Damascus has long occupied a privileged place in the mythology of Arab nationalism. Whilst the political history of the city has been well-rehearsed, there remain significant gaps in our understanding of the urban and social history of Damascus. This paper examines the development of Damascus during the interwar years, between the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the independence of Syria. In the context of French imperial rule, the city was reinvented as the capital of an externally-imposed nation-state and underwent a series of profound social and physical transformations. A central plank of France’s imperial project in Damascus was the establishment of a regime of urbanisme, intended to supervise and direct the physical development of the city. Urban planning was a critical field in which the mandate authority represented itself as a force of modernisation and through which it pursued such diverse objectives as sanitation, security and conservation. This paper interrogates the priorities of the mandatory urban planning regime, as revealed through such key documents as the 1936 Master Plan for Damascus. It examines the vision for the city that was promulgated by the French mandatory authorities, asking a series of questions: How did French authorities conceptualise the urban population? What sorts of spatial divisions and communal identities did they emphasise? In what terms did the mandatory authorities understand the needs of locals? Is there any evidence of consultation with community leaders having taken place in the preparation of the 1936 plan? Which sectional interests were most served by the planning regime, and to what ends?