Casablanca

A century ago, the modern metropolis of Casablanca, which today houses some three million inhabitants, was a small and unimportant coastal settlement. At that time, the Medina of Dar el Beida -- as Moroccans often call the city -- had only about 25,000 inhabitants. However, the arrival of the French changed Casablanca's destiny forever. Foreign investment and the construction of a large artificial ocean port transformed Dar el Beida swiftly into the new economic heart of Morocco. Like many other cities in the developing world, Dar el Beida attracted many times more migrants than it had jobs to offer. Consequently, unemployment increased and slums sprang up across the city. These ominous developments, however, did not stop hundreds of thousands of new immigrants arriving over the last century. As such, social disaster became inevitable. The author of this book explores the causes and consequences of persistent massive rural-to-urban migration to Dar el Beida during the twentieth century.