Les Écolabels au service de l'attractivité de la ville nouvelle de Bouguezoul

Abstract

Declining economic development and race towards globalization have created hard competition in the world and caused a massive fight over attractiveness which has become a means for survival. Considered as development cradles, cities face a hard situation of competition. They have to seek means and ways to assert their identity and empower themselves. Further, they have to find complex strategies to ensure enlightenment, either local or global. With such strategies including all energies and capabilities at their disposal, cities target economic attractiveness and competition which remain their main challenges. Today’s world awareness about the state of the planet faced with ecological and economic challenges is propelling attractiveness towards sustainable development , which makes of eco-label a means to support cities attractiveness to face requirements of equity and efficiency. This research is focused on the identification of an environmental authentification tool (eco-label), adapted to the problem of attractiveness of the new eco-towns , in particular the town of Boughezoul which shows a tendency to become a “green town” ecologically viable and resilient . In order to achieve such a goal, three questions need to be answered:  What are the indicators of attractiveness for the new eco-towns?  Which eco-label takes into consideration, within its assessment system, the indicators of ecological attractiveness?  What kind of eco-label could be useful to make the new town of Boughezoul attractive? Such questions have framed our research which unfolds into two main parts; the first part identified the indicators for a urban attractiveness in general and those for attractiveness in new eco-towns; the second part assessed how far urban ecolabels are dealing with these indicators in order to identify those who are more suitable for attractiveness targeting investors and future population of the new town of Boughezoul. The research starting by two hypotheses led to some objectives which can be translated into the following substantial outcomes: 1. The first outcome, i. e setting a series of attractiveness indicators for the new eco-towns, has been achieved following a comparative analysis (Benchmarking) made between ecological aspects, which have been identified in the examples of new eco-towns ( like Don Tan in China, Ch’rafat in Morocco, and Masdar city in Abou Dhabi), and indicators of territories attractiveness and towns attractiveness in general . 2. The second outcome demonstrated that urban eco-labels provides us with an answer to the problem of ecotowns attractiveness . Comparative audit between the three urban eco- labels (HQEA, LEED ND and CASBEE UD) allowed to know to which extent the objectives concerning new eco- towns attractiveness were reached ( 0 % for HQE eco-label which urban indicators are still developing, 92 % for LEED and 77 % for CASBEE). Such a result makes it also possible to certify LEED ND eco-label as the most adequate authentification tool to the problem of attractiveness of the new town of Boughezoul. 3. Lastly, as a third result, it is possible to demonstrate, through a comparison between ecological attractiveness indicators and the project objectives, that the town of Boughezoul thanks to the strategic plan allowing its arrangement , is able to win the LEED NB ecolabel authentification. This opens for Algeria a new perspective in so far it allows the creation of future Algerian urban eco-labels to serve the development of led urban attractiveness targeting investors and population.