The socialist agricultural villages, born from the great modernising utopias of the 20th century, provide a valuable framework for analysing the links between ideology, spatial planning, and socio-spatial transformations. In Algeria, the “1000 Socialist Villages” programme, launched in the 1970s, aimed to create a modern peasantry rooted in its territory, while embodying a new conception of rurality and agricultural development. Designed to promote agrarian priority and collectivism, these villages have since undergone profound changes.Drawing on a social geography approach, this article examines the socio-spatial and functional transformations of these villages in north-western Algeria through a diachronic study of the village of Fellaoucen, located on the western outskirts of Oran, over a fifty-year period. The objective is to analyse to what extent the evolution of this village represents a continuity with the recognised foundations of socialism or, conversely, a rupture influenced by urbanisation, accelerated peri-urbanisation, and post-socialist reconfigurations.The findings of this research reveal that the socialist village project, far from fostering the emergence of a modern peasantry faithful to its initial values, has instead given rise to hybrid spaces. These territories combine the abandonment and conversion of certain legacies—particularly the agricultural function—while maintaining state ownership of agricultural land. They thus illustrate the complexity of transitions between rurality and urbanity in contemporary Algeria.

The socialist agricultural villages, born from the great modernising utopias of the 20th century, provide a valuable framework for analysing the links between ideology, spatial planning, and socio-spatial transformations. In Algeria, the “1000 Socialist Villages” programme, launched in the 1970s, aimed to create a modern peasantry rooted in its territory, while embodying a new conception of rurality and agricultural development. Designed to promote agrarian priority and collectivism, these villages have since undergone profound changes.Drawing on a social geography approach, this article examines the socio-spatial and functional transformations of these villages in north-western Algeria through a diachronic study of the village of Fellaoucen, located on the western outskirts of Oran, over a fifty-year period. The objective is to analyse to what extent the evolution of this village represents a continuity with the recognised foundations of socialism or, conversely, a rupture influenced by urbanisation, accelerated peri-urbanisation, and post-socialist reconfigurations.The findings of this research reveal that the socialist village project, far from fostering the emergence of a modern peasantry faithful to its initial values, has instead given rise to hybrid spaces. These territories combine the abandonment and conversion of certain legacies—particularly the agricultural function—while maintaining state ownership of agricultural land. They thus illustrate the complexity of transitions between rurality and urbanity in contemporary Algeria.