Colonial capitals were laid out as ordered diagrams where buildings signify institutions

Evidence

‘I shall explain to you the philosophy of the thing’, Lyautey began, as they got off the train at Rabat and entered the new capital. ‘The buildings as a whole form a fan. At the centre of the fan, in the mounting – those are the Administration. Beyond them, where it broadens out, are the Government Ministries placed in the logical order. You understand? For example, here, Public Works. Next to it: Roads and Bridges, and then Mines. Next to Agriculture, Forests. This, here, is the gap for Finance. The building has not yet been built, but it will be intercalated in its logical place.’ One of the guests interrupts with a question: ‘Monsieur le Maréchal’, he asks, ‘what is this kiosk for?’ To which Lyautey replies: ‘That? That is for the sale of maps.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 501

Categorization

• XREF: The fan-layout capital explicitly renders political abstraction as built order — a concrete instance of the exhibition-effect the book’s whole argument traces; the kiosk-for-maps detail is the absurdist reveal that punctures the system’s own claim to completeness.
• ADDENDUM: The ‘grafting & growth’ piece’s trees-as-infrastructure logic and this city-as-diagram logic share the same technique: making an abstraction physically present so it reads as natural rather than constructed.