Maroon 307dial-up connections (which incur phone charges as well) has precluded
the building of an information nation connected from home. As sites of
public leisure, les cybers, as the Moroccan cybercafés are called, are linked
to the traditional cafés that preceded them on the city landscape.^27 Yet
in terms of clientele, they are quite different from their predecessors. In
cybercafés there is a roughly equal proportion of women to men during
the daytime hours. In conventional cafés (glaciers, modern cafés, deco
cafés), women make up less than 10 percent of the clientele; and in the
literally thousands of cafés that fall into the category of les cafés populai-
res (traditional coffeehouses found throughout the city’s neighborhoods)
women are nowhere to be found. Before addressing the implications of
such a radical distinction, it is important to provide an overview of the
activities taking place in these Net-connected spaces. I will then dis-
cuss the ways in which cybercafés are situated in the larger network of
Casablanca’s older cafés and tea salons since the significance of practices
like chatting, surfing and emailing can only be fully understood when
placed in the context of a greater public sphere.
n the city of Casablanca, the tourist areas adjacent to the “old I
medina” and the commercial districts of Maarif and Gauthier have the
highest density of cybercafés. The quartiers populaires,^28 home to the city’s
poorest residents, also house cybercafés within walking distance of mar-
kets and residential clusters. This is in contrast to upper-tier residential
neighborhoods, like Polo and L’Oasis, where one likely needs to drive to
find a cyber site. I would suggest that this is due to two factors. One, the
mean income of residents in the upper tier allows inhabitants to afford
both home computers and Internet dial-up service, thereby lessening the
need for cybercafés. The second reason may be that the urban planning
practices for these areas assume occupants are automobile owners, and
therefore sites of public interest are more likely to be spread across greater
(unwalkable) distances.
at cybercafés can be found throughout the city of Casablanca Th
(though in greater or lesser densities, as discussed above) is indicative of
their increasing presence in the public sphere. Cybers have been incor-
porated within the city’s complex architectural heritage and are therefore
located in a variety of building types. The most obvious cybercafé space
to the pedestrian eye is in renovated former storefronts. Most of the city’s