Algiers’ tramway: from an infrastructure project towards a walkable city projects
(2015) Walk21 — Location: Vienna
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- Abstract
- As many cities around the world, Algiers has recently built a new tramway line. The part of the line that has first been built goes through the eastern part of the city for more than16 kilometers. By going through a great diversity of urban configurations, the tramway seems to be a potential link between parts of the sprawled city of Algiers and between the disconnected urban forms of the city. However, the study of the line shows that the tramway has been thought and set up only as a transportation infrastructure, which is disconnected from its territory. It has been designed as a structural infrastructure on the city scale, aiming at connecting precise parts of the territory and linking them linearly. Thus, the new furnished public spaces do not go over the limits of the main roads accommodating the passage of the tramway line. The line doesn’t contribute to the creation of any link on the local scale. The question I ask here is the following: how can we transform Algiers’ tramway, from an infrastructural transportation project disconnected from its context, into a city project that could be at the origin of the development of a walking city? In this abstract, I propose to introduce the results of a PhD thesis presented in January 2015 at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium (UCL). This thesis aimed at finding the conditions that allow the establishment of public space as a mediation and as a city project. It develops the idea that the improvement of the tramway’s spatial adherence to extended territories of the line constitutes one of the conditions that allow the establishment of the sought city project. The improvement of adherence that I suggest is based on the production of public spaces, because they allow for pedestrian movement, which is the most adherent mode of transport. Those public spaces should lead to a better integration of transportation infrastructures with the development of the city, by making it more liveable. This should be reached by building continuities in the pedestrian paths. The presentation will focus on three points : - the presentation of the methods used to evaluate the tramway’s adherence to Algiers’ territory; - the presentation of four projects proposed as examples of what could be done to improve the adherence of the tramway; - the presentation of some suggested solutions to build up the city project that I propose. This abstract has been written for the breakout session, but is can also be presented during the round table.
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Citations
Mezoued, A. (2015). Algiers’ tramway: from an infrastructure project towards a walkable city projects. Walk21, Vienna. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/167473