In French Modern (1995), Paul Rabinow analyzes the French colonizers’ implementation of “comprehensive urban-planning legislation” established in April 1914 in Morocco whereby the “native city” (medina q’dima) was separated from the “new city” (la ville nouvelle). The language of the “old” and the “traditional” were separate from that of the new and the “modern”. Rabinow analyzes how this period of the French colony under the leadership of General Lyautey was dedicated to structuring of a “modern” Morocco: a Morocco which would both “preserve the social integrity of [the] cities” while creating a “new, modern social ordonnance.” Lyautey’s controlled planning of the “new” Morocco became the model for constructing a social, physical and bureaucratic systems of the “modern” upon the colonized spaces of society, urban structures and and the systems of communication that had long made up the “traditional” Morocco.
Rabinow elucidates how France used its colonies as the model of the modern for the French who were able to put into practice a physical, technological and geographical ordering and discipline of public space. As ordinances were put into place following the first 1914 decree, such as those which regulated the widths of streets, style and height of buildings, and architectural codes related to design and color, Moroccan modernity took shape not just as an architectural or urban forum for the eye to behold, nor the spectacular use of newer traffic patterns that actually bettered those of France. If anything, the colonizers quickly realized that the “sclerotic” institutions of France would only delay this project of modernization. Instead, Rabinow demonstrates that modernity as a project in colonial Morocco was about establishing “isles of modern civilization” whereby the modern French juxtaposed the “anarchy” of the Moroccan. In short, the French colonizers’ use of technology and urban planning produced a modernity as not only a tour de force of French design, but as a site for understanding the necessity for these practices of modernization.
And today with modern technology, we see how urban planning can be helped with mobile apps that make up for past interpretations of public space, such as Waze which allow drivers to move through cities designed hundreds of years ago with streets barely wide enough to accommodate anything more than a contemporary one way traffic flow. Cities like London not only benefit from Waze as users’ own movements feed information into the system hence keeping everything realtime in updates on traffic closures and hazards, to include user groups allowing people heading in similar directions to communicate together.
But what Waze has created in terms of networking is merely a digital form of the older CB radio (citizens band radio) whereby users would be able to communicate through a short-distance radio waves used by truckers through the 1990s. Even through there are trucker apps that perfectly replicate the voice interface like TruckChat, Waze allows the information on traffic to come through without the necessary user interaction—simply navigate around the blocked tunnel and your movements as a user are also fed into the system which in turn becomes information for drivers behind you. Yet, Waze is supposedly the modern version of the discussion format of CB radios whereby truckers would share information as well as a joke or two.
This raises the question if our technology is really all that modern at all, or if we are reinventing the wheel with new bangs and whistles. Indeed, we must ask if any of our innovations are helping the earth in its current ecological decline. I mean should’t a real improvement with Waze begin with people ditching their automobiles for public transport, bicycle or a good jog to work? What seem innovative and modern, might actually be anything but as our planet’s marine life is becoming extinct, our air so polluted that many parts of the world going outside necessitates a gas mask and natural disasters are ballooning in both size and breadth of devastation. Should not the technological aim in recreating older forms of traffic communications perhaps be put to better use, for instance, in remapping if people even need to travel long distances to their jobs in the first place?
If anything, the ruin of our planet needs to be understood in the context of modernization and reconsidered in the future plans of western modernity and technology. And it begins with our dependence upon petroleum for transport and for the creation of plastics, most of which are not recyclable, all of which are not infinitely recyclable. We might ought to look towards more traditional cultures which might hold the key to modern innovations towards creating greener cities and consumer models.
While Lyautey’s the nouvelle set the scene for the new and improved Morocco while also projecting the new and improved France upon the face of Morocco, the distance established between the ville nouvelle and the medina q’dima lent meaning to the “modern” by virtue of these spatial and aesthetic separations. The reinforcement and legitimation of the colonial project whose ethos lie in improving the “archaic” physical and institutional spaces of Morocco as it turns out was entirely unnecessary. The traditional city design of the medina q’dima is turning out to be the best ecological model for urban planning with cities like Fez, founded during the 8th century, which continue to be populist urban centers for living and trade. And they are a fitness gym to boot with over 3.9 square kilometers with over 9,000 streets, many of which are wide enough that you can touch both sides from standing in the center and for which most any destination is a short walk away for any of the old city’s 200,000 plus inhabitants.
I recall leaving my house in Fez’ old city and walking towards the central shoe market—no names for streets, no traffic lights or traffic whizzing by to negotiate. I simply walked, moved around the elderly and those walking at slower speed, a few times a donkey carrying metalware required a moment’s wait, but soon I was able to move around the donkey and get to my destination. I memorized the city through movement for which streets names were useless and knowing where the honey and oil markets were helpful as I could conduct a day’s work and return home without the need of anything other than my own body. Might the French have recreated the wrong modern and instead skipped over what was the more evident innovation for the new city: that of the walking city?
