The Legal Protection of the Urban Environment

This article offers an in-depth legal analysis of the concept of the urban environment and the instruments for its protection in Morocco, within the theoretical framework of environmental law as an emerging discipline. The author starts from a rigorous definition of the concept of environment, distinguishing its natural and artificial components and highlighting the difficulties inherent in delimiting the urban environment, whose geographical, functional, and normative boundaries remain fluid and subject to doctrinal debate. The study critically inventories the Moroccan legislative and regulatory texts applicable to urban environmental protection, covering urban law, public health law, classified establishments regulation, and general administrative policing, while identifying their gaps and sectoral, fragmented character. The author concludes with a call for a comprehensive and coherent legal policy for urban environmental protection, based on the systematic integration of environmental requirements into all sectoral planning policies and the establishment of effective institutions with genuine powers of control and sanction.