Urban and Regional Planning in Colonial Morocco: From Protection to Exploitation

Abstract

During their colonial years in Morocco, both France and Spain adopted an official discourse that was protectionist and paternalistic: the supposed task of civilizing a “virgin space” where, from the perspective of progress and modernization, everything “had to be done” contributed to the elaboration of many urban and regional plans. Both the discourse and the plans masked an intention to exploit and control. Proximity to Europe, joint actuation with other colonial powers in Tangiers, and some rivalry with what Lyautey was doing in French Morocco, raised the level of Spanish colonizing operations. French interventions were the model to be followed: French urban planning offered an excellent example of systematic tactics for occupying, controlling, transforming, and exploiting Moroccan territory and Moroccan society. Yet although part of the Spanish colonial legacy in Morocco was an unusual effort to create many urban, regional, and thematic plans (this planning was even previous to and better than what was...