More mobile, less common? The transit sociality of Rabat’s Central train station

Abstract

Over the past few years, Rabat has been undergoing a double-process of modernisation and transformation into a heritage site. Its central railway station, which is currently being transformed into a large interchange hub, reflects the city’s aspiration to become a global metropolis. Previously, this place functioned as an urban magnet where people also came to stroll and socialise. The article explores how the refurbishment is affecting its functional and symbolic uses. Official sources promise that the renewed infrastructure will be a great new ‘milieu de vie’, a notion that summons up a vision of togetherness and an aspiration to metropolitan high life. But will the future project still welcome everyone and every type of sociality? Structured as a before-and-after comparison, the article describes ethnographic observations conducted at the station’s successive entrances. It shows that the new entrance layout may make the infrastructure more functional, but that it offers less opportunity for social activities. Causal interpretations concerning the role of design in facilitating or preventing social practices are proposed. The article concludes that the capacity of transit infrastructures to become a ‘common’ place depends on the connection between physical features and cultural skills. Since Rabat Central Station has become an arena of conflict between tradition and modernity, the paper’s contribution aims to reposition the controversy within a broader perspective, which connects the architectural and social dimensions of a local culture of transit (im)mobility.

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