La baie d’Alger, un espace côtier prisé, entre pressions d’urbanisation et gouvernance territoriale

Abstract

The metropolisation of cities is a global phenomenon, which particularly affects coastal and economically attractive cities (haliotropism). The bay of Algiers, the economic core of the Algerian capital, is affected by intensive urbanization; this uncontrolled artificialisation, which has often been spread out in an anarchic way (precarious or state collective housing) is often transgressive over existing laws and planning instruments and has caused a significant environmental degradation of the coastal area. Certain urban areas, built on watersheds or on the edges of Oueds, have already been subject to disasters in the past (the floods of Bab El Oued 2003, Oued Korich 2001). The aim of this work is to analyze the urban growth in the bay of Algiers using remote sensing techniques. First of all, this will make it possible to identify the spatiotemporal trajectory of the urbanization during the last three decades, the emphasis is then put on the legislation in force and its effectiveness for the control of this littoralisation, and, in the end, one is interested in the morphologies of this expansion, by observing the spatiotemporal typologies of the forms of urban growth on the whole of the wilaya.