William Kutz "State and Territorial Restructuring in the Globalizing City-Region of Tangier, Morocco " (2010). Paper 39. Supervised by Professor J. Miguel Kanai. Despite a master degree, this thesis deserved to appear in Scholarly Repository Open Access Theses of University of Miami It is what I found upon this Port City north of Morocco. Indeed it is a master piece about practical 'behavioral' geography in Political Town Planning Social and Economic determinants. Since 2013, William Kutz is Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Environment, Education, and Development at the University of Manchester, after a PhD thesis of Geography obtained at Clark University. His Ph.D. Thesis about land properties economics seems somehow too specific for African City Urban Planning Massive Online Course of Jerome Chenal from Lausanne Polytechnique. William Kutz master degree thesis on Tangier luckily revealed a well written exemplary urban social case study, to appraise the ambition of city planners and deciders to turn their town into a global city, when already having had a historic international trajectory. It is an excellent opportunity to examine how social groups whom effectively play at different levels of society within a sort of global scale. This work refers very well to many modern theories at the respect of cities wanting to be global. This reading is much to recommend. Context After decades of underdevelopment and progressive disinvestments, following colonial period, northern region of Morocco is under the light of large regional and urban planning processes of development. The region is structured by 2 growing mid-size cities (and 3 other small urban centers): 1. Tangier as major port of entry of European tourists or North African workers Europe emigrated and holidaymakers if not returning to their country and travelling by road. 2. Tetuan more interior center but close to Ceuta which is a city Spanish enclave in North Africa. Near-By Tangier a major container port planned for 12 million containers per year has been recently opened. It is settled bordering a new industrial free zone between the 2 cities (and with a plan of new town?) to attract major industrial producers. The City Port of Tangier has been, for long, a historical pole of attraction of Mediterranean cultures and place of international geopolitical interests. Since the start of the new millennium and by royal will, it has huge ambition for a midsize Globalization-City policy based upon:  Development of tourism (somehow inspired by other side of the strait of Gibraltar: "Costa del Sol" (in the instance of historic renewal, sustainable development and megaprojects residential projects).  Intent to create, more of less officially an interconnected network of cities south of Spain: Spanish port of Algeciras and British rock of Gibraltar and Spanish enclave of Ceuta (transit place of many informalities of illicit goods, informal services, and humans’ low-cost labor including focus of attraction of much legal and illegal emigrations).  Marketing efforts have been made to attract new settlements constructions for European retirees or middle east investors (already well-established south of Spain's nearby Costa del Sol)  Major industrial and port facilities willing to cover Mediterranean south and north markets of some 600 millions of people), actively attracting important investors from Spain, France, Germany and the Middle East.  It is also the usual entry to Morocco and North Africa of emigrated workers in Europe. West of the strait of Gibraltar a powerful maritime water Atlantic stream pours into the Mediterranean Sea. The so called Hercules' columns one peak on each side of the strait (Gibraltar's rock and Mulhacen mountain in Morocco) form a geostrategic complex and major social gate between cultural worlds. Tangier at the Atlantic entry of this system is situated north of Morocco. This city port may nevertheless not be considered as a single dominating capital of this northern region of Morocco. There is also an interior urban center in Tetuan which today and historically stay relevant. Meanwhile Tangier has been successively colonized by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Portuguese, England, and Spain and from the start to up the mid-XXth century had an International Administration (1923-1956). When Tetuan was the Spanish colonial capital of a much contested "protectorate" over Rif Mountains of Berber culture. W. Kutz examines the impact of post-colonial period effects; may be missing slightly that the disinvestment produced by the relatively slow outflow of foreign capital was not substituted because of the central underesteem of the region. Emphasis he makes rightly on the increasing repressive centralism of past "director" of Morocco. Nevertheless the crisis of the eighties made World Bank and International Monetary Funds introduced Moroccan national economy restructuring plans and by side , contributing to the social effects in the form of urban dwellers turmoil, riots and social unrest during this decade of the eighties. All this contributed to change the national perspective upon urban development, including its northern region. This came together with a progressive establishment of a central technocracy and the swift from a policy of substitution to imports (impulse up to the seventies) into efforts for open the economy. A free zone has started in Tangier since the beginnings of nineties. Rescaling may also have occurred once achieved the marocanization processes of construction of wealth (unequal and dysfunctional) and once more established postcolonial economic powers could have paid more attention to new opportunities of profit, helped by a some democratic opening and King Mohamed the VIth will. With the support of international financial agencies and cooperation agencies to impulse social transformations. Regional scale and urban development have turned quite prominent in these strategies. Modernity upon "sustainable development", participative planning or right to habitat (or "right to the city") induced programs such as: "cities without dwellings" during the first decade of the millennium as an effort to promote popular access to housing by a mixture of actions, including the private sector. It was introduced around 2002 and frame worked up to 2005 before being implemented. Last (2014) UN-Habitat Report delivered on the State of African Cities Report puts more neutral information upon larger cities but bearing in mind the Arab Spring. Previous delivered report (2009) had some concern of mid-size cities and cases included Tangier's main projects. Recently in Rabat's October 13th of 2013 World Summit of Local and Regional Governments (a special of "Jeune Afrique" on this subject) perhaps may be the feeding source of Jerome Chenal’s MOOC. Previous world summits having taken place in Istanbul. Today massive investments cross-bordering associate Morocco with Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Middle East and even further. Morocco Central Authorities (at the service of central proprietary interests well preserved in the regional and urban framework of social and technocratic agencies ?) promote nevertheless, through 3 main agencies concerned by Tangier a mixture of important private interests national as well as international ones. Mediterranean regional interests are both economical (through private big groups) but include too regional public ones. For example since Spain autonomous regional governments can have foreign affairs (Cataluña, Valencia, Andalucía, Madrid and others). And a point of social feasibility concern: if most of social work could be assumed by foreign projects of humane cooperation, rather than by genuine regional resources initiatives, would? The supply of jobs be enough qualitatively and quantitatively to compensate and turn sustainable if the different social layers do not learn to work together to promote everyone profit? The Euro Mediterranean initiative intended, end of the past decade with some support from France and Germany to involve regions of France, Italy and elsewhere. Africa's and United Nations Agencies are interested too. Very significant too are rich Gulf countries, Middle East investors including Turkey. After W. Kutz "Unique character of globalization in Tangier is not simply due to its local cultural and spatial position in the contemporary world economy, but is the result of a long transformative process that is largely situated in post-colonial development ideologies and practices. It is possible to situate the “global” role Tangier has played throughout history, even before formal colonization in 1912." writes the author (p.12). Though the author privileged the second half of the 20th. Accordingly today it falls within what can be considered a "globalizing city" (coined by Grant 2009). The thesis starts its review when the independence (1956) passes by 1982 when International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank led structural adjustment of the Moroccan state. New urban managerial transformations are observed since 1983. Central State command felt, under the pressure of social turmoil, the need to impulse policies that could face more positively Morocco's urban social dynamics and recast its views also on the development of its northern region. Sustaining the Thesis inscribes (in italics reader's shorts) to quote: • "Various conditions within which managers are influenced to undertake specific responses to the questions with which they are posed. Pointing at the priorities set for upper classes or already wealthy economics groups of interests • Need to maintain and improve the existing city in terms of both physical and social infrastructure. With technocrats ambitions to have things done and achieved as far as possible and fixed in contractual terms. • Initiatives undertaken by diverse urban managers. Despite willing to be social and participative after the modern speeches about local democracy (since 2002) but not hesitating in "cleaning brutally" to imposed "policies" to informal as long established settlements. Central or too close 'bidonvilles' have disappeared but social home supply stood well insufficient. • "Undertaken actions are always political: benefiting specific social groups and disadvantaging others." When not calling social program kinds of infrastructure more profitable to wealthy classes, such as the highways built in popular areas for the mobility of upper ones but still called projects in social areas. • "Uniqueness of “globalization” in human history (Jones and Philips 2005 p.3)". • Global