Understanding the cultural landscape value of traditional agrarian landscapes of African Sahara Desert: The case of Timimoun, Algeria

Guerrout Chouaib; Bahar Baser Kalyoncuoglu

doi:10.47818/DRArch.2022.v3i1045

Understanding the cultural landscape value of traditional agrarian landscapes of African Sahara Desert: The case of Timimoun, Algeria

Authors

Guerrout Chouaib Short Bio Okan University

Dr.Chouaib Guerrout, he has two decades of experience in architecture, urban design and planning, received engineer degree in architecture from Bechar University, Algeria, in 2000. And master’s degree in architecture from USTO Oran, Algeria, in 2017. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Ecological urban design from the Istanbul Okan University, Turkey, in 2021. His areas of research include ecological urbanism, sustainable architecture, mobility, transportation, water management, and heritage architecture.
Bahar Baser Kalyoncuoglu Short Bio Istanbul Medipol University

Assist.Prof.Dr. Bahar Başer Kalyoncuoğlu is a landscape architect and academician. She had the bachelor degree from Department of Landscape Architecture at Istanbul University (1999) and MSc Degree from Landscape Planning Graduate Programme from Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Istanbul Technical University. Her Phd is also from ITU’ Landscape Architecture Programme. Since 2002, she has been giving courses to the Architecture, Urban and Regional Planning, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Departments, at ITU, Okan University and Medipol University in Istanbul, Turkey. Recently, she is an Assistant Professor and Department Chair at Istanbul Medipol University, Department of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture and has numerous publications on a variety of research areas such as urban landscape, urban ecology, urban agriculture, cultural landscapes, socio-ecological memory, green infrastructure, sustainable landscape planning.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47818/DRArch.2022.v3i1045

Keywords:

cultural landscape, Ksar ecosystem, social resilience, Timimoun-Africa

Abstract

In 1992, the World Heritage Convention became the first international legal instrument recognize cultural landscapes as a human heritage that must be protected. The Cultural Landscape - Past, Present and Future considers different aspects of man's intervention with natural vegetation and the landscape resulting from a long equilibrium of co-existence. These landscapes are not stable, and the recent and ever accelerating changes in technology and life-style have increasingly affected many ancient landscapes, as old land-use practices are abandoned and traditions forgotten.(Birks et al., 1988) Human communities in desert areas formed a special landscape, providing these cultural landscapes within a special ecosystem of sustainable living conditions, which helped to create many social, economic, and cultural systems in addition to preserving biodiversity.

Unfortunately, the cultural landscape in the African desert is constantly deteriorating under the influence of urban, economic, and social changes. In the southern Algerian Timimoun city of is one of the most important global desert touristic destination due to the natural cultural landscape characterizes it, but unfortunately this landscape in continuous deterioration. Agricultural landscapes of desert environment, with its remarkable knowledge culture and world of practices, must be seen as a living library where this knowledge is transferred from generation to generation. It seems certain that we will need more of the know-how stored in this living library in the near future, especially considering the effects of climate change we are experiencing today.

The paper aims to identification of cultural landscapes in the oasis and analyses transformation and change in cultural landscape and traditional green infrastructure elements by relying on a historical analysis of spatial images based on quantitative analysis using ArcGIS software with the aim of identifying the real reasons of this deterioration in the urban cultural landscape in desert cites we will propose an action strategy to prevent this degradation.

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Published

2022-04-30

How to Cite

Chouaib, G., & Baser Kalyoncuoglu, B. (2022). Understanding the cultural landscape value of traditional agrarian landscapes of African Sahara Desert: The case of Timimoun, Algeria. Journal of Design for Resilience in Architecture and Planning, 3(1), 82–95. https://doi.org/10.47818/DRArch.2022.v3i1045