Urban Planning in North Africa CHAPITRE 9. Postcolonial Urban Changes of a Colonial Village: Ain Arnat, Algeria

Abstract

In the last decades, Algeria has experienced significant demographic growth and a rapid process of urbanization due mainly to rural migration to its main cities. Confronted with this fast and uncontrolled urbanization, Algeria «s largest cities have implemented new forms of planned urban expansion, although in most cases largely unsuccessfully. A key feature that characterizes this recent urban growth process in Algeria is certainly the demographic and physical growth of its largest cities, those with over 50,000 inhabitants, in the northern part of the country. But since the 1980s, this demographic and urban growth process has been mostly due to the expansion of small towns located on the outskirts of these main cities and in other parts of the country as well (Chadli and Hadjiedj, 2003). Since the administrative reform of 1984, based on the law on the territorial organization of the country, small urban centres were promoted to new administrative status (Commune and Daïra) and attracted the attention of public administration authorities due to their potential role in the national territorial policy, whose aim was to rebalance the urban network of Algeria. Within this new approach, new administrative duties and tools were given to those smaller urban centres in the lower tiers of the urban network. Confronted with this new development approach, chosen by the state, many small towns also experienced fast demographic growth and the growth of their urbanized areas. The aim of the chapter is to contribute to the debate on the process of urban change in colonial hometowns in contemporary Algeria. The analysis is centred on the case of Ain Arnat, one of