Turning rooftops into cafes

Overview & Synopsis

This article researches the relationship between urban public and private nighttime space during the lockdown imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic in Casablanca (Morocco). Based on ethnographic research, this work shows how public and private spaces were disrupted and reinvested with various forms of presence and appropriation by the inhabitants, especially in the popular neighbourhoods of Casablanca. This appropriation occurs in an intersection of new forms of nocturnal occupation linked to these spaces' social and cultural gender roles. The material boundaries between private and public spaces are also subject to conflict and even masculine domination during the nights of confinement. The results show how women usually occupy appropriated spaces and are even occupied by men, transforming them into exclusively male spaces. During this health crisis, the nightly closure of cafés led to a redirection of men towards private spaces or borders such as the rooftops of buildings, stairwells, and patios. The appropriation of rooftops, which in regular times is an exclusively female space used for drying clothes, consists of a transformation of these spaces for nocturnal use during the lockdown. The men install tables, chairs, and ashtrays to mark and prohibit this space from using women at night. Collective recreational practices such as hookah smoking in these spaces are carried out in a kind of translation from the male public space of the café to the female private space of the building rooftops.