Résumé en anglais
It was anticipated in 1977 that increasing urbanization and the superseding of a fundamentally agricultural economy by an economy based on oil production would have harmful effects on historic buildings and their settings and on the natural envionment. In an attempt to counter this trend as far as possible, the General Directorate of Works on Sites and Monuments, which comes under the Secretariat for Development and Public Works, began to take action in the peninsula, devising schemes for the protection and revitalization of historic centres and initiating a programme of restoration of nationally-owned historic buildings.