city activities are often understood through the role that select urban elites play in the global economy (Florida 2002, Sklair 2005 p.4). • These revolve around “command and control” functions driven by the producer service sector...". (Sassen 2001 p.4). Sometimes even with over ambition on the sort of global patterns expected by the marketing or oversizing of megaprojects... as a sort of way to manage rent's opportunities for every improvised legal regulators or intermediate services providers? • Facilitating the means by which global service industries and their subsidiary industrial and leisure activities can be harnessed in their respective locales (Zukin 1992, Krätke 2006 p.4). Nevertheless with enough attraction to major industrials as evidence in existing free zones past (opened in the nineties but affected by Asian textiles clothing competitions) or new ones attracted by low wages hardly respecting the legal minimum and new markets opportunities. • "Diverse needs of the urban and regional citizenry (Ross and Shakow 1980, Moulaert et al 2003 )"(p.4). • "small transnational cohort of competing “starchitects” (e.g. Rem Koolhas and Frank Gehry, and Norman Foster) versus global architectural firms (e.g. Faulconbridge 2009)" • "Effort to make cities more like those in the economic core (Castells 2000, Wu 2004)." • "Globalization is understood as the rescaling of (particularly economic) relations (Grant and Nijman 2004 p.6)." • "Structural forces of globalization and their imposition of foreign cultures and practices (Peck 2001, Sklair 2005 p.11)." Field study highlights 3 broad sets. 1. The identification of key urban issues (construction industry transnational suppliers) 2. Scores the political nature of managerial actions (main urban agencies and relations with major private players) 3. Then examines if these activities effectively respond to the problems initially identified (urbanism operations, public services as well as macro projects and some of their social effects). Author devised an alternative collection strategy that is most closely aligned with "qualitative comparative analysis" and considered 2 periods of data collection in Tangier and at the Capital city of Rabat. (p.26) Chapter 3 Analyzes the "negotiate process from 3 scalar perspectives and enquiry about 3 main epochs (1) Nationalist planning (1958-1967); (2) Regional planning (1968-1982); (3) Urban-global rescaling (1983- ). He used a "procedure-based post-structural discourse methodology to analyze Moroccan Economic and Social Development Plans from 1956 to 2004." (p.16) (p.47) Chapter 4 State rescaling and the re-production of Tangier space: centers specifically upon how the long-term reconsolidation of Moroccan administrative relations ... while managerial institutions have grown since the 1980s that claim to support more participatory engagement ... These new institutions have shifted their priorities from the provision of needed basic services for local inhabitants to more speculative ventures with the private sector, also known as urban entrepreneurialism (p.48). Practically the author used a Lefebvrian method of dialectical analysis ... (1991) theorized space as a synthesis of three distinct but interrelated qualities (conceived, perceived and lived spaces) (p16), (p.68) Chapter 5 Globalization on the margins, Tangier’s socio-spatial fabric: "approaches the globalization of Tangier from “on the margins.” ... Although urban managers are indeed producing their own unique form of urban globalization, the benefits have been unevenly distributed.” uses a constructivist-embedded methodology to understand the culturally-informed agency behind the production of the built form ... extrapolated from Faulconbridge’s (2009) (p.17) study of “embedded” place-making as a way to highlight the negotiative and mutual relations forged by foreign and domestic parties to construct iconic global city formations. For some minimum quotations on annotated social issues:  "Tangier City Center ... does not appear to provide substantial positive feedback for the majority of Tangier’s population." (p.69) at the date of the enquiry which is still soon to appreciate fully its effect on employment at regional level.  “contextual” facets of marketing, building regulations, and network relations situate Tangier’s endogenous globalization." (p.78)  "Meager minimum wages for unskilled labor have aggravated situations of working poverty. Underscoring this new form of exclusion is the fact that informal settlements currently exist in and out of the free zones" (p.87).  "Need for urban managers to physically engineer Tangier’s image as a global city has a direct impact on actively razing informal settlements rather than investing in the provision of basic infrastructure, when such options are entirely feasible." (p.91) Chapter 6 sets the conclusions which in short may be: “However problematic, this process of Moroccan rescaling has not led to the devolution of the state, but represents a restructuring of its authority." (p.95). "Current drive for economic development in the city evidences a unique alteration in urban management. Viewed from its ideological, practical and physical manifestations, urban entrepreneurialism is comprised of new legal frameworks that condition how urban problems are identified" (p.95).