scholarly journals Urban renewal in post-industrial districts: the example of Lyon Metropolis

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (33) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Lydia Coudroy de Lille ◽  
Caroline Bouloc

Urban renewal issues in France are very often discussed with reference to the demolition or renovation of large-scale housing estates. But these issues also concern former industrial areas which have their own distinct architectural, social, and economic difficulties. This article aims to present analysis of these differences using the example of two case studies in the Lyon metropolitan area, the second largest agglomeration in France. First, we outline the background of urban policy in France and Lyon in particular, together with mapping “priority geography” of urban policy in Lyon. Our two case studies, La Saulaie and Carré de Soie, are located in suburbs of the metropolis. Through our analysis of the social and spatial features of these two renewal projects which are currently under way, we demonstrate that urban renewal policies in France are multi-layered, and that the case of Lyon illustrates especially robust engagement on the part of local authorities. Tackling poverty and isolation are the priorities in La Saulaie. In Carré de Soie, the challenges are to create a public transportation hub, a new housing market, and to attract companies to this new secondary centre. We also show that urban renewal operations are not limited to the areas defined by the “priority geography”.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koko Warner ◽  
Zinta Zommers ◽  
Anita Wreford ◽  
Margot Hurlbert ◽  
David Viner ◽  
...  

Countries across the world aspire towards climate resilient sustainable development. The interacting processes of climate change, land change, and unprecedented social and technological change pose significant obstacles to these aspirations. The pace, intensity, and scale of these sizeable risks and vulnerabilities affect the central issues in sustainable development: how and where people live and work, access to essential resources and ecosystem services needed to sustain people in given locations, and the social and economic means to improve human wellbeing in the face of disruptions. This paper addresses the question: What are the characteristics of transformational adaptation and development in the context of profound changes in land and climate? To explore this question, this paper contains four case studies: managing storm water runoff related to the conversion of rural land to urban land in Indonesia; using a basket of interventions to manage social impacts of flooding in Nepal; combining a national glacier protection law with water rights management in Argentina; and community-based relocation in response to permafrost thaw and coastal erosion in Alaska. These case studies contribute to understanding characteristics of adaptation which is commensurate to sizeable risks and vulnerabilities to society in changing climate and land systems. Transformational adaptation is often perceived as a major large-scale intervention. In practice, the case studies in this article reveal that transformational adaptation is more likely to involve a bundle of adaptation interventions that are aimed at flexibly adjusting to change rather than reinforcing the status quo in ways of doing things. As a global mosaic, transformational change at a grand scale will occur through an inestimable number of smaller steps to adjust the central elements of human systems proportionate to the changes in climate and land systems. Understanding the characteristics of transformational adaptation will be essential to design and implement adaptation that keeps society in step with reconfiguring climate and land systems as they depart from current states.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1308
Author(s):  
Milena Trzcińska

In 2004, in response to France’s 1960s and 1970s urban regeneration program proposing the demolition and redevelopment of large scale social housing developments, Frédérik Druot, Anne Lacaton, and Jean-Philippe Vassal created their PLUS theory (PLUS—Les grands ensembles de logements–Territoires d’exception). Its main aim was to modernize the existing buildings, and to add extra living space, functional freedom, and comfort. This essay examines the PLUS strategy and two of the architects’ projects: the Bois le Prêtre Tower in Paris and the Grand Parc housing estate in Bordeaux. Its aim is to examine the tools used by the architects and investigate the purposefulness and potential of using their solutions in Polish large-scale prefabricated housing estates. Combining the categories of luxury and saving in redevelopment of housing estates paves the way for a new outlook. Maximizing living space, quality, and freedom of living in housing facilities that are not part of the commercial luxury segment of the housing market may prevent potential gentrification and homogenization of the social structure in individual city districts.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Baeten ◽  
Sara Westin ◽  
Emil Pull ◽  
Irene Molina

Based on interview material relating to the current wave of housing renovation in Swedish cities, this article will analyse the profit-driven, traumatic and violent displacement in the wake of contemporary large-scale renovation processes of the so-called Million Program housing estates from the 1960s and 1970s. We maintain that the current form of displacement (through renovation) has become a regularized profit strategy, for both public and private housing companies in Sweden. We will pay special attention to Marcuse’s notion of ‘displacement pressure’ which refers not only to actual displacement but also to the anxieties, uncertainties, insecurities and temporalities that arise from possible displacement due to significant rent increases after renovation and from the course of events preceding the actual rent increase. Examples of the many insidious forms in which this pressure manifests itself will be given – examples that illustrate the hypocritical nature of much planning discourse and rhetoric of urban renewal. We illustrate how seemingly unspectacular measures and tactics deployed in the renovation processes have far-reaching consequences for tenants exposed to actual or potential displacement. Displacement and displacement pressure due to significant rent increases (which is profit-driven but justified by invoking the ‘technical necessity’ of renovation) undermines the ‘right to dwell’ and the right to exert a reasonable level of power over one’s basic living conditions, with all the physical and mental benefits that entails – regardless of whether displacement fears materialize in actual displacement or not.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostyantyn Nesvit

