WHAT IS A GREAT PLACE IN NORTH AFRICA ?

Saïd ALMI

E-mail : almi.said@wanadoo.fr

What is a Great Place in North Africa ?

More than half a century after gaining independence, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are still living in the shadow of three major planning principles from their French colonial past: functionalism, culturalism and, to a lesser extent, regularization.

Functionalism, culturalism and regularization in urban planning

The "regularization" was implemented by the so-called French school of urban planning, whose the French Society of Planners is a direct emanation still alive, in the early twentieth century. It was applied between the two wars through PAEE (Development, Embellishment and Extension Plans), then it was quickly abandoned.

The functionalism came from the modern movement of CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture) and its Athens Charter. As for culturalist ideas, they are inherited from a backward-looking movement whose origins date back to the nineteenth century in England (with Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, John Ruskin and William Morris).

Functionalism in architecture and urban planning is based on a universal ideology of progress. It advocates strict adaptation of form to function and rigorous separation of urban functions. It emphasizes values of economy, hygiene and movement and uses technical and industrial know-how to create a new space to meet anticipated needs which are assumed to be the same the world over: to live, work, travel and enjoy entertainment. Thus functionalism does not take into account the past or local, regional or national specificities.

The culturalist approach focuses on cultural aspects of society and advocates a graded organization of space, following a federative scheme. It is marked by a strong nostalgia for the old social and cultural communities.

North African cities are dependent on planning models

After a period in which their inspiration was mainly European, where there is a failure of functionalist and culturalist models, North African developers are turning more and more to the Gulf States whose real estate companies and world-renowned urban development firms now appeal to them. For example, the planned development of the south shore of Lake Tunis and that of the Marina in Casablanca and the Amwaj in Rabat have been entrusted to the Sama Dubai group, while Dubai Ports World is tipped to take over the management of the port of Algiers, among other sites or projects.

This use of management techniques of Gulf countries has been made possible thanks to anchoring functionalist and culturalist principles in political North African development. These principles are universally valid supposed effect.

But these North African countries do not they benefit from inspiration rather the principle of regularization? The principle of regularization aims indeed to optimize the urban space using modern techniques and adapt historic new needs generated by industrial civilization, without sacrificing the legacy of the past. The general principle is: the general rules applicable to all cities need to add specific provisions for each city treated concrete. This realistic vision contrasts with the utopian nature of functionalist and culturalist models of urbanism.

Regularization, founding principle of the French School of Urbanism

Originating from the four major influences: the Ponts et Chaussées, the Musée Social and the Moroccan colonial experience under Lyautey, and to an extent, British culturalism, the French School of Urbanism can be mainly characterized by its realism and its distance from any domineering ideology.

These two elements are indeed what the functionalist and culturalist models of modern urbanism lack, in spite of their decisively scientist objectives, which still prevail worldwide. Since it is linked with value systems, urbanism cannot in any way prevail itself to be a rigorous science. It sand cannot claim to be anything but a praxis, i.e. a group of human activities potentially able to transform the natural environment or to change social relationships. The French School of Urbanism has been so convinced ever since its birth in the early 20th century, combining the technical, economic, social and cultural dimensions in its project of "regularization" of urban space. Meanwhile, within the FSU, the word "urbanism" enters the French language, yet some contend that it first appeared in Switzerland, in an article by Pierre Clerget : "L'Urbanisme, étude historique, géographique et économique", in : Bulletin de la Société neuchâteloise de géographie, 1910, in other words 43 years after the creation of the word "urbanización" by Ildefonso Cerdá, a Spanish engineer. Also within the framework of the EFU, was born in 1911 the SFU (Société française des Urbanistes) whose such founding members as H. Prost, L. Jaussely, D-A. Agache, J-M. Auburtin, A. Bérard, J-C-N Forestier, E. Hebrard, E. Hénard, L. Jaussely, A. Parenty, E. Redont are prominent members of the Ecole Française d'Urbanisme, along with H. Cornudet, G. Risler, J. Siegfried...from the Musée Social.

The regularization is based on the trialogue

Trialogue and regularization. Both these neologisms were created a century apart (1). They refer to two groups of approaches or oddly similar intentions. One and one summons the otherness: the contest of the Other is indeed erected in order.

Trialogue means: long-term vision, creating conditions possible and wider participation. As for regulation, it means the optimization of urban space by its adaptation to modern requirements of hygiene and circulation including action without sacrificing the legacy of the past.

