Bildung und Wandel zentralörtlicher Systeme in Nord-Marokko

Abstract

This paper seeks to transfer central place research to areas of non-European social systems. A part of northern Morocco is used as an example. At the start of this century, two central place systems can be identified which had virtually no connection with each other and were oriented towards two basic social structures: 1) a hierarchically ordered system belonging to the oriental urban economy and 2) a system of equally-ranked closed cells in the ephemeral-periodic central place network of weekly markets. The latter corresponds to the semi-autarchic pastoral patriarchal society of semi-nomads and miners with only semi-fixed settlement. Later parts of the paper describe the changes in these central place spatial structures caused by the colonial intervention since the beginning of this century, their adaptation to the changed socio-economic conditions and their increasing degree of interlinkage between them. In the past few decades, a strongly differentiated hierarchically ranked system of central places has developed in northern Morocco which has resulted, at almost every level, linkages between a traditional weekly market with a more or less large permanent settlement which has its own central place importance. The process of integration between both central place systems is not yet complete. The resulting new central place system has pronounced oriental-rent capitalist characteristics and it is this which differentiates it from the central European parallels despite a similar hierarchy.