The article deals with the transformation of the role of industry’s social potential as a determinant of sustainability in the new economy. It also scientifically substantiated the social sources and the functional impact factors. The large-scale and multi-vector changes accompanying the wave-like oscillations of post-industrial economies have been investigated; the leading trends in the development of the social potential of industry have been highlighted. Emphasis is placed on the importance of the social potential of industry in the context of implementing sound structural changes and capacity building of technologically intensive industries, increased human capital productivity, renewal of economic and social infrastructure, achieving general economic and social progress.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Maria CYSEK-PAWLAK

As accessibility becomes a basic need of modern society, the issue of sustainable transportation continues to gain importance. On the large scale, it concerns interconnecting cities and metropolises, and, on a smaller scale, it refers to connection networks for pedestrians, cyclists and other means of public transport. The study aims to assess the importance of sustainable transport as a principle of New Urbanism in contemporary redevelopment projects. It introduces possible ways of implementing these principles, as well as dangers coming from misunderstanding them. The approaches and methods used in this article combine field studies conducted during the research trips, desk research and interviews with professionals at various stages of two urban renewal projects –Clichy Batignolles (France) and the main train station area in Lodz (Poland). The study revealed the strategic role of rail line redevelopment projects in both rebuilding the continuity of the urban fabric (Clichy Batignolles) and in creating a new centrality for an area with attractive cultural activities and services (Lodz). As urban project timeframes are often long, both case studies show that high flexibility and the ability to adapt investments to changing conditions are often required. Nevertheless, the realization of the key infrastructure elements should be maintained all along. Furthermore, functional diversity can provide an important support for the sustainability of the project as it ensures the quality of urban tissue through height level representative public projects, thereby giving the area in question a new image. As exemplified by the housing policy in France, the distribution of functions can also serve as a pertinent response to the strategic needs of the entire agglomeration as well as a useful solution to local problems. One of the most crucial elements of redevelopment projects is the implementation of sustainable transportation that provides quick and comfortable connections by various means of public transport within different urban scales: metropolises, cities, districts and the city. As an element of sustainable urban policy, an effective public transportation network in the inner city should be supported by the limitation of car park ratio for non-residents within the redevelopment project. Altogether, the impact that other New Urbanism principles exert on developing urban structures is a pertinent question. Today, the real challenge for this movement has moved into the city, rather than on the outskirts, as in the past.


Author(s):  
James McElvenny

This chapter sets the scene for the case studies that follow in the rest of the book by characterising the ‘age of modernism’ and identifying problems relating to language and meaning that arose in this context. Emphasis is laid on the social and political issues that dominated the era, in particular the rapid developments in technology, which inspired both hope and fear, and the international political tensions that led to the two World Wars. The chapter also sketches the approach to historiography taken in the book, interdisciplinary history of ideas.


1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.


2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-79
Author(s):  
Carla Marcantonio

FQ books editor Carla Marcantonio guides readers through the 33rd edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival held each year in Bologna at the end of June. Highlights of this year's festival included a restoration of one of Vittorio De Sica's hard-to-find and hence lesser-known films, the social justice fairy tale, Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1951). The film was presented by De Sica's daughter, Emi De Sica, and was an example of the ongoing project to restore De Sica's archive, which was given to the Cineteca de Bologna in 2016. Marcantonio also notes her unexpected responses to certain reviewings; Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (2019), presented by Francis Ford Coppola on the large-scale screen of Piazza Maggiore and accompanied by remastered Dolby Atmos sound, struck her as a tour-de-force while a restoration of David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) had lost some of its strange allure.


Author(s):  
Joseph John Hobbs

This paper examines how the architectural, social, and cultural heritage of the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries may contribute to better development of this region’s lived environment. Modern urbanism has largely neglected heritage in architectural design and in social and private spaces, creating inauthentic places that foster a hunger for belongingness in the UAE’s built environment. The paper reviews recent urban developments in the UAE and the Gulf Region, and identifies elements of local heritage that can be incorporated into contemporary planning and design. It proposes that adapting vernacular architectural heritage to the modern built environment should not be the principal goal for heritage-informed design. Instead we may examine the social processes underlying the traditional lived environment, and aim for social sustainability based on the lifeways and preferences of local peoples, especially in kinship and Islamic values. Among the most promising precedents for modern social sustainability are social and spatial features at the scale of the neighborhood in traditional Islamic settlements. Interviews with local Emiratis will also recommend elements of traditional knowledge to modern settings. 


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