El Khroub : From the Village to the Healthy City

of the country. This framework relied on a network of cities but essentially on colonial villages that constituted a territorial grid responding to an occupation strategy and functionality related to the socio-economic vocation of that period. Within this grid, cities and villages were not the result of a uniform genetic process; regional geography and history, as much as political choices consistent with the colonial forecasts of the time, weighed heavily and influenced the form, size, and importance of human settlement sites.

Driven by urban development policies—and also by uncontrolled demographic and socio-economic constraints—villages became cities. The speed of their growth had repercussions on consumed space, often phagocytized, as well as on an urban society surprised by the various mutations induced by these policies, which were often defined in haste.

The city of Khroub perfectly illustrates this case of a village core rapidly placed into the echelon of medium-sized cities with its accompanying consequences. These consequences are grasped at the spatial scale (urban sprawl, urban dysfunction, ecological imbalances, frantic demographic growth) but also at the scale of difficulties in emerging a functional vocation that would distinguish it in its relationship to the metropolis of Constantine, whose urban dynamics it absorbs. A city created not in the shadow of Constantine but in its trajectory, the urban history of Khroub sheds light on the problematic of urban identity in all its components.

Originally an agricultural village, it established a livestock market that placed it within a regional and even national "souk" network; its cattle market was ranked second nationally after El Harrach in Algiers. Its railway station, dating from the colonial period, confirmed its geographic position as an important crossroads. Leaving the south of Constantine, Khroub remains the mandatory passage to the south, southeast, southwest, east, and west. The station and the "souk," being complementary facilities, breathed a national merchant and commercial character into the city for a century. Furthermore, in the 1980s, Khroub benefited from a prime position as a market for various products (informal trade or "trabendo") until cities like Tadjenanet, Ain Fakroun, and El Eulma challenged this position.

The spatial structure still bears the marks of the agricultural and crossroads village, organized around agricultural plots and articulated around the founding buildings of colonial villages: a town hall, a church, and a school. It is also determined by National Road No. 03. This old "national" road, a structuring axis of the village layout, achieves an ambivalence of openness and closure.

Independent Algeria injected industrial zones, shifting its primary economic vocation (Oued Hamimine and Tarf). To these vocations, a third has been grafted—the "Healthy City" (Ville-santé) since 1996. Today, El Khroub is the only Algerian city to have adopted the Healthy City approach.

Its proximity to Constantine, the ancient capital of Numidia, has undoubtedly weighed on its formation and evolution, largely engaged in addressing the problems of Constantine. This singular situation is also a handicap in the emergence of an identity status consistent with its varied potentials. The city experienced rapid urban growth (4,000 inhabitants in 1962 to 150,000 in 2006), making societal structuring largely dependent on its urban history. Sporting movements, notably the football team (ASK), also act as drivers of city identity.

The urban evolution must be placed within its ancient history, as the city sits at the center of the nourishing lands of "Cirta." Epigraphic inscriptions and the presence of the Tomb of Massinissa—the "Aguellid" who marked Algeria's history—remind us of the site's place in the urban crown of the Numidian capital. This plurality in its statutory orientations grants it a particular position both in the Constantinian belt and the national urban framework.