THE COMPACT CITY: A URBAN SHAPE FOR SUSTAINABLE CITY, IN ARID AREAS. Khalissa HAMEL and Said MAZOUZ
Department of architecture, University of Biskra, B.P 145, Biskra, Algeria. Abstract:
One of the principal reflexions concerning the sustainable urban development is that of the urban forms or, in another terms, the morphology of the cities. It is quite obvious that the cities do not represent a single form, but whatever their form, they continue to be defined above all by their urban density. Between the dense city and the model of the burst city, the urban density influences the use and the space management, energy and resources, on social co-education and the cost of the infrastructures and services, like on the urban climate. This question arouses a great interest between various disciplines. This research task is a contribution to the debate on the urban forms most favourable to a durable urban development, in a particular context, that of the arid areas. It is made of two shutters. First rests on a theoretical analysis of the impact of the various urban forms, on durability in urban environment, by focusing thereafter the study on the influence of urban morphology on the climate of the city. The second shutter has the results of an experimental study, examining the effect of the level of the urban density and the compactness of the framework built on the climate of a city belonging to the arid areas with hot and dry climate: the town of " Biskra ". This experimentation consists of a data acquisition by series of measurement, carried out in representative days, the two seasons of spring and summer, according to routes', passing by 31in spaces in the city, representing five typical samples. The latter are taken according to a typological classification based on criteria connected to the aims of the study. The examined climatic factors are: the temperature of the air, the radiant temperature, relative humidity and air velocity. This research leads to a draft of