Author(s)

R. Meziani, T. Kaneda & P. Rizzi

Abstract

This paper examines the state of the sustainability and the urban sprawl phenomenon of an Algerian Oasis city. Our purpose is to analyse sustainability and sprawl in M’zab valley through measuring its impact on the environment by using indicators. The work consists of three parts: firstly, analysis of the urbanization process of M’zab valley and identification of sprawl impacts through a cause-effect structure from literature investigation; secondly, a brief overview of sprawl land impact indicators in order to define the analysis framework and to chose the appropriate indicators to apply to our study case; finally, calculation of the land resource consumption indicator by measuring the land use change area amounts from 1968 to 1997 in M’zab valley using GIS. Keywords: oasis city, sustainability, second residence, loss of oasis farmland, sprawl indicators, GIS. 1 Introduction M’zab valley has been faced with the urbanisation process and has suffered from population growth during the last 50 years. Many studies reported the problems generated from the sprawl phenomenon, especially since the 80’s; the loss of oasis farmland. Our purpose in this paper is to analyse the sprawl and sustainability of the valley through the analysis of the urbanisation process from the literature survey and to calculate the land resource consumption indicator via the land use change area amount measurement using GIS.

Keywords

oasis city, sustainability, second residence, loss of oasis farmland,sprawl indicators, GIS.