The Saharan city of El-Ayoun, located on the Atlantic coast and the Saguia el-Hamra River, is the traditional hub of the Reguibat tribe and more recently the administrative and political center of the disputed Western Sahara. Founded in 1938 under Spanish colonialism, El-Ayoun has grown tremendously under Moroccan administration since 1975. The demographics of the city have shifted over time as more non-Sahrawi Moroccans have moved into the region hoping to benefit from expansion of commerce and government incentives to initiate enterprise and benefit from the lower cost of utilities. With a total population of over 200,000, Moroccans of Arab and Berber descent now outnumber the indigenous, Hassaniya-speaking population of Sahrawis in El-Ayoun, and usage of the Hassaniya dialect of Arabic has become increasingly marginalized by the rising dominance of Colloquial Moroccan Arabic in public spaces. Tensions between inhabitants remain palpable as an increasing influx of Moroccan settlers from the North disrupts the ambitions of Sahrawi activists who support the Polisario Front and government-in-exile of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) in refugee camps based in Algeria. Polisario supporters have staged several key protests in the city over the past decade, and Morocco renders access to the territory difficult for foreigners, especially human rights monitoring groups and journalists. This paper considers the historical development of El-Ayoun from a mobile pastoralist center to a modern North African city and traces the intersection of urban development with the politics of the ongoing Western Sahara territorial dispute. We argue that the Moroccan state has employed policies of urbanism as a strategy to claim Saharan space and enforce systems of administrative control. This political change has indelibly shifted an area known historically for the fluidity of the desert environment and cultural hybridity established through the dynamic interchange of tribal inhabitation, networks of commerce through caravan trading, and mixing of Arab, Berber and sub-Saharan African populations in the region. While El-Ayoun is often held up as a successful example of urban development in Morocco, we interrogate the ways in which the state narrative of integration is challenged by ongoing ethnic and political tensions surrounding the protracted forty-year territorial conflict.