ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the study of the implementation of waterfront projects in Maghrebi metropolises that was already started in a previous work on the Lake of Tunis projects. Waterfront development is a process with a certain number of convergences and shifts mirroring Euro-Mediterranean waterfront mega-projects that started in the 1990s in Marseilles, Barcelona and Athens. Two main developments in the current development of waterfronts in Tunis and Casablanca must be put into perspective: first, in the mid-2000s, the recentralization of urban action in the hands of the head of state, the Prince, through prestige projects and metropolitan strategy processes; second, the creation of private project management structures for prestige projects. Metropolitan government has refocused on the state since the year 2000. First, the notion of a presidential project' or royal project' emerged in the 2000s and increased in importance since then.
