Natural Heritage as a Structure for Urban Regeneration: Case of the El Harrach River

Abstract

Discredited for a long time, the El Harrach River is extremely pollut­ed today, exceeding by 30 times the accepted standards and by 400 times the WHO standards. Indeed, it crosses over its last nine kilometers to its outfall, an important urban and industrial zone. Nonetheless, the river pollution threatens the bay of Algiers. Being a main part of the urban structure and the natural grid of the city, at 67km-long it starts in the Blida Atlas and flows into the Mediterranean in the middle of the Bay of Algiers. Relatively modest operations have been undertak­en to try to absorb the pollution. Recently, the government launched rigorous decontamination work as a part of the new redevelopment plan of Algiers by 2029. The river is considered an important ecological axis and a natural regen­erative of the urban structure. This article analyses the strategy of reinstatement of this urban and natural microcosm through five segments as a green heritage and generator of the city of tomorrow, with a special focus on the impact of the river redevelopment on these different slices, in relation to the protection of ecosystems, channelling axis of urbanization, for the medium and the long terms.