Six Decades of Coastal Urban Expansion in Greater Agadir, Morocco (1967-2025): Spatiotemporal Reconstruction, Structural Drivers, and Planning Implications

<div> Greater Agadir is among the most rapidly urbanising coastal agglomerations </div> <div> on the African Atlantic seaboard, yet its spatial development trajectory has </div> <div> remained unquantified because the most consequential phases of post-earthquake </div> <div> reconstruction and expansion predate the Landsat satellite archive (1972). </div> <div> This study presents, to our knowledge, the first continuous quantitative </div> <div> reconstruction of urban built-up area in Greater Agadir across 58 years and </div> <div> four temporal epochs (1967, 2003, 2014, 2025), covering the three </div> <div> administrative communes of Agadir, Inezgane, and Dcheira El Jihadia. A </div> <div> validated GeoAI pipeline combining panchromatic archive colourisation and </div> <div> deep learning semantic segmentation was applied to the 1967 declassified </div> <div> Corona KH-4B imagery and three modern Google Earth Very High Resolution </div> <div> acquisitions. Regional built-up area grew from 196.4 ha in 1967 to </div> <div> 3,040.7 ha in 2025, a 15.5-fold increase. Annual growth velocity followed a </div> <div> non-linear three-phase trajectory: 46.3 ha/yr during the post-earthquake </div> <div> reconstruction interval (1967-2003), 35.1 ha/yr during state-directed </div> <div> consolidation (2003-2014), and 71.8 ha/yr during periurban explosion </div> <div> (2014-2025). The peripheral communes of Inezgane (8.1-fold) and Dcheira El </div> <div> Jihadia (12.5-fold) expanded faster than the primary commune, documenting </div> <div> the absorption of former rural Souss plain settlement nuclei into the </div> <div> metropolitan fabric. Three structural drivers are identified: post-earthquake </div> <div> seismic exclusion zone determinism producing a linear metropolitan form </div> <div> exceeding 20 km, tourism-driven coastal land economics establishing a demand </div> <div> displacement cascade, and rural-to-urban migration driving periurban </div> <div> informalisation and threatening the plain's agricultural economy and aquifer </div> <div> integrity. These findings establish the empirical baseline from which SDAU </div> <div> planning effectiveness, seismic risk accumulation, and agricultural land </div> <div> conversion can be evaluated against the full 58-year historical record. </div> <div> <br> </div>