An Urban Profile of the Middle East by Hugh Roberts

Author:Hugh Roberts [Roberts, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138192317
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

Maximum area required (approximate) (hectares)

Area already committeda (ha)

Outstanding requirements (ha)

Residential landb

3,600

800

2,870

Industriallandc

2,000

3,090

surplus

Commercial landd

12

–

12

Assumptions

a Excluding Sidi Ammar New Town.

b 350 persons per hectare residential density. (6 persons per dwelling average, 59 dwellings per hectare by 2000).

c 50 to 60 industrial jobs per hectare. Industrial Proportion of Active Population in 1975 (i.e. 11.6 per cent) constant to 2000.

d Approximately 0.12 m2 per head of gross commercial floorspace. Commercial proportions of active population in 1975 constant to 2000.

It will be noted from Table 6.2 that the proposals for the new town at Sidi Ammar, originally scheduled to accommodate a target population of approximately 75,000, have been excluded from the calculations. These proposals would in fact add some 214 hectares of residential land to the commitments in the area to develop some 800 ha in separate developments. These figures suggest that, of the maximum predicted growth for the Annaba subregion up to 2000, whether presented in population terms or as hectares, Sidi Ammar will supply only an additional 7 per cent towards the outstanding requirements of the subregion.

This situation illustrates a classic problem of economic investment not only in Algeria and the Middle East, but very often throughout the whole developing world. The pace at which governments are capable of making industrial, residential, commercial or any other form of economic investment decision and commitment is so often too slow for the patterns of growth and change already taking place on the ground. Through no faults of their own (because individual national economies cannot sustain expansion fast enough), governments are faced with growth which is moving faster than the planners can implement programmes to provide the expanding population with jobs and homes in which to live. Even in an oil-backed economy such as that of Algeria, the only answer to this fundamental problem of real per capita economic development will be long term, namely significant reductions in natural population increase, and a levelling out of the real or imagined discrepancies between urban and rural wealth and ways of life which generate such huge migratory movements in the first place. It is clear that both these solutions are still a long way in the future not only for Algeria, but for most of the developing world.

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