Tebessa, Algeria: young automobile Tucson's old traditional city twin

I decided to find the traditional city equivalent of Tucson. 

I gave the old Google Earth a spin  and found Tebessa, Algeria. 

On first sight the stats line up pretty well:

Population: Tebessa around 600K, Tucson around 500K. 

Geography: Tebessa at 35 degree latitude, and Tucson at 32. 

Both cities sit on a high plateau surrounded by mountains, 

Tebessa at 858m (2800 ft) and Tucson at just over 700m (2400 ft) above sea level.

Climate: Tebessa is semi-arid, and Tucson is desert. 

Tebessa has annual precipitation of 342mm, and Tucson of 294mm. 

So far so god. Here are Google satellite images captured to show the similarities: 

Tucson, Arizona (resolution: 3.2 km)

Tebessa, Algeria (resolution: 600m)

Well, not really. Tebessa above is pictured at 5x higher resolution than Tucson. Oops.

The area of the City of Tucson is an enormous 600 square km (around 260 sq mi) in contrast to Tebessa, which occupies a mere 41 square km (16 sq mi).

Here is Tebessa at the same scale as Tucson above.

Tebessa, Algeria (resolution: 3.2 km)

Tucson (resolution: 300m)

Tebessa (resolution: 30m)

They say that good, walkable traditional cities are build on a grid. Unfortunately, Tucson's grid is automobile scale, and is about 10 times larger than that of Tebessa's.

Tucson:

 Here is a "traditional city" block of Tucson. This is one of the most "compact" and "walkable" areas of Tucson (Bario Viejo) built prior to WWII, prior to the automobile crazed suburban sprawl. Even so, the barrio's block is 2x the circumference,and roughly 6x the area of a largish traditional city block in Tebessa outlined below.







You notice that the rooftops are about the same size (these images are at the same scale). Thus the actual buildings in Tucson's Bario Viejo are not larger than Tebessa's traditional city style housing. Its all the empty (and thus useless, non-revenue generating) "liability land" around the buildings that adds to the large block area in Tucson.

Tebessa:

So why are they so different, when they could be so similar? It likely all is in history: Tebessa, located in North Africa, was founded in 150 BC, and was part of the Roman Empire. By 100AD, Tebessa had a population of around 30,000. Tucson reached similar population size around the 1930's. Although Tucson (the Santa Cruz river valley) had been settled as far back as 2100 BC, Tucson's population was a mere 7500 by the turn of the 20th century, and most of its growth came after WWII in the form of automobile centric suburban sprawl.