Urbanization and risks: case of Bejaia city in Algeria

Abstract

Urbanization is a worldwide process, occurring rapidly with adverse consequences on the environment and people. More exactly, urbanization aggravates natural risks and creates additional articial risks; this is a key issue for urban planning, which can reduce the exposure and negative outcomes if its provisions are properly enforced. This article is based on observations from Bejaia, Algeria. Each year, the city suffers from disasters including oods, forest res and landslides. This situation has led to the question whether urban planning observes the regulations from other domains. In order to answer it, different risks threatening the city were modeled and mapped. The results consist of computing the number of buildings situated within non-aedicandi zones by the type of risk. The results show that 15,832 buildings violate the law. Moreover, natural hazards (78.31%) are a more important threat than the articial ones (21.69%). The most important natural risks are due to forest res (44.82%), and the explosion of the industrial zones (15.24%) is the dominant articial risk. The ndings show that planning can help reducing the risk exposure within the urban areas, if the planning provisions are properly enforced. Moreover, the article makes a signicant contribution to demonstrating the possible consequences of sacricing long-term safety for short-term political interests.

Degradation of Coastlines under the Pressure of Urbanization and Tourism: Evidence on the Change of Land Systems from Europe, Asia and Africa

“…The literature review showed that coastal landscapes are subject to increasing demands and pressures; the present study explored the changes of landscapes in order to assess the anthropogenic pressure, especially that resulting from land use/land cover change, or urban sprawl, taking into account role played by the socioeconomic and political factors. In a nutshell, the results revealed that most changes are due to the "derogatory planning" [119,120], emphasizing the conflict between the local political factors, influenced by the local economy, and the national legislation. The study identified the specific driving forces (urbanization, including its mechanisms, and tourism), and provided additional evidence for the changes of coastline landscapes, which can be countered by policies for a sustainable landscape management.…”

“…However, this is rarely the case, and development occurs only by exceptions, i.e., by developments that to not comply with the rules, but are exempted from these. This pattern is called derogatory planning [119,120]. For example, in Constanţa, the largest city of the Romanian seashore, the Master Plan was not updated for 18 years, but the real development was documented by over 3000 plans for different areas of the city, representing exceptions from the regulations imposed by the Master Plan [121].…”

“…In a nutshell, the study revealed that the main drivers are in Romania the joint urbanization (e.g., development of vacation homes, to be used or rented) and tourism (larger facilities), in Vietnam a gap between the policies governing different sectors (e.g., developing tourism for helping the economy while spending money to diminish or counter the adverse effects), and in Algeria a difference between the national policies (unable to supply the infrastructure needed by tourists) and the illicit construction of small, but sparse residences to be rented out. In general, all these are attributable on the one hand to the race for profit (implying the sacrifice of long-term sustainability, including the environmental issues, for short-term economic benefits), and on the other hand to a general national planning strategy that is lacking, underdeveloped or not implemented in conjunction with the local often illicit urbanization; this second phenomenon is the "derogatory planning" [119,120]. This is by far the most important finding of the study, and applicable to all cases.…”

Spatial Integration and Urban Aglomeration in the Mamminasata Metropolitan Area

“…This has lead to economic growth, changes in spatial attributes and integration of urban activity systems and its relative dynamics are much higher than in the centres of the largest cities (Kowalczyka et al, 2019). Urbanization is a worldwide process which occurs rapidly, accompanied by adverse consequences on the environment and people (Hamma and Petrisor, 2018). Moreover, city planners and policy makers have an important role to play in tightening the village-to-city land conversion system and curbing expansions (Zhang et al, 2018).…”

Delineation of the Urban Influence Area Using the Multi-Criteria Assessment Method. The Case of Focşani City, Romania

“…Over the last 60 years urbanization has occurred more forcefully than ever in the human history (Scott and Storper, 2015) and it has changed boundaries, morphologies and scales of human settlements (Vigano et al, 2017). Aggressive urbanization rendered the increase of artificial land (Petrișor, 2012;Lois González et al, 2016) by the contraction of agricultural land (Ianoş et al, 2010;Petrișor et al, 2010;Zitti et al, 2015;Hama and Petrișor, 2018), by deforestation (Ianoş et al, 2010;Zitti et al, 2015;Verma et al, 2017;Niţă et al, 2018), impacting water bodies and natural parks (Ianoş et al, 2010;Zitti et al, 2015), and generating complex process environmental conflicts (Ianoş et al, 2010;Petrişor et al, 2010;Ianoş et al, 2017).…”