Since the 1950’s Morocco has steadily undergone the process of transformation from a primarily rural to an essentially urban country. In 1950, less than 25 percent of the population resided in a city; by 2000, Morocco’s urban population represented nearly 57 percent of the country’s inhabitants. With this rapid urbanization, the shantytowns (bidonvilles in French, l-brarik in Moroccan Arabic) that first began to appear in the 1920’s have come to house more than 8 percent of the city-dwelling population. As Lamia Zaki argues in her article, “Transforming the City From Below,” the shantytown is something that inherently develops in opposition to both the State authority and the “regular urban fabric.” The State itself employs a kind of administration that Zaki refers to as “management by absence,” the objective of which is “to fix the shantytown dweller in an infra-legal situation, a ‘pseudo-clandestineness,’ never formally recognizing his (her) rights as a city-dweller.” As a space, the shantytown has been similarly underrepresented in contemporary Moroccan literature, with the notable exception of the novelist Muhammad Zifzaf. Though Muhammad Zifzaf is one of Morocco’s most important modern novelists, he remains little discussed in European languages. This paper will look at Zifzaf’s novel "Muhawilat ‘aysh" and the way in which it represents the space of Casablanca’s bidonvilles. The novel attempts to remove Casablanca’s shantytown dwellers from the pseudo-clandestineness mentioned above by both restoring them to the largely socially selective landscape of Moroccan literature and granting them visibility within the larger intellectual/cultural discourse. James C. Scott has suggested that the public performance required of subordinates by elites produces a discourse that he has termed the “public transcript.” In contrast, there is another discourse that takes place backstage among subordinates beyond the gaze of those in power, inaccessible to them. As a deliberately obscured discourse, this “hidden transcript” is often lost to the historical record. Zifzaf’s novel, then, serves the double of function of figuring the shantytown into Moroccan cultural discourse and writing this “hidden transcript” of the oppressed into the public record. Here, I will examine the aesthetics of this project and the ways in which Zifzaf both succeeds and fails in his execution.

Urban geography has tended to neglect the multiplicity of human processes in contemporary Middle Eastern cities; the literature is framed by simple dichotomies such as 'modernity' vs. 'tradition' or 'destitution' vs. 'wealth.' As the modernization of the Gulf states since the 1950s has rapidly transformed the region into a major global destination for large numbers of foreign workers, gated housing compounds for expatriate professionals have become prevalent. Not much is known, however, about these housing compounds or the attendant social networks and human geographies associated with them. This research employs mixed methods in an examination of the nature and structure of different housing compounds in Bahrain and a study of their residents’ social experiences. By combining archival research, field surveys and observation, and interviews, a picture of compounds as elements of the Bahraini urban landscape emerges. Extensive field surveys were undertaken to understand the spatial distribution and layout of housing compounds, and to develop a typology of compounds. Informational interviews were conducted with a number of stakeholders: local academics, government officials, and real estate professionals. These interviews provided insight into how compounds have affected (and been affected by) the Bahraini city. Finally, a series of in-depth interviews were conducted with compound residents in a variety of compounds. These interviews shed light on residents’ mobility, social networks, contact with Bahraini culture, and overall impressions of compound life. Preliminary results illuminate the variety of ways in which mobile transnational professionals living in compounds experience 'community' and conceptualize 'home,' and bring into relief differences between gated housing compounds and the larger Bahraini urban fabric. Various social, cultural, and demographic factor interact with compounds’ built landscapes and locations to shape residents’ experiences, both positively and negatively.

The story of contemporary Esfahan is told as a tale of two cities. The first tale is of the former capital of the country, a heritage site containing acclaimed gardens, fountains and the finest examples of Safavid architecture, the other is about industrialization and urban development. The first image, a source of national pride and international recognition often stands opposed to the second, one that continuously pushes forwards through population growth, urbanization, and urban sprawl. Environmental perils, such as the effects of air pollution and the drying up of the Zayandeh Roud river that flows through the heart of the city are seen as result of modernity and capitalism, which naturally eat away at the heritage zones in the old city. Consequently, literature on city planning in Iran which deal with the relationship between the modern and the traditional structures of the city focus on conservation and protection of ‘heritage environments’ from the ‘modern’ demands of society. However, as this paper seeks to illustrate, this perspective is changing, with new conceptualizations of the ‘modern’ which seek increasingly to integrate the old structures (baaft)of the city with the new. This paper will focus on two constructions in Esfahan. The first is the Jahan-Nama tower, which was built approximately 800 meters from the famed Naghshe Jahan Square. The proximity of the tower to the square made it a highly controversial issue with criticism from the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization, and threats from UNESCO to remove the square from the World Heritage Site list, condemnation from Nobel Prize winning human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi and eventually a court order to remove two floors from the complex. The second is the Nazhvan Natural Park, a 1163 hectare park in the West of the city. Contrary to traditional geometrically shaped gardens such as Bagh-e Hezar Jarib (square) and Bagh-e Farahabad (rectangular) the park is planned as a wild natural conservancy which will retain the ‘natural’ ecology of Nazhvan. Based on trade publications, city records, ethnographic material from 2008 and 2009, together with interviews with city planners, both public and private, particularly from Shahr-o-Khane, the private developers involved in both the cases, this paper seeks to highlight the changing perspectives of what it means to be a modern city, transforming Esfahan into a living city. It will be argued that these new conceptualizations are consequences of new global ideas of modern cities and urban ecologies.