Tangier-Med: the territory against its networks[Tanger-Med, le territoire à l’épreuve du réseau]

Through an economic and geographical cross-section, this article on the Tangier-Med complex and its array of new activities is positioned in a reflexive perspective. It focuses on the difficulties of linking an economic structure that is almost imposed by the state, foreign direct investment, global value chains, and the local political economy, which is in a sense required to accommodate what neo-liberal discourses promote as opportunities. The hypothesis that structures the reflection can be formulated as follows: the strong connectivity that Tangier-Med allows and organises undermines the very foundations of the "proximity synergies" on which the consolidation and productive unification of the territory rests. This accounts for the weakness of the state in the face of local economic and social development issues. In the Moroccan context of a middle-income country, as a result, we question, through a multi-scale analysis, the relationship that exists between economic infrastructures and territories, between networks (logistic networks and production networks resulting from the international division of labour) and territories.