To illustrate these concepts trialogue and regularization, consider the case of the city of Algiers during the French colonial period. The domination of the Other was, there, a major factor. So this environment is an ideal setting for examining the question of otherness, Central on trialogue.

From dialogue to trialogue, through regularization

If trialogue is meant as an exchange between three parties involved in a project, it is then necessary to define more precisely the notion of dialogue wherefrom the word «trialogue» was born. At the core of the movement of rediscovery and imitation of Antiquity, and therefore a favourite genre in every intellectual debate of the Renaissance, dialogue was a major concern for all humanists.

Thanks to the role playing of those taking part, it brought about an « opportunity of critical distance and of questioning the powers of discourse » (2).

ln the fields of edification, with a general acceptance of the term, it can be found mainly in the writings of Leon Battista Alberti. For him the three specific levels of edification are necessity (necessitas), pleasure (voluptas) and above all convenience (commoditas) where the dialogue between the planner and the client is of first and foremost importance. (3).

With the appearance of the Industrial Revolution occurs undeniably a complexification of the process of edification. The entrepreneurs or planners are then much more numerous than when Alberti was alive, and when his dialogical axiom could come down to the relationship between an architect and his client

As from the mid-nineteenth century, the requirements related to edification become more various. Haussmann becomes well aware of it. The Prefect of Paris realises the necessity to extend the consulting and besides to regard the town not as a collection of separate parts, as in the traditional road widening schemes, but as a whole.

Such is what a part of the principle of regularization consists in (4), which is what today's «synthesis of haussmannian thought » is called (5). The remaining part consists more precisely in the idea of an unbreakable link between the past, the present and the future. Such is not the case in the functionalist and culturalist theories of contemporanean urbanism of haussmannian regularization, whose protagonists are no other than the Spanish Ildefonso Cerdá (6) on the one hand and both the Austrian Camillo Sitte (7) and the British Ebenezer Howard (8) on the other. The former of these theories is indeed almost entirely turned to the future, whereas the latter focuses on the past.

A third part can be defined in the characterisation of hausmannian regularization : this one deals with geography. No town can be separated from its region with which it is inter-related.

Oddly enough, the regularization-functionalism-culturalism trilogy of urban thought in the late half of the nineteenth century are to be found integrally in Algiers from 1930, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of colonisation. Prost, le Corbusier and the couple Bardet-Socard are respectively its main leaders and representatives.

Enforcement of the principle of regularization in Algiers (9)

The three principles of extended consulting, historical dimension of town-planning and geographical determining factors are all present in the process of urbanisation of Algiers, as they are in the one of all the major Algerian towns to which is enforced the Law of March 14 1919 on the organisation of planning, enhancement and extension (in French, PAEE: Plans d’Aménagement, d’Embellissement et d’Extension). This Law enables a new way of intervening on urban space. The new proceeding, which originated from a group of professionals and from a think-tank who started working together as from 1910 in the framework of the so-called French school of urbanism, aimed at the optimisation of urban space. As a matter of fact, this is just the logical result of the haussmannian regulatory tradition, to which has been added by the fruit of the experience acquired in Morocco in a colonial context under the rule of Lyautey, the works of a visionary engineer called Eugène Hénard and the socially oriented reflexions of the Musée Social.

The new regulatory viewpoint is indeed made up of three major orders : geographical, historical and consensual. Each of these orders is itself strongly connected to three vital elements.

- Geographical order : the town, its neighbourhoods and its region

By means of its PAEE, the town of Algiers endowed itself, for the first time in 1929 with an overall scheme conceived on the scale of its whole territory. This PAEE is even aimed at being a genuine leading plan, upon which will depend all the following projects. Conversely, this town plan very quickly reveals its regional links, in other words the necessity of a regional plan whose conception started as early as 1930. It so happens that this scheme was already present in the law of March 14 ,1919 and in the decree of October 24, 1925 which made this law enforceable in Algeria. The surrounding towns or villages were allowed to « have only a single general scheme for every extension or town-planning unlikely to be achieved in the short term », as is stated (10). Thus the town of Algiers will not wait for the votes of the Law of July 25 ,1935 on regional plans to resume the study of its regional planning.

