Lyautey's Dual-City Policy

When Resident-General Hubert Lyautey arrived in 1912, colonial practice was to demolish old cities and rebuild. Lyautey did the opposite: he decreed that new European cities (villes nouvelles) would be built adjacent to — never through — existing medinas. Architect Henri Prost drew master plans separating old and new with green buffer zones. This single policy decision preserved the medinas of Fes, Marrakech, Rabat, Meknes, Essaouira, and every other Moroccan city. It is perhaps the most consequential urban planning decision in African history, and the reason Morocco has more intact medieval cities than any other country.