For more than forty years, an active, forward-looking policy has brought change to the Algerian Sahara by creating administrative bodies and investing in the economy and facilities located for the most part in the county seats of wilaya. As a result, the Sahara’s urban system is in a state of imbalance, due to high urban population densities, which benefit major cities at the expense of small and medium-sized towns. Subsequently, cities of the Sahara such as El Oued suffer from urban hypertrophy are unable to meet citizen needs and face intractable problems.