Borderless Connections
A Traveling Market as an Agent of Resilience and Change in Borderscapes
Y. Chergui (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
Joran Kuijper – Mentor (TU Delft - Theory, Territories & Transitions)
Piero Medici – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / AE+T)
J.M.K. Hanna – Mentor (TU Delft - History, Form & Aesthetics)
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Abstract
This thesis challenges the political imagination of the border as a fixed structure, aiming to change the way the public thinks about and interacts with borderscapes. It explores how borderscapes, particularly those between Morocco and Algeria, serve as platforms for showcasing state identity and ideology, while simultaneously becoming spaces where border communities question and redefine these ideologies.
Research shows that despite the border closure between Algeria and Morocco, border communities remain connected through informal cross-border trade. These communities continuously find ways to cross the border to meet their needs, creating new opportunities for social and economic growth. This impacts local markets and ways of living, fundamentally challenging our understanding of borderscapes.
Taking the informal as inspiration for rethinking urban spaces, the project proposes dynamic design strategies for redefining the borderscape, using Oujda, a city in northeastern Morocco near the Algerian border, as a case study. It builds on the existing politics of tolerance, fostering the creation of self-organized settlements along an abandoned railroad that once connected Algeria and Morocco. The long-term vision is for these growing settlements near the border to lead to the gradual reopening of the border, with a traveling market serving as a connector and an agent of resilience and change in borderscapes.