Cinq Continents (Jul 2019)
La maîtrise d’urbanisation autour du champ gazier de Hassi R’mel – Algérie, entre réalité et action publique
Abstract
The mastery of urbanization around the gas field of Hassi R'mel - Algeria, between reality and public action. This paper is at the crossroads of the two themes: urban planning and environmental governance, in urban sites around major-risk gas industries. Our choice fell on the city of Hassi R'mel - Algeria, located in southern Algeria (520 km south of the capital) and home to one of the largest gas fields in the world. We are interested in highlighting the urbanization control strategies through the exurbanization process as a pilot project of the Algerian environmental policy, with a focus on the relocation project, which is one of the ten stakes of exurbanization and representing the primary factor of success or failure of this process. We favored a temporal and spatial comparative approach based on the questionnaire and the directive interview. We targeted a sample of 160 households residing in the slum of Hassi R'mel before exurbanization and 120 households among them relocated in the new city of Bellil. This survey was supplemented by semi-structured interviews conducted with 22 local urban operation actors. By analyzing their responses as well as official statistics, the results obtained show a strong inadequacy of these new places of residence to the aspirations and way of life of the households in particular at the sociocultural, spatial and environmental levels.
