L’esperienza dei villaggi di colonizzazione agricola nel Portogallo salazarista (1933-1974)

Architectural and urban features of the last two centuries are nowadays spatial markers, which are shaping the downtown landscape of Northern African cities. This material production is associated to the European colonisation that produced a general transformation of African countries. The potential value of 19th and 20th century urban heritage needs to be enhanced and requires an affective valorisation to play a proactive role in the development strategies, at the national and local level. Those urban realities often reflect specific and relevant social and economic arrangements, in spite of the lack of appropriate conservation and development initiatives respecting their tangible and intangible heritage. Its preservation requires the understanding of multiple and often conflicting models and meanings, but also the awareness of their contribution to the history of African towns. The large amount of the ordinary inheritance produced during the last two centuries induces to reflect about the contemporary role of this urban legacy composed both by monumental and ordinary architecture. This chapter deals with the non-monumental areas: residential or small production districts mainly built for the European population, the colonial middle class. Their landscape is the witness of the post-colonial transformation: they represent the colonial fabric and they are a productive portion of the town. The experience shows that the protection of “ordinary” heritage used by common citizens is a crucial topic for town conservation and development. The simple introduction of restrictions in physical transformation is not appropriate to this kind of heritage. Fast transformation societies introduce so many economical and financial values in historical districts that cultural institutions look like totally powerless in protecting the ordinary heritage. Despite the pessimism generate by the effective weakness of the juridical protection instruments we are observing an interesting new way of colonization of colonial quarters. During the last decades, parts of the old residential fabric were transformed in order to include new economic activities. Material spaces shaped during the colonization are nowadays proposing an appropriate environment for small services or immaterial productions. Despite to the new accommodations built in the outskirts, recent but not contemporary quarters offer suitable conditions for start-up immaterial enterprises, small private schools, and middle class commerce. Geographically speaking, those areas offer the advantage of centrality, they are relatively well equipped (public transport and IT services e.g.) and the quality of the buildings is correct for the needed image standard. Last, but not least, colonial buildings offer an appropriate size for this kind of economic activities, the real estate propose commercial correct surfaces, not too small and not too large. The tertiary sector is a crucial one for Northern African countries, they are transforming this traditional segment to a really contemporary one: IT technologies and the insertion into the global word, modify the structure of the tertiary sector. This transformation is very interesting for heritage preservation because those activities can transform the building structure and the urban fabric respecting their cultural heritage shape, as indicated also in the Unesco 2011 HUL directive. Quarters as Mers Sultan in Casablanca, La Fayette in Tunis or the “Harmony” area in the khedivial Cairo are transforming themselves into middle class contemporary activities areas: probably the best way to introduce an active process of dynamic heritage conservation