Empreinte éco-institutionnelle urbaine. Outil d'aide à la décision pour l'évaluation et le controle du métabolisme urbain en Algérie

Abstract

These last years, a plethora of researches in urban metabolism assessment have been conducted by many disciplines developing new theories and tools. However, only few researches on urban metabolism assessment are developed from urban planning perspective. In Algeria, projects such as the coastal management plan (known as PAC) of Algiers and the new town of Boughezoul, introduced, yet unofficially, urban metabolism and urban ecosystem planning approaches inducing the challenge of their future integration into the environmental evaluation framework in Algeria. Our research aims to answer this challenge by questioning the urban metabolism assessment integration into the environmental urban planning framework in Algeria. We propose a functional solution to integrate the urban metabolism assessment in the environmental urban planning framework and make a contribution in urban metabolism academic research from an urban planning perspective. We first, designed a systemic model of the urban ecosystem with its metabolism and control centre. Our urban metabolism model helped us identifying the missing link between the flows assessment, currently in use, and the urban environmental planning. Hence, we proposed to fill this gap located in the urban metabolism control centre by reinterpreting the urban metabolism assessment to include, in addition to the flows‘ dynamic assessment, the assessment of the urban metabolism control. On this basis, we proposed two tools. First, we complemented the Ecological Footprint (EF) in charge of evaluating flows level by the new Institutional Footprint (IF) tool, we designed, which would be in charge of evaluating the urban metabolism institutional control. We designed the IF based on the systemic model following a multicriteria analysis approach. Second, we proposed to integrate both tools the EF and the IF in the dashboard of the Eco-Institutional Urban Footprint (EIUF). We designed the dashboard using Excel as an urban metabolism strategic management planning tool and a support for decision making. At last, we performed a limited simulation for one flow of the urban metabolism applying the dashboard of EIUF to the cases of Algiers and new town of Boughezoul. In this research, we reinterpreted urban metabolism assessment in order to incorporate urban metabolism control assessment from an urban planning perspective. We proposed the IF to complement the EF integrated into the EIUF dashboard as a new framework for the urban metabolism‘s control and planning.