Reshaping the industrial urban landscape: an innovative approach or a means to gentrification?
Résumé
This paper questions the meaning of preservation of industrial remnants in former industrial cities. Isolated buildings as factories and abandoned infrastructure and equipment dated on the industrial era are often demolished in favor of contemporary buildings which seem to better correspond to contemporary aesthetics. On the other hand, in France, Robert and Reichen, propose new forms and uses for the old industrial buildings such as industrial museums based on the principles of circular economy and preservation of urban heritage. Even though the media highlight the clash between different values and meanings (conservation of cities’ past ≠new forms of architecture and economic activities), we must underline that there is a different approach in the context of urban regeneration programs. This means that decision-makers choose either to restore and reuse old industrial buildings or to demolish them in order to transform the urban landscape. The study of the fundamental elements of space which refer to the cities’ urban and social fabric contribute to a better understanding of essential meanings and their intersection in the forms of architecture and urban design. The concept of industrial heritage is changing with the emergence of Critical Heritage Studies which consider heritage as an evolutionary process that responds to the needs of contemporary societies in terms of sustainable development, economy, or culture. At the same time preoccupations since the 1980s at the international level about the sustainability of cities, and the appearance in the 1990s of ecological and social movements focusing on the active citizen engagement in the procedures of architectural and urban design created new challenges for the preservation of industrial heritage in the contexts of sustainable development and co-creation. The two case studies of the paper are considered as exemplary models of architectural and urban design forms in former industrial cities. On the one hand we have the reconversion project Ile-de-Nantes, a brownfield within the former industrial city of Nantes, a city with a significant industrial heritage. The project functions as a vector for the development of new architectural forms in public buildings (e.g. the local courthouse). On the other hand, we have the reconversion project Docks-de-Seine, a brownfield located in the city of Saint-Ouen in the outskirts of Paris, a city characterized in the last 20 years by its urban transformations (spatial, economic, social), in which industrial activities have never ceased to exist. The project functions, as the first case study in Nantes, as a vector for the development of new architectural forms in office buildings (e.g. the buildings of Alstom). The study and comparison of the two case studies revealed the risk of gentrification in former industrial cities as their working-class identity changes due to the arrival of executives and the rejection towards the cities’ periphery of the modest socio-professional categories. We must also note the high cost of such operations, even in the case of large, deindustrialized cities, because the financing of such projects requires significant economic funds, at the risk of disfavoring other municipal actions.
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