Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
After Algerian independence in 1962, the houses abandoned by Europeans made it possible to temporarily fulfil the important demand caused by rural emigration. According to Côte (Côte, M, 1999), upon the departure of the Europeans, approximately 700,000 houses were recovered by the Algerians. During this time, the State was not worried about the problem of housing supply and concentrated its efforts on the creation of economically productive sectors. In addition, the war of liberation had caused damage to the rural areas, in particular to rural housing which had undergone much damage, and consequently had regressed. This present study focus on three major points: firstly to introduce the development of urbanisation in Algeria (Breil, M.J, 1957) between 1966 and 2008. Secondly, to describe the state of housing in the same period and thirdly to show in terms of housing, regional disparities taking into account different indicators.
2. Study Area and Methodology
Algeria is a country located in North Africa. In terms of land area, it is the largest country on the Mediterranean Sea, the second largest on the African continent after Sudan, and the eleventh largest country in the world. Algeria is bordered by Tunisia in the northeast, Libya in the east, Niger in the southeast, Mali and Mauritania in the southwest, a few kilometres of the Moroccan controlled Western Sahara in the southwest, Morocco in the west and northwest, and the Mediterranean Sea in the north. Its size is almost 2,400,000 km2, and it has an estimated population of about 35,700,000 as of January 2010. The capital of Algeria is Algiers (BeIIaIJ, 2009).
This study was based primarily on statistical data from the general census of the population and housing of 2008 carried out by the National Office of Statistics and using the preceding censuses (1 966, 1 977, 1 987 and 1 998) as comparatives. The method was based on the study and analysis of data using some computer programmes such as: Microsoft Excel, Illustrator and Maplnfo. This enabled us to work out several maps by anamorphosis. Anamorphosic maps show regions' areas in relation to their population sizes, and each map shows a housing indicator according to different statistical classes. (Cauvin, C, 1987).
The difficulty raised in the cartography was the...