Cities 118 (2021) 103328 Available online 13 July 2021 0264-2751/© 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Contesting “inclusive” development: Reactions to slum resettlement as social inclusion in Tamesna, Morocco Miriam Keep a, * , Bernadette Montanari b , Andrew J. Greenlee a a Department of Urbana and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA b Dept of Geography and GIS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Housing development Social inclusion Slum resettlement Morocco ABSTRACT Since 2004, Moroccan authorities have promoted the development of new cities to provide affordable housing to low-income residents. A major objective of this policy is to provide a site for the resettlement of slum residents. As policymakers justify poverty alleviation and social inclusion to advance their agenda, residents facing displacement have shown substantial resistance to these resettlement programs. Tamesna, the second new city established under this policy, was mainly established to provide a resettlement site for approximately three thousand households living in informal settlements in the surrounding rural commune of Sidi Yahya Zaer (SYZ). Only two-thirds of the households had resettled in summer 2017, and the resettlement process was delayed as some residents refused to participate. This paper questions the factors that infuenced the refusal of many households to participate in the resettlement process that was ostensibly designed to meet their housing needs. Using a combination of ethnography, archive review and interviews with the local population, and housing developers, the paper examines the different circumstances and factors that shape residents’ reactions to the resettlement process. We conclude that the residents’ demands for inclusion diverge from and transcend the authorities’ plans for social housing provision in the new city of Tamesna. 1. Introduction Over the past two decades, the concept of social inclusion has emerged as a key objective for global development institutions, espe- cially those working in the Global South (McGranahan et al., 2016; Miraftab, 2009). Numerous states throughout the Global South have likewise implemented programs targeting substandard housing with the express goal of reducing social marginalization and promoting urban social inclusion (Belda-Miquel et al., 2016; Ferilli et al., 2016; Gilbert, 2007; McGranahan et al., 2016; Miraftab, 2009). While these housing programs vary widely in their scope and implementation, they share the broad aims of eliminating substandard housing conditions under the auspices that improved housing will increase social inclusion (Ferilli et al., 2016). Scholars point out that “inclusion” has become widely prevalent and used among international development institutions over the past several decades (McGranahan et al., 2016; Miraftab, 2009). McGranahan et al. (2016) found that “social inclusion” fgures in over 500 references in World Bank documents between 2000 and 2015 (p. 15). Inclusion also features prominently in the 11th UN Sustainable Development Goal, with the goal to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” (United Nations, 2013). However, scholars also argue that these types of programs frequently fail to deliver the promised social outcomes and produce instead new forms of social exclusion for the intended benefciaries (Ferilli et al., 2016; Gilbert, 2007;McGranahan et al., 2016; Miraftab, 2009). That current policies in developing countries do not meet the citi- zens’ criteria and requirements is not surprising; colonial infuences and interests are still at play in today’s decision and planning. Njoh (2017), for instance, points out that the current housing policies applied in South Africa and throughout Africa are the results of neoliberal market pol- icies; then and now, the primary goals are to monopolize private indi- vidual land ownership which are still largely governed by Western agencies. In his study on Sub Saharan African’s slums, Fox (2013) ex- plains that the interests and lifestyles of a European minority still dominate the concept and design of cities; this in turn facilitates the protection of western interests and the extraction of primary commod- ities and resources, in highly centralized forms of urban governance. Similarly, Pal (2021) explains that in India, the welfare policy has transited to a “so called” public–private participation (PPP) in recent * Corresponding author. E-mail address: keep2@illinois.edu (M. Keep). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2021.103328 Received 1 November 2020; Received in revised form 15 April 2021; Accepted 23 June 2021