Large high-rise housing estates share a common history whose geographical context does not seem to be relevant. They are today, in the same way as the populations who inhabit them, often equated with delinquency and lack of safety. The present research attempts to go beyond the preconceptions inherited from sociology and the prejudices amplified by the media and aims to investigate the urban reality of three large housing complexes resulting from successive development policies adopted in Algeria. To do this, the context chosen is that of Bejaia's suburbs, an average southern Mediterranean city, and a representative sample of cities of its size. The approach refers to Hillier, who considers mobility as the modality use that most likely to inform us about the potential uses of spaces (Hillier et.al 1984). This modality is itself guided by vision, which leads us to scrutinize any variation in visible space that may influence it, particularly the angles of deviation of routes, the degrees of openness of spaces and their overall three-dimensional properties. It is based on the study of the urban landscape’s qualities and the modalities of use, by using the combined methods of syntactic analysis and analysis of visible environments by PixScape©. The results of these two analyses will be confronted with reality through a survey of the uses of the people who use these places. The findings show a strong concordance between the quality of the visual landscape, its topological and morphological variations in three dimensions, and the actual usage patterns.

Large high-rise housing estates share a common history whose geographical context does not seem to be relevant. They are today, in the same way as the populations who inhabit them, often equated with delinquency and lack of safety. The present research attempts to go beyond the preconceptions inherited from sociology and the prejudices amplified by the media and aims to investigate the urban reality of three large housing complexes resulting from successive development policies adopted in Algeria. To do this, the context chosen is that of Bejaia's suburbs, an average southern Mediterranean city, and a representative sample of cities of its size. The approach refers to Hillier, who considers mobility as the modality use that most likely to inform us about the potential uses of spaces (Hillier et.al 1984). This modality is itself guided by vision, which leads us to scrutinize any variation in visible space that may influence it, particularly the angles of deviation of routes, the degrees of openness of spaces and their overall three-dimensional properties. It is based on the study of the urban landscape’s qualities and the modalities of use, by using the combined methods of syntactic analysis and analysis of visible environments by PixScape©. The results of these two analyses will be confronted with reality through a survey of the uses of the people who use these places. The findings show a strong concordance between the quality of the visual landscape, its topological and morphological variations in three dimensions, and the actual usage patterns.