L’enfant et ses pratiques de l’espace urbain Algerien : cas d’etude a Setif

Abstract

It is admitted that the modern city, an artificial creation of man, often of gigantic proportions, exists for the purpose of providing material and social conditions that allow its inhabitants and users to enjoy a level of well-being that is, if we believe in progress, higher than that of previous eras. But progress is more than simple quantitative growth. For the last four decades, Algeria has witnessed an extremely rapid urban growth. Whatever the driving force of this growth (motivated at an earlier stage by legitimate needs but now mainly by the search for profit), it is not guided by a clearly stated philosophy of social life. In other words, it generates a state of disorder that looses view of the human ends which the building activity must seek. The present work seeks to evaluate some of the results of urban growth in Algeria by analyzing them in the light of the needs of a particular strata of the population: the children. Children are the weakest and most vulnerable part of society and, at the same time, the most precious. This work is organized around three main focuses which are 1) An effort to gather what we have found best in theoretical knowledge regarding children, their “being” and their needs as these unfold in different social and spatial contexts. 2) The analysis of one of the instruments of urban planning, namely the (cahier des charges) and the specifications that seek to meet children’s needs. 3) Observations of a number of urban settings in the city of Sétif , settings evaluated in the light of children’s needs. Comparison with what has been done in other countries to make urban planning meet children’s needs has been used as a tool for evaluation. A result of this investigation is that a primordial need of children, that of security, is yet to be met.