Algeria's economic and social changes in recent decades have resulted in major shifts in the geographic distribution of its people. The phenomenon of urbanization in Algeria is relatively recent and is characterized by its very rapid growth and deep disparities in its spatial arrangement. Algeria, has an ancient urban tradition and is experiencing an accelerated urbanization process, with a scale unsurpassed for several decades. The purpose of this article is to investigate urban expansion and the phenomenon of urbanization in Algeria. Between 1954 and 2008, two processes occurred: the extension of existing urban districts and the urbanization process. This was an era of tremendous economic, social, and political changes in Algerian society. Our study was primarily based on the Algerian General Census of Population and Housing (ONS, 2008) and the use of the city-size criterion (city range-size distribution) in accordance with Zipf's hierarchical model. In this study, we examine urban growth and the phenomena of urbanization, which is caused by the development of the strata of existing urban centers or by the transition from rural to urban between 1962 and 2008, a period of major economic, social, and political change.
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