Historical order: the techniciens, the colonizers and the colonizing

As if it were a triptyque, past, present and future are more than closely linked in the regulatory approach of urban space. ln addition to the general rules which must be enforced to every town endowed with a PAEE, there are still specific clauses adapted to every one of them and which underline its « own character » (11). ln Algiers, five large areas set the way buildings should be constructed and how many people should live there, in accordance with the way these buildings should be lived in, by what category of people and by people having what kind of job. The fifth one, covering the historical quarter of the Casbah, was added to the list in a correction made in 1934. This correction endows the old muslim quarter with a specific regimen aimed at preserving its general features. It goes under a special rule and involves very severe conditions of conservation.

- Consensual order : the political power, the technicians and the users

Both the historical and the geographical orders enable the regulatory proceedings to benefit from a realism which both the functionalist and the culturalist theories are deprived of. There is additional profit : a consensuous will be based on a sum of information. The vote of the PAEE goes along, as early as 1929 with the birth of the «Société des Amis d'Alger », an association which focuses on a wide debate on town-planning and on getting the inhabitants involved in the development of their town. This repreents a huge attempt at making people aware at what was at stake thanks to numerous newspapers either local or metropolitan. Lectures to which leading figures were invited, surveys focusing on the planning of Algiers and two major exhibitions of architecture and town planning were also set up so as to make Algiers the setting of an unprecedented debate. Meanwhile, a large work of documentaion and research was launched. Mentioning « l'etude de géographie et d'histoire urbaines» by Lespès (12).

Prost goes as far as saying that it is a precious tool and «a valuable introduction» (13) to his plan for the development of Algiers.

Thus local history remains most valuable.

This way of thinking is incompatible with the functionalist and culturalist models which were created from scratch and applied indifferently, whatever the location, because they were supposedly easy to reproduce, on account of their given universal value. Therefore, these same models would have survived the war, benefiting from the recovery of the country, and even its independence.

The choices which were made were the easy victims of the misleading of these comforting models.

All in all, the three orders above mentioned (geographieal, historical and consensuous) are all in favour of a mind-openness proper to regularization, which aims at a composed town-planning, as opposed to the funcionalist and culturalist models aiming at an imposed one.

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(1) The word « regularization» was introduced by the Prefect of Paris Eugène Haussmann, loaded from 1853 by Emperor Napoleon III of the planning of Paris.

Cf. Baron Haussmann (1890-1893) Memoirs, Paris. Reissue Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000.

« Trialogue »was launched at the 43^rd ISoCaRP, International Planning Congress, (Urban trialogues), 19-23 September 2007, Antwerp.

(2) Godard Anne (2001) Le dialogue à la Renaissance, Paris : PUF.

(3) Alberti Leon Battista (1485) De re aedificatoria, Italy. French translation L’art d’édifier, Paris : Editions du Seuil, 2004.

(4) "Regularization" is a word which has been introduced by Haussmann himself. Cf. Baron Haussmann (1890-1893) Mémoires, Paris. Réédition Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000.

(5) Cf. Choay Françoise (1969) The modern city: planning in the 19^th century, New York Braziller.

(6) Cerdá Ildefonso (1867) Teoria general de la urbanizacion, Madrid. French translation Théorie générale de l’urbanisation, Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1979.

(7) Sitte Camillo (1889) Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Gründsätzen, Vienne. French translation L’Art de bâtir les villes. L’Urbanisme selon ses fondements artistiques, Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1996.

(8) Howard Ebenezer (1898) To Morrow, a Peaceful Path to Social Reform, Londres : Swan, Sonnenschein. Traduction française Les cités - jardins de demain, Paris: Editions Sens Tonka, 1998.

(9) For more details, cf. Almi Saïd (2002) Urbanisme et colonisation. Présence française en Algérie, Sprimont : Pierre Mardaga.

(10) J O du 31 octobre 1925.

(11) Danger René (1933) Cours d’urbanisme, Paris : librairie de l’enseignement technique Léon Eyrolles, p. 10.

(12) (1930) Paris, Alcan, Coll. du Centenaire de l’Algérie.

(13) Prost Henri (1929) ‘’Entretien’’, Le Journal Général Travaux Publics et Bâtiment, n° 393, du 14 décembre.

Saïd ALMI

Anthropologist, Sociologist of the built space, Ph.D. in Town planning

Town planner SFU (Société Française des Urbanistes/French Society of Planners) (Paris). In charge of Renewable energies and North Africa.

Member of the AAUA (Association des Aménageurs et Urbanistes Algériens/Algerian Planners Association) (Algiers).