Territorial Dynamics and Community Resilience: Transient Housing in Post-earthquake in Al Haouz Rural Regions in Morocco

The integrative strategies for transient housing related to vulnerable rural communities in Morocco, in the aftermath of the recent earthquake, introduces their unique organization and lifestyle. Adopting a field-oriented approach, this study embraces a descriptive-analytical method with a focus on field-survey and post-occupancy-evaluation. The criteria for understanding the adaptive territorial dynamics of transient housing are derived from on-site investigation. Field-research was mainly conducted in the earthquake-affected villages in the Al Haouz region at the south of Marrakech, villages of Asni, Tlet Nyaakoub, Tizi Ouadou and Tafghaght. While drawing insights from community engagement, questionnaires, and spatial observations, sets of criteria are categorized through socio-cultural, physical-functional, and technical-structural elements. This research reveals, accordingly, key insights into the adaptive measures taken by rural communities, who proved indeed tactical patterns of resilience and resourcefulness in their transient housing typologies that are genuinely exposing their local topographies and territories. This study identifies, henceforth, sites, where communities have set temporary housing forms that derive out of their sociocultural context. This demonstrates their local capacity in facing challenges through resilient adaptation processes. Research findings would contribute to developing a strategic emergency territorial planning framework, emphasizing spatial considerations, community engagement, and the preservation of cultural practices as rooted resilient savoir-faire. The purpose of paper is to shed light on the relevancy of local know-how of vulnerable rural communities that have their genius-loci to urgently solve consequences of natural catastrophes. In addition, these findings prove that rurality is not limiting but capitalizes accumulative frugal innovations that ought to be considered once dealing with resilience and sustainability. The local rural communal tactful actions to deal with emergencies are hence to be further researched to set more advanced strategies of transient housing in the global scale.