Conceived in the early 2000s as a flagship urban transformation initiative, the Bouregreg Valley Development Project represents Morocco’s strategic effort to recalibrate the spatial, socio-cultural, and ecological relations between Rabat and Salé. Positioned at the intersection of heritage conservation and developmental ambition, the project enacts a form of state-sponsored urbanism—mobilizing architecture, infrastructure, and landscape design as instruments of territorial integration and national image-making.

In 2006, the Moroccan state institutionalized this vision through the establishment of the Bouregreg Valley Development Agency (Agence pour l’Aménagement de la Vallée du Bouregreg – AAVB). Unlike conventional municipal planning bodies, the AAVB operates as a quasi-autonomous public authority, endowed with exceptional legal and financial prerogatives to bypass fragmented governance and expedite large-scale implementation. This reflects a broader trend toward “agencification” in urban governance, where centralized state actors deploy specialized agencies to produce high-visibility spaces of spectacle and economic promise.

Officially, the project is anchored in four guiding principles:

• Environmental stewardship of the river valley

• Social and civic development through inclusive public infrastructure

• Conservation and adaptive reuse of architectural heritage

• Improvement of local quality of life through upgraded amenities and spatial equity

Yet, these ambitions raise unresolved questions: Whose heritage is being preserved? Who defines “quality of life”? And to what extent is civic development genuinely participatory? As with many large-scale urban interventions, the Bouregreg Valley Project is as much about spatial justice as it is about national branding—where architecture becomes a proxy for legitimacy, and landscap