The Historical Texture of Asileh: The Mutual Relation of Tourism Industry and Local Landscape

As the shaping and developing nucleus of human communities throughout history, historical texture has a significant role in the cultural heritage and reflection of local landscape. In recent decades, simultaneous to the development of tourism industry, these textures found another role in urban life. As touristic destinations, these textures extensively affect the economic life of cities. The multiplicity of aims in expanding tourism industry along with the revival and representation of cultural values and local landscape in these textures are the apparent challenges in the way of reviving and renovating historical textures, particularly in the developing countries. The historical texture of Moroccan cities reflects these challenges. The revival and renovation of the historical texture of Asilah, done with the aim of “preserving the ancient texture with a particular focus on tourism,” reflects the influence of the local landscape of historical texture of the city in various dimensions, either positive or negative.
Considering the total procedures and actions of revival and renovation of the historical texture of Asilah on the one side, and field observations on the other side, this work seeks to investigate the scale of the influence of these factors. The findings of this investigation shows that the program of the reconstruction and revival of the medina has acted like a bilateral sword, buttressing the local landscape of the city in one aspect and unsettling it from other aspects. On physical dimension, these actions have enhanced the readability and quantitative entity of the texture, but have negatively affected the qualitative dimension and local life. Though, the interferences preferred by tourists and their subsequent activities have been less destructive in comparison to other cities in Morocco.