Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Algiers is far from the Arab city and the European city. Space managers are inventing and importing models of centers; Algiers has become a city that comes from elsewhere. Models for the city are sometimes drawn from the west and sometimes from the east. The city is all at once. It is looking for itself. It is cosmopolitan. It is a city that is not totally “European” colonial; yet, it moves away very little. It is not Western, its “Arabity” separates it on the one hand, and on the other hand, it proclaims itself another and it is other. It is not Eastern either. The Orientalism of the city disappeared very early. Of all the Arab cities, the Algerian city is the one that has kept this aspect the least, without being totally Europeanized. Algiers is the victim of unimproved “imported” urban planning, and as a result the city appears as a series of models with juxtaposed conceptions that are sometimes contradictory. This situation prompts us to look for the causes of this urbanism without traditions and to question the protection policy of the colonial urban fabric and the effectiveness of the urban interventions bearing on the old buildings dating from the French era.