Quand les « marges » territoriales, sociales et économiques bougent. Le rôle du métro et des tramways dans les métropoles maghrébines : quelques pistes de recherche

Abstract

Tunis, Algiers, Casablanca have been equipped very recently with urban transport systems on rails (underground and tramways). How these innovations have modified the connection between the town centre and the suburbs, how they have increased the mobility of poor dwellers, how rich people more and more settled in peripheral districts have disliked these new transport lines, how finally the public transport have changed the socio economic structures of some districts? Have the urban « fringes » moved? Such are the questions asked in this paper. Firstly in Tunis (first « light rail » line in 1985) with a passing time of 30 years, then in Algiers where both underground and tram opened in 2011 thanks to the petroleum and gas financial resource, finally in Casablanca where after long hesitations, a double tram line was inaugurated in 2012 and where an ambitious trams network is planned. If the new public transport brings a real fluidity to the population mobility, it seems not to have created for all of that a larger social mixing; boundaries are appearing or reinforced between urban districts; the decline of private cars traffic is not for the moment the one which was hoped.

Keywords

• Algiers
• New subway and tram lines
• Tunis
• Casablanca
• Change in the social and territorial structures
• New mobility