Pour un développement durable des villes historiques côtières

Abstract

The objective of this research is to get the multiple resources of Cherchell, now marginalized, in the heart of the development process to make it more sustainable by supporting these nonrenewable resources. Cherchell as historic coastal city contains in its territory two categories of resources: coastal and heritage resources. Some of these resources, which are subject to strong pressures, may eventually disappear, and require special attention when preparing development projects. The recovery and exploitation of these resources for their integration in such a process require a good knowledge of the city and its evolution. An assessment of their existing potential could help to make them as engines for the development of coastal historic cities. These resources must, however, be integrated in the early steps of the implementation of a specific urban development strategy. With the objective of identification of a successful reconquest strategy of the resources in a historic coastal city, the study of the city of Genoa (Italy) as a best practice case was conducted. It identified two innovations in the strategic point of view: • Planning using resource recovery poles to optimize public investment and focus the work of the working teams on a small area. This pole based planning has the aim to lead the development of the surrounding area. • The use of the major events organization to mobilize funding, concentrate human and financial efforts on the event area, and to have an international communication on the city and its richness improving its image (Branding). A strategy based on the one identified in Genoa, with contextualization and adaptation to our case study, gave a specific approach to the integration Cherchell’s multiple resources in its development process. Indeed, we began by identifying and defining what might constitute a pole of development and resource recovery. For this, we superimposed the various resources previously identified: heritage resources, coastal resources and landscape resources. Then we used the points of concentration of the resources to make them development poles. Five areas have been identified in Cherchell. To prioritize programming recovery projects for each pole, we have classified them according to their ability to create a dynamic resource recovery and development in their influence ranges, and depending on their components state. This strategy led us to establish a flowchart of the process of preparing a sustainable development plan that integrate the various resources of the city. We also define the different stakeholders: Institutional actors, civil society, a site Advisory scientific committee "CS²" and the professionals (plan’s designers) with the identification of each one’s missions. We followed these strategic steps by simulating their application to Cherchell through the establishment of a sustainable development project in the priority development pole, previously identified. The simulation allowed us to provide the recovery of architectural and urban heritage that we propose to reconvert to the tertiary sector of tourism and culture. These spaces on both sides of the interface between the city and the sea will improve the city/sea interface and preserve the specific landscape of this city’s area.