This paper explores the common paths modernization in the administration of cities has taken in the nineteenth century world. Taking the concept of the ‘global middle east without boundaries’ as a guiding light, it situates the Ottoman Tanzimat city within the context of nineteenth century European urbanization. Fuelled by industrialization and middle class formation, big cities in nineteenth century Europe experienced gigantic levels of population growth and urban development. Ottoman town centers, first led by port cities, underwent very similar developments in the second half of the nineteenth century, as seen in the case of Bursa—the historic capital of the Empire with symbolic significance to the ruling dynasty. The Tanzimat reformers in their quest to save the Empire from disintegration looked increasingly to European forms of knowledge to build their armies, bureaucracies, and cities. Urban development became one of the obsessions of these reformers where they could showcase their achievements to both the European and Ottoman public. While eyeing European capitals for examples of modern municipal reforms they also sought to instill an Ottoman identity onto physical public space. This paper brings together the process of global municipal developments and the Ottoman project to create an original synthesis out of the interaction of the foreign with the domestic. In particular, it looks into the case of Ahmed Vefik Pa?a who became the legendary Vali of Bursa in the second half of the nineteenth century. Transferred from his post in Paris as the Ottoman ambassador during the heyday of Baron Haussmann—the infamous creator of the modern Parisian landscape—Vefik Pa?a became inspector general to western Anatolia with special orders to supervise the reconstruction of Bursa after a destructive earthquake wiped out the beautiful panorama of the former Ottoman capital city in 1855. Primarily using documents from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives along with the UK National Archives and the Archives Diplomatiques of France, this paper tells the story of how various actors interacted during Ahmed Vefik’s tenure in the early 1860s. It argues that the urban reforms of Tanzimat were the crux of what the reform movement stood for: increasing the infrastructural power of the state by administrative, financial, and technological reform; using this infrastructural power to restore order and security in social life including the provision of public health and hygiene; and creating an aesthetic landscape resistant to urban disasters for the enjoyment of the public gaze.