The Current Distribution of Educational Facilities within Urban Areas and Ways to Reorganize Them to Achieve Spatial Balance: A Case Study of the City of Biskra

Abstract

This study addresses the problem of the overall distribution of public facilities within urban space and the mechanisms for reorganizing them to achieve balance within the city. It starts from a clear discrepancy observed in the field between rapid urban expansion and intensive housing programs on one hand, and the school map on the other. The study aimed to identify the planning mechanisms capable of reorganizing this distribution to achieve balance in the allocation of facilities within the city, using the educational facilities of the city of Biskra as a case study.

Through field diagnosis and statistical and cartographic analysis using Geographic Information Systems, the study found a sharp gap between the reality of rapid urban expansion and intensive housing programs on one hand, and the rigidity of the school-map network on the other. This has resulted in a severe geographic maldistribution of pupils, leading to a numerical explosion and stifling overcrowding that exceeds acceptable standards in the secondary schools of the city center and the western sector, such as Mohamed Krouf and Mohamed Boudiaf secondary schools, which reached an occupancy rate of 42 pupils per class — in contrast to a clear waste of capacity and the presence of vacant rooms and classes in peripheral and developing secondary schools such as Obeid Allah, Ghemri Mohamed Fateh, and Hassani Abdelkrim, as a result of their weakness, isolation, and the lack of school transport networks.

To remedy this imbalance, the study proposed a set of urgent and structural solutions based on reorganizing the school map and adjusting intermediate catchment areas to direct pupils toward institutions with relatively comfortable capacity, strengthening urban and school transport to break the isolation of peripheral points, in addition to activating temporary pedagogical and organizational alternatives and applying a sub-grouping (splitting) system to reduce density within core classes — while stressing the necessity of digitalization and real-time forward-looking coordination between the urban-planning and education sectors to ensure balanced and sustainable urban growth.