Abstract
The city of Metlaoui is the most important urban core in Gafsa Mining Basin (BMG) in southwestern Tunisia. Like other BMG cities, it is characterized by a single industrial activity of phosphate enrichment and observes a spatial activity between the "European village" favorized to a certain term and the peripheral cities disadvantaged. Today, this dichotomy is not decreasing; on the contrary, the research reveals real signs of accentuation of this socio-spatial segregation inherited from colonial and post-colonial periods, and the environmental vicissitudes confirm the territorial iniquity. The research methodology has used for the social-spatial aspect heterogeneous data sources and open source: aerial photographs and satellite images (1952, 1976,1991 and 2019), PAU data (1978,1992 and 2008), census statistics, diachronic analysis of land use during the last decades. For the environment aspect, we proceeded to environmental and chemical analysis, measures on urban soil composition of various entities of Metlaoui, evaluation of potential risks in terms of distances of inhabited areas to pollution sources unequally with references to international standards. The main goals of this paper are to analyze the urban land-use evolution and mostly its recent evolution by using a GIS-mining first; to examine by a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) using the Ordered Weighed Average (OWA) some issues of the environment. All aspects are integrated in a GIS-MCA. The results of this GIS-MCA were mapped; they establish a territorialized iniquity and a diagnosis of the serious risks that may a f fect the city. The cartographic outputs may give useful insights to deciders to choose valuable solutions to manage or protect the city from real urban risks.