Landscape Study of Urban Dynamics in Mining Towns in Morocco. The Khouribga Phosphate District

Discovered in the 1920s, the phosphate basins, of which the country is one of the world’s largest exporters, have made Morocco’s fortune. These basins, concentrated primarily in the central regions of the country, have fundamentally transformed Morocco’s economic landscape, making it the world’s largest phosphate exporter, controlling approximately 75% of global phosphate reserves. Thousands of people have been employed in the different areas related to their extraction and processing, entire towns and districts have been built to house workers, managers, employees. Ports have been built for cargo ships to transport the ore, which reaches the ocean through kilometers of underground pipelines, creating a complex industrial infrastructure network that remains vital to Morocco’s economy today. At the head of these operations is the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), which, since 1920, has been directly and indirectly the responsible and promoter of profound territorial, landscape, and urban transformations. Starting from the 1920s, Morocco experienced a season of modernization and industrialization, related to mining activities, which changed the face of a country devoted to agriculture and livestock breeding and where nomadism was a widespread practice. This transformation was particularly dramatic in its social implications, as it introduced wage labor and industrial time management to communities that had previously followed seasonal rhythms and traditional forms of economic organization.