ABSTRACT
Every resident in one of North Africa’s old cities knows his and her houma (neighbourhood). The concept is difficult to pin down, being more than just houses and streets in a quarter of the city. Jacques Berque in his 1962 Le Maghreb entre deux guerres, explores a houma, the rue du Pacha district, of the Tunis medina. Thirty-five years later, I explore two neighbourhoods in the same district looking at the sights and sounds, which along with the people and buildings, make the identity of the changing streetscape.
While the first part of the article revisits the ground covered by Berque, the second part draws on personal experience of the rue Marr neighbourhood. (An interlude looks at central souks.) Drawing on notions of space versus place, I explore the notion of ‘texture’ as a possible approach to the sensory richness and human diversity of medina neighbourhoods. An enhanced awareness of the ‘texture’ of the streetscape, it is argued, may have implications for future initiatives for the conservation of the city. The concluding section draws on recent literature on gentrification to explore issues of authenticity, taste and the (re)creation of texture.
