A Portrait of the Urban Landscape of Algiers

Greater Algiers today extends over 1200 square km and penetrates far beyond its bay: a metropolis with about four million inhabitants, it occupies a vast territory that was once a wide productive land on the slopes of a branch of the Atlas Mountains. The city today notably differs from the old stereotyped picture of a port-city nestled on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and also from the nineteenth century white amphitheater set along the bay. However, its urban landscape still bears witness to its fate, shared with many other Mediterranean cities, resulting from a long urban history, from the intertwining between local identity, transformation and globalization processes, from the recent decay and a new projection towards regional and tourist development. As for most contemporary cities, its metropolitan area appears today as an agglomeration of different heterogeneous parts: the so-called Kasbah, or the old city, the colonial city, the modern city, and finally the contemporary city, which embraces all the different layers, connecting them into a new regional vision. This article describes the urban development of the capital city of Algiers and explains how the city formed in relation to the surrounding territory, laying the basis for the contemporary urban development.