A regional identity through a railway line : North<br />Tunis suburb and the TGM

A regional identity through a railway line : North<br />Tunis suburb and the TGM

[SHS:ARCHI] Humanities and Social Sciences/Architecture, space management

[SHS:HIST] Humanities and Social Sciences/History

[SHS:SOCIO] Humanities and Social Sciences/Sociology

history

identity

memory

railway station

suburb

transport

tunis

The TGM (Tunis-Goulette-Marsa) is a railway line which connects Tunis with<br />Marsa while passing by Goulette. The first electrified suburban line of the<br />African continent, bears officially the name of TGM since 1905, date of the<br />inauguration of the first direct layout through the Tunis Lake. In fact well the<br />TGM was at the origin of the Tunis extension of towards north creating in sea<br />front, the most attractive suburbs of the capital. We propose to put the projector<br />on this railway line characteristics and the architectural specificities of its<br />stations, in an historical and contemporary aiming, in order to direct the Tunisian<br />urban developers towards the interests of the railway heritage and to feed the<br />current reflexion on Tunisian urban space and the rail-bound transports.<br />Indeed, to follow the evolution of the suburban railroad statutes contributes to an<br />awareness of the city as a significant space. The reading of urban space is not<br />limited to architectural forms, it is also organized by its means of transports.<br />Instead of getting lost in a total, general and reducing definition of the northern<br />Tunis suburbs identity, we will target the place of the railway identity of an area<br />in its total identity.<br />More precisely, we think that the Railway stations are urban entities which knew<br />how to generate their own temporal culture, and where it is urgent to study the<br />“lifespan” of its identity impact. Line TGM is punctuated by stations which<br />preserved the original néo-Moorish style with a repair in 1979, but today, a<br />harmony loss with surrounding urban fabric is clearly perceptible. These stations<br />are directly active in the production of the suburbs regional identity but are<br />locked up and are not any more transformed to constitute a different universe<br />being used as developing reference. The TGM myth does not exist any more but<br />only in books. With the accelerated urbanization and use of cars, those which<br />take it are stripped and do not have any idea of its history. This micro-regional<br />identity can, through a particular form of development, overcome the challenges<br />of urban developments which tend to asphyxiate it and destroy it.<br />On a methodological level, it is a question to write an identifying monograph of<br />a space, on the one hand, by exploring its endogenous memory, and on the other<br />hand, by focusing on contemporary uses and practical. We will carry a new<br />glance on urban, architectural, technical, economic and social potentialities of<br />TGM line and stations. We will emphasize the permanence of historical indices<br />which are continuously secreted.<br />The results will consolidate the assumption that the railway line identity and<br />architectural potential must be better taken into Tunisian urban space reflexions.<br />The relations which we establish between railway identity, architectural identity<br />and social identity, is a transverse reading which makes possible a better control<br />of increasing contradictions between the areas modernization and their urban<br />identity.

Ben Hadj Salem, Mohsen

Regional architecture and identity in the age of globalization

Regional architecture and identity in the age of globalization, The Second International Conference of the Center for the study of architecture in the Arab Region

2008

ENG

conference proceeding

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00353019

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/35/30/19/PDF/ben_hadj_salem_TGM_railway_station.pdf

Tunisia