An Algerian city is the talk of the world. And it is not even a wilaya capital. Not even a town. A city without historical monuments or famous natural sites.
And it’s not an industrial center either. Ksar Tafilelt is a district of Bounoura, a commune of Ghardaïa and one of the seven cities of M’zab. We talk about it because this newly created district is considered the first eco-citizen city in Algeria.
20 years ago, Ksar Tafilelt did not exist yet. In 2014, it received the Arab League Prize for the Environment and in 2016, that of the sustainable city at COP-22 in Marrakech.
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The secret ? The district was designed from the start to be an ecological city, built with local materials and respecting the environment. The Mozabite culture of mutual aid and organization did the rest.
But the idea belongs to one man, Ahmed Nouh, who created the Amidoul Foundation in 1997. Its objective was to provide an ecological and local response to the housing crisis which spared no city in Algeria.
The foundation bought from the State a plot of about twenty hectares perched on a plateau overlooking the M’zab valley. Work began in 2000. Then it was a success with a thousand houses and 6,000 inhabitants from 2013. Since then, the expansion of the city and its demography has stabilized.
Its designers had to face several challenges. How to create a city in a rocky area in the middle of the desert, at a lower cost to be accessible to small budgets, and above all a city that can better withstand difficult climatic conditions while consuming as little energy as possible. The Mozabites know something about it, they who have tamed the desert for several centuries.
Transmission
For the construction of the houses of Ksar Tafilelt, the ideas of yesteryear were very useful. The materials are extracted on site. Not concrete, but stone, plaster and lime.
With one stone, several shots: these materials do not cost much, are available nearby and are excellent natural insulators. A temperature of 45 degrees in the shade is quite usual in summer in the region.
Thanks to these materials, it is cooler inside. The architecture is also ingenious. The houses do not exceed one floor and are very close together. The alleys are narrow.
“You need narrow streets to break the prevailing winds and sandstorms. And when they are narrow, you see that there is a lot of shade. We must not forget that we are in the middle of the Sahara. In summer it hits, ”explains the one who is at the origin of all this, Ahmed Nouh, to AJ + who devoted a report to the city.
Everything related to long-term ecological projects, even chimerical for many countries, is here in Ksar Tafilelt a palpable reality. Solar-powered public lighting, 50% biologically recycled wastewater and sorted household waste. The cleaning and maintenance is provided in turn by the inhabitants. Each family should do this task for a week. And it works.
The designers of the city have also integrated the concept of organic farming. In an eco-park that also houses an animal park, the animals are partly fed with household scraps and each inhabitant is required to maintain at least one palm tree, one ornamental tree and another fruit tree.
Seddik Karim, animator at the eco-park, is not proud of it, recognizing that all of this is first and foremost an ancestral heritage. “We didn’t invent anything, we just perpetuate the traditions of our ancestors. We prepare the base with our children. We are almost sure that tomorrow will be better, ”he predicts, optimistic. Among the M’zab, everything is indeed a question of transmission.
Translated from TSA
