The King of Morocco has stipulated that as Africa matures in the coming years, he would like to position his country to provide leadership in construction, architecture and engineering.  To accomplish that goal, he has incentivized major corporations in Morocco to build now for their employees in areas of housing, recreation, education and workplaces and utilize international expertise to provide knowledge transfer in construction, architecture and engineering.

Working with one of these primary corporations, the design for Mazagan is to define not only a major new town, but one that is clearly about the potential for urban living and job creation in the 21st Century when the automobile is diminished as a force in planning.

The 1400 Hectare site overlaid on Manhattan would stretch from 80th st. to the Battery.  It is located in a relationship to Casablanca in a similar way as the Irvine Ranch and Orange County is to Los Angeles and is very similar in both climate and relationship to the ocean.

Linear in form, the property abuts an existing rail line and toll way on one side and a national road that is just inboard of the beach and ocean front properties on the other side.  It is also located between the two coastal towns of El Jadida and Azemmour.  Most of the local jobs are in El Jadida and the nearby port facility of Jorf, but there will be potential to commute to Casablanca by the toll way and more so when the rail line is converted to accommodate passengers, as is part of our plan.

Underlying the planning is the concept of a Technopol.  This concept attempts to create jobs and economic growth by means of wrapping institutions of higher learning with research and development facilities and then offering subsidized adjacent incubator facilities nearby.  Conceptually this is “learning from Silicon Valley” rather than “learning from Las Vegas”. 

One of the primary goals of the plan was to create discrete places or villages that could have at their centers a public open space and a walk-able pedestrian environment.  The villages, of course are significant entities for phasing and discrete growth that can achieve interim levels of completion for the overall development.

At some point in the future there is a possibility for some form of local transportation which could begin as small electric rubber-tired vehicles and when appropriate and or necessary evolve to light rail linking Azemmour to El Jadida and passing through each of our village centers. 

One of the primary design concepts is to accommodate the existence of automobile circulation in both private and service vehicles, yet to also understand that the impact of a minimum of 4 lanes of traffic serving each village would be detrimental to each village center if designed to pass through them.  With this in mind as well as the reality that the traffic patterns will extend linearly through the site towards the major job base in Jorf and El Jadida, the concept embraces a gently curvilinear boulevard that is near to each village center but allowing the through traffic to by pass these pedestrian zones.  In concert with this strong linear design element is a similar and parallel linear landscaped parkway that can begin as a bicycle path and is designed to be the alignment for more significant transit in the future.  This linear park serves also as a secondary visual organizing element that complements the Boulevard yet acts as a counter point in rhythm through the development.  This park space passes directly through the village center public space and can be accessed by foot with out the interruptions and hazards of primary automobile traffic.

The secondary road patterns are designed with specific and limiting widths to discourage through traffic and support the local development and neighborhood.  The objective is to define the pedestrian, in all cases, as the reason for the development and by restricting vehicles to only the necessary it is expected that the transit service will be necessary sooner in the development rather than overly accommodating the automobile unnecessarily into the future.  The primary concept for sustainability is to diminish the negatives of the automobile in as early a timeframe as possible, yet recognizing that there is a certain need that will be necessary throughout the development window. 

The crossing boulevards are both secondary circulation distributors and also aligned with deep grids of trees will serve as landscape buffers between each village.  One will extend visually as a major pier into the ocean. 

Finally the planning utilizes the Armature Concept that establishes as many forces that restrain and control the evolution of development as possible.  Using defined open space, landscape zones, transit corridors and street grid dimensions and patterns, we are attempting to create an underlying genetic code to the master plan that will extend and guide the development into the future.  Accidentally and perhaps prophetically the twin linear forms that intertwine with one another resemble the graphic of a DNA molecule and thereby accomplish a graphic statement to our purposes of planning for the future