A NOMADIC OUED

Abstract

Can we develop tourism without evicting local inhabitants? A tourism development package is being bulldozed into the historic medina of Fès in Morocco by an international ‘aid’ agency. A living community is forcibly evicted on the excuse that their craft industry pollutes the river. Out of sight, there is little improvement of living conditions in the new settlement; yet there is extensive destruction and the clinical preservation of building shells to house new tourist-oriented program. The cultural wealth of Fes is being mined for commercial interests of the West. The ideological fallacies of such neo-colonial development are questioned for their tremendous social costs and inequity. Instead, this project seeks to rebalance the relationship between tourists and inhabitants through a community-managed development. Located in the voids of the labyrinthine city along its river, it combines an artisan school, a training hotel, gallery/archives and cooperative shops. These program are housed in a water treatment machine that filters the effluent from the surrounding craft workshops and supplies clean water to the tourists, relieving the pressures of water in the city without unnecessary eviction. Tourists, nomads of the contemporary age drift through the machine halls, inhabiting it seasonally in search of ludic interactions with the locals.