Casà è di chi l'abita. Forme e significati dell'abitare a Casablanca

This work points out the development of the city of Casablanca, from the colonial period under the French Protectorate until nowadays. A multidisciplinary approach, from the history of architecture to sociology and visual ethnography, has been used to analyse the different urban policies developed for social housing and the inner meanings that the inhabitants link to their home and to the general idea of inhabiting. The analysis of National Archives sources in Morocco and French has been reinforced by a field research. The fieldwork has been carried out in two different moments: in 2015 and in 2017, with some people living in what we have defined as the main models of social housing, implemented during the French government: the slums, the cités ouvrières (workers gated community) and the collective buildings. These spaces have been in the past, and are still nowadays, battleground of social conflicts, in opposition to the dominant system of power. Casablanca, and Morocco in general, is carrying out a strong policy to eradicate slums and informal settlements and the idea of social housing has been implementing with a facilitation to the access of property, not always affordable for people with low incomes. At the same time, thanks to the stability of the monarchy, huge foreign investments are overcoming to finance the construction of international financial hubs and multinational offshore activities. We have then explored the question of what the role of the inhabitants within these processes is and mostly what their narration of the history that involves them is. The realization of an ethnographical documentary has helped us to investigate these subjects.