Moul Picala

Green Spaces

Fri, 09 Aug 2024 19:12:51 +0100

The ability of urban green spaces to radically transform a city cannot be understated. In particular, it’s not simply having a solitary mega urban park that makes a city have green spaces, though not to discount the functionality of a Central Park in Manhattan or a Golden Gate park in San Francisco. It’s the plethora of trees creating shade, of sidewalk shrubs and gardens, of natural paths and small parks that provide access to a green space throughout the city that truly creates a city with urban green spaces.

Rail Connectivity

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 18:13:21 +0100

Traveling between Switzerland, northern Italy and Germany immediately transforms your worldview of what rail connectivity means. Suddenly every town with a rail station becomes well-connected with larger urban centers. In a country like Morocco, where rural-urban migration is an important challenge, rail connectivity would go a long way to easing those challenges.

Economically, the advantages from increased coonnectivity can be explained by the network effect. There are increasing returns to scale in trip volume when there are more origin-destination combinations. Furthermore, the increased connectivity can have relatively benificial operational congruencies with the more high-volume large-city trunk routes.

Urbanism through Film

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 14:12:45 +0100

It’s not a surprise that film and urbanism overlap. Film serves a medium of social commentary, and urbanism in itself is highly concerned about social outcomes. In some films, the nature of social commentary and urbanism intersect overwhelmingly. It is such intersection, that allows one to draw parallels with urban phenomenon that take place in other cities or in other time periods, and reflect on the current state of the places we live in today.

Public Transport Capacity in Casablanca

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 11:43:41 -0700

Casablanca is currently building tramways. A mode of transport that is suitable to medium sized cities. Many French and Italian cities of urban population around 200K-500K build tramways (think Toulouse, Bordeaux or Florence). Casablanca has a population of ~3.6 million people within its city limits of ~216sqkm. This is a larger population than most urban cores with metro systems. Put differently, that 3.6 million population lives in an extremely dense urban environment. Almost at the level of density of Paris and Manhattan. Yes, you read that right, Casablanca is an extremely dense city. It has a population density of around ~16K/sqkm but if you make the comparison to the city limits of Paris (population 2.1 million, ~87sqkm and ~25k/sqkm, minus bois de boulogne et bois de vincennes) the equivalent denser 2.1 million population neighborhoods in Casablanca have a population density of ~22K/sqkm (and around 98 sqkm) and comparing to Manhattan’s population of 1.7 million in ~56 sqkm (minus Central Park) for a population density of ~30K/sqkm, you can add up neighborhoods within Casablanca to a similar 1.7 million population in about ~72sqkm for a population density of ~24K/sqkm.

about

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

My name is Bilal Islah. I grew up in Toronto, spent the bulk of my 20s in the San Francisco bay area, and now live in Rabat. Growing up I often visited and explored Morocco, where my parents are originally from. A country in the midst of improving its urban form.

This blog is motivated by my experiences in the places I’ve lived and frequented. I’ll also try to draw from my own interests in urbanism, urban economics, development and my belief in environmentally sustainable ways of living.