Belgeo (Mar 2021)
Oran : des terres agricoles sacrifiées pour un urbanisme sauvage
Abstract
Nowadays, peri-urbanization is recognized as a global phenomenon prompted by different determinants (demographic growth, industrial development, rurality crisis, etc.). In fact, peri-urban territories are spaces which receive the excess of the urban demographic growth as well as they welcome the new planning and development projects (housing promotions, establishment of various activity zones, development of communication networks, and maintenance or development of certain types of agriculture, etc.).In such peri-urban areas where urban and rural mingle, strong tensions around the land are exacerbated. The matter of control and management of land is one of the heaviest and most complex issues: if land is the keystone of socioeconomic activity and if it is at the crossroads of issues and development orientations, its complexity often hinders the definition of strategies that can probably resolve them. This means that land has such a strong influence on the configurations and developments of urban and rural territories as on city-countryside relationships.The objective of this article is to understand the recomposition processes of Algerian rural territories since the independence (1962), to explain the outstanding mechanisms of evolution and to decipher the strategies developed by public actors in order to transform agricultural land into building ones (land to be urbanized or for future urbanization) in the peri-urban spaces of large Algerian cities. To give more meaning and reality to the Algerian rural world dynamics, the investigation focuses on the peri-urban area of Oran, the second city of Algeria and regional metropolis of Orania; it aims to shed some light on some of the mechanisms for the reappropriation/reallocation of agricultural land for the benefit of urban projects.
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