The boundaries of streets across time, in Saharan space

Abstract

The way to draw a clear limits, the art of operating and to foil the passages, reports of the cultural expression mode which reflects the architecture of Saharan oasis: holder of the identity signs equally to traditional knowledge, including the famous frontiers of the public space. 'If the oasien lived a rational life insofar as he understood the components: his agriculture, his tools, his clothes', it is not the same matter for today. From the oasis to the city, in this urbanized space, the extent of the offset between the image that offers the former spatial organisation (which reflects the daily real image of those we call Saharans), as well as the current growth theatre (which imports its models from the occidental countries, far to accommodate with the Saharan context), it is quite detectable. These spatial dynamics witnesses pertinent transmutations which operates on homes settlements in the Sahara, but also on public spaces including roads, more on the formal plan then the intrinsic practices. Consequently, it is necessary today to wonder about the demarcation lines of roads we have inherited. Forthwith, these frontiers and limits rarely follows a linear traces to allow to discern two extended. At first glance, they alter, corrupt, and tangle giving birth to metaphors. Whence the difficulty to construct, in a clearer way the streets spaces thus define them. This study is descriptive and explanatory of the limits symptoms to the level of the traditional inhabited space in the Sahara by a diachronic reading.