Algeria: building a sustainable new city

Algeria will be building a new city with the name El-Menia in Constantine, with a budget of $2.4 billion over a 1.2 million sq m development project. The city is designed by Canadian firms Exp and Lemay with the aim of making it a sustainable new community and reducing its carbon footprint as much as possible.
The design is a mixture of local and modern styles. It has looping lines of Arabic calligraphy and arabesques have been a strong reference point for Exp and Lemay, with sinuous silhouettes which form an adorable skyline. The mountains have also been taken into account as it can be easily noticed in its green wedge-shaped arrangements and zones of variable density. An affordable cableway system will be integrated into the city plan to enable a swift commute for residents with the majority of amenities only a short walk away.
The team described the project saying “with its pragmatic and audacious strategies, the city of El-Menia can be perceived as a systemic organism with a functional, technical, regulatory, economic, social and symbolic composition. As a result of these multiple forces, our new city presents an ecosystem integrating different variables while taking into account the refined art of living and friendly character so distinctive of the Algerian culture.”
$1.57bn of the full $2.4bn budget for the project will be dedicated to residential properties, fitting smoothly into a World Heritage global development plan.
Exp and Lemay came out as winners in the worldwide competition for the project. They will now take care of the master planning of the city and the design of the main buildings and typologies for El-Menia in order to give the city’s structure coherence.
El-Menia is 431 km east from Algiers, the capital.