The Landscape Quality of Community Spaces in Collective Housing: Case of the City Of Béjaia. Developments, Changes and Evaluation

Abstract

Today's city is the product of multiple mutations through time and space. Its current state results from urban sprawl and an accelerated spread of residential developments totally disconnected from the surrounding urban space. The housing policy in Algeria, mainly oriented towards the massive production of housing, aims at filling the quantitative deficit to face the emergency situation created by the housing crisis. The reflection on the quality of common spaces is considered to result after the implantation of residential buildings, which represents a failure to take these spaces into consideration, and which considerably alters the landscape quality of built environment. Collective housing estates are losing quality of their living environment day after day, as a result of a process of non-attachment to places people live together and of a very reduced appreciation of the landscape, creating an image still needs to be identified and improved. We wonder about the landscape quality of common spaces, how to evaluate them and how to materialize them. Bejaia, characterized by a varied urban fabric and residential complexes of several eras, has seen housing flourish in diverse configurations of community spaces, ranging from the old historic center to the new district of Sidi Ali Lebher.