Rabat Prost Plan
Core idea
Ville nouvelle beside medina; green structure
Why it matters
Capital planning in North Africa
Description
A plan for the new capital of the French Protectorate in Morocco, prepared by Henri Prost for Resident-General Lyautey from 1914. It laid out a European ville nouvelle of boulevards, administrative quarters and zoned residential districts beside the walled medina, which was preserved largely intact, with green belts, protected vistas and servitudes controlling building heights and character. Rabat was one of a series of Moroccan cities Prost planned on similar principles, and the plan was substantially carried out during the Protectorate.
Significance
The Prost plans in Morocco became the leading model of French colonial urbanism, praised for early heritage protection and comprehensive zoning yet criticised for institutionalising spatial separation between coloniser and colonised. Rabat in particular shaped debates on the 'dual city' and on the colonies as laboratories for planning techniques later reimported to France.
What shaped it
- The British Empire and modern colonialism (1600 – 20th c.)
- The garden suburb (1903)
- The public park (1843–1858)
Plans it influenced
- Casablanca Prost Plan (1917–1922)
- Plan Obus for Algiers (unbuilt) (1931–1934)
- Istanbul Henri Prost Plan (1936–1951)