Urban Agriculture as an Integrative Factor of Climate-Optimised Urban Development, Casablanca

In March/ April 2009 the UAC Project started an awareness raising campaign in Casablanca. The main places selected to host this campaign where those sites within the periurban space of Grand Casablanca, where the piloting activities of the project had been initiated some months ago. Besides we decided to campaign also at place Mohammed V, the most frequented inner-urban place of Casablanca, to hold a press conference and to celebrate a final event nearby/ respectively inside the meeting room of our local office, evenly situated adjacent to the City Center and to the Central Market.

The overall objectives of this effort (milestone 7.3) were to get into touch with the public audience in urban and periurban settings, to inform local stakeholders and inhabitants especially at the four sites of the pilot projects on the planned activities of the project, to introduce the project to experts, scholars and students in Casablanca and to build up and enlarge capacities to promote and implement the project. In close cooperation between mainly Terre & Humanisme, and ZEK/ kubus-TU Berlin, but also with contributions of all other Moroccan and German partners involved in the project, a multifold strategy had been proposed, discussed, and finally applied to achieve these objectives. The building blocks of this strategy consisted of seven activities

1. We created the label of “VIsion VErte Casablanca - VIVE CASA!“ for our activities emphasizing that the overall leitmotif/ guideline for dissemination of the project’s efforts was driven by an innovative approach of ecologically shaped „green“ and sustainable urbanism.
   
   
2. All pilot projects designed and produced a bilingual poster (Arab/ French) showing the place of the pilot and giving some images/plans / drawings concerning the measures to be deployed to realise the pilots. Furthermore a large poster on the overall approach of the project had been made. We agreed on a corporate design by using the same layout and varying only content and colours.
   
   
3. Together with our Moroccan partners we presented the project in several radio transmissions during the period of 21.3 - 4.4.2009 to address the public audience in the Grand Casablanca area, striving to make them interested in the nature and opportunities of urban agriculture in Casablanca. Furthermore, a press conference has been organised. The project had been mentioned in TV newscast.
   
   
4. A couple of lectures at the Universities of Casa¬blanca and a few Round Tables have been organised by our Moroccan partners, highlighting the intentions of the project and its piloting activities.
   
   
5. Students from Open Space/ Urbanism faculty of TU Berlin presented the results of a study on water solutions at the Agence Urbaine, at the two universities of Casablanca and at the INAU in Rabat.
   
   
6. At the sites of the pilot projects detailed information (flyers on pilots and project) was spread among the inhabitants concerning the intentions of the project as a whole and especially of the objectives of the locally implanted pilot projects. In addition, the coordinators of the pilot projects organised workshops, events and contests to celebrate the start of the local activities.
   
   
7. A large number of give-away items (caps, pens, balloons) showing the logo of Vision Verte Casablanca have been produced at very low costs in Casablanca and distributed during the events at the pilot sites and during all other events.
   
   

The activities of this awareness raising campaign contributed to make the project and its efforts more visible among the public audience (inhabitants of Grand Casablanca), the urban planning community, academia and students at the two universities of Casablanca. Because of the fact that quite a lot of direct and indirect Moroccan stakeholders attended the events of Vision Verte, the project benefited not only from the opportunity to get into touch with those persons and experts. The project also learnt more about the nature and the problems of agriculture in the Casablanca region by interacting and communicating with practitioners as well as with political and administrative stakeholders. Thus the project was able to enlarge its capacities in terms of gathering specific knowledge concerning a more realistic evaluation of the state of the art of agriculture within Grand Casablanca.