News, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Algeria to create two new cities in less-populated south
Jordan Times, Friday-Saturday, October 31-November 1, 2003
ALGIERS (AFP) — The Algerian government on Thursday announced the creation of two "new cities" in areas south of the capital in a bid to shift several million people away from the overcrowded northern coastal zone.
The cities will be named Boughezoul, to be located 160 kilometres south of Algiers in the country's vast, semi-arid plateau region, and Bouinan, much closer in at 50 kilometres south of the capital in an agricultural region known as the Mitidja plain.
Congestion, notably in the Algiers where three million inhabitants live in cramped conditions, has been a long-standing problem in the fertile northern agricultural zone along the Mediterranean which represents only 10 per cent of Algeria's land surface but houses 80 per cent of its population.
The announcement made no mention of last May's devastating earthquake that killed some 2,300 people and left some 100,000 homeless.
Many are still in tent though President Abdelaziz Bouteflika — embroiled in a power struggle as his ruling party tried to nominate a rival to stand in presidential elections next April — has been quoted as promising "no-one will spend winter under canvas".
According to the government, the project at Boughezoul revives an idea first proposed in the 1970s and modelled on the creation of Brazil's capital Brasilia, but ended up getting put on hold and never followed through.
The government said it wants to rehouse some three million people in Boughezoul to work in the "service sector, advanced technology and scientific research". Boughezoul is only 30 kilometres from Ain Oussera, site of a 15-megawatt nuclear reactor built in the 1990s with Chinese help and used today for scientific research.
The other project at Bouinan, which will be half the size of Boughezoul, will also include "sports and recreational facilities," the government said.
Though Algeria is Africa's second largest country after Sudan, the Sahara Desert stretches across much of the south.
No target dates were given for completion of the two new cities. Construction is already under way on another new city, Sidi Abdallah, some 20 kilometres west of Algiers, to help relieve overcrowding in the capital.
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |