing and provide housing space. This city has been developed especially for affect, directly, on the issue of the presented research: the official Moroccan promotional housing (VPO). The second part of the study it has been finished with the development of a catalog of existing projects in the cities studied so far: Tetouan and Larache.