Political context and professional ideologies: French urban conservation planning transferred to the Médina of Tunis

Abstract

Abstract The present paper discusses the transfer and adaptation of French urban conservation plans and other planning instruments for the Medina (old city) of Tunis and traces out the development of the ideologies of the picturesque and the nation which underpin planner discourse on the Médina. Under the French protectorate, (1881–1956), attempts were made to protect the built fabric of the Médina using heritage conservation plans. In the immediate post‐colonial period (1956–66), the original residents departed to be replaced by rural migrants. Urban decay prompted the creation of a Médina planning body, the Association Sauvegarde de la Médina de Tunis (ASM), which in its early years fought demolition schemes. With the successful implementation of two reconstruction operations (late 1980s) and a major slum clearance operation under way (early 1990s to the present), there is a general shift in the image of the Médina, with a conservation area plan now receiving official support. On the basis of interviews with planners and architects working on projects in the Médina, the paper examines attitudes and ideologies towards Tunis' built heritage and instruments available or to be developed for its protection. A clear shift is observable from the early 1970s, when the ASM team was motivated by vigorous debates on the nature of planning for the Médina, to the mid‐1990s, when architect‐planners, no longer working in a multi‐disciplinary team, are chiefly involved in implementing programmes germinating in the political hierarchy ‐ and hence gain room to act by working in close harness with the paternalistic State.