Cultivating the urban environment: where do the paradoxes lie?

9 Preliminary 11 Introduction Chapter I: The Site and the City 21 The Physical Setting of the Oran Site 23 Human Impact on the Oran Site: Between the Risks and Potential of the Mediterranean Environment 24 Historical and Symbolic Uniqueness versus Typological Standardisation of the Site 30 Post-colonial Urban Planning or the ‘Obsession with Catching Up’ 32 Uncertainty regarding seismic risk 35 Ravines in the development of the site. From the substantialisation to the subjugation of the ‘topos’ 42 The city that ‘turns its back on the sea’, a Mediterranean ambiguity 44 Conclusion: The paradoxical effects of modernity and progress at the interface of the living environment Chapter II: Water in the city 47 Water, a ‘raw material’ and a ‘common good’ 49 The genesis of a landscape through the materialities of water 55 A rural landscape: useful and pleasant in an urban setting 56 Issues and uses of water in the semi-arid Mediterranean region 61 Pre-colonial Oran: a fortified oasis, paradoxically passable 67 Transformations of the hydrographic environment in the name of progress and modernity 68 Water, an instrument of exemption in the service of ‘raids’ 70 Water at the heart of municipal developments and social adornments 72 Values and representations of ‘water from the sky’ 75 Here lies, there (re)emerges the Oued Erhi 78 Water sharing under colonial arbitration 80 Technological capabilities and limitations of dams at the interface with climate 81 Water risks between ‘natural memory’ and awareness

In connection with urban planning, the mesological reflection proposed in this work undertakes an analysis of the urban/rural relationship based on the hypothesis of a different approach to understanding this relationship. It suggests the expression "cultivating the urban" in order to question its double meaning, which branches out into paradoxes to be considered as "indicators of subjectivity" in the urban development process. This approach involves clarifying the semantics of concepts and neologisms related to mesology in order to identify the "trajectories" that structure the anthropization and development of a site. The genesis of the transformations of a place as part of an "environment" consists of an anthropological reading of space, associating the symbolic data of the collective imagination of society. In this sense, to understand the characteristics of its identity, the ecological components connect transversally according to the material and immaterial values ​​that underlie them.