Fuelled in part by an open skies policy with the EU and the arrival of lowcost air carriers, tourist numbers jumped from about three million in 2003 to seven million last year, while the government aims to reach 10 million by 2010. To accommodate the surge, six tourist cities with a capacity of 100,000 beds are currently under construction along the Moroccan coast. Marrakesh, however, remains the country’s leading tourist hotspot as it is easily accessible by road, train and airplane.
As it was. The medina changed well be-fore the arrival of mass tourism. Meanwhile, Marrakesh’s formerly bountiful gardens have been nearly obliterated.

“About half of the city, which is nearly nine miles [15 kilometers] in circumference, is occupied by gardens,” wrote British merchants George Cowan and R.L.N. Johnston in 1883. “The Moor believes not only that a garden was the original birthplace of mankind, but also that the souls of virtuous Muslims will realize supreme beatitude in the radiant bowers of the Mohammedan paradise.” In addition to spiritual considerations, the city’s early architects knew that gardens and fountains functioned as a natural cooling system – one that’s much needed when summer temperatures soar well above 40 degrees.

But the ancient medina is no longer the “garden city” it once was, In fact, hardly a tree remains. Mohamed el-Faiz, a professor of economic history at Marrakesh’s Cadi Ayyad University, estimates in his book “Marrakesh, Patrimony in Peril” that the amount of green space per inhabitant during the 20th century dropped from 650 square feet to 20 square feet as the population of the old city grew from 250,000 in 1960 to 450,000 in 1982. Today, over one million people live in and around Marrakesh.
The greatest damage may have been done outside the medina, however. Maps dating to 1898 reveal that Marrakesh lay surrounded by a green belt of palm groves, gardens and agricultural fields. Following the colonization of Morocco in 1911, the French started the construction of a new Marrakesh, simply known as la nouvelle ville (the new city), to the west. By 1986, the green areas located to the north had largely fallen prey to urbanization, and by 1990, only the royal garden south of the medina remained.

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