France's urban areas: projects & developments

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Alsace-Lorraine-Champagne-Ardenne is now "Grand Est", Greater East. But east of what? Berlin? Warsaw? Once more complaining, I find these new names short-sighted and silly for bound to national borders as if Paris was a center of the universe or something. Would there be an aggressive ballsy European policy, they could've called it something sexier like Austrasie, that sounds much cooler. Doesn't it?
Oh well, I guess we'll have to change these names again sometime.

So Lille is now the capital of "Hauts-de-France". Lol, not used to it yet. Some over there are kidding hard with puns like "les eaux de France". Aaaahïaïaïe...
Whatever, it is now the main urban center of a region of 6 million and they're planning something fairly big for the new seat of their metropolitan council.











This will sit nearby the Euralille district to expand the embryonic high-rise cluster.

I'll be honest, don't quite fancy the mayor of Lille who's a complete prick, but of course she'd be happy at this public thing for her dear administration, supporting it. Work is supposed to begin as of 2019. It seems they already have an idea of a funding plan, but then it will cost more than expected at first anyway, as always.

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To bring this story to an end, here's the new map of the country.


http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/201...de-regions.php

This is France, so people will grumble till they get used to it and forget what was before.

Now the actual hard work is to push decentralization further. Obviously, in other words, the French people must find some convenient deals to make their national government give up on the many powers centralized over the Paris region (Île-de-France on that map) and get the regional administrations more independent and powerful. That is no easy business at all here.

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Some updates of what was introduced previously, a couple of posts above.
By MaxouDeNantes to the French-speaking sub-forums of SSC.











A bunch of pictures of this last one there:
http://www.a-lta.fr/wp-content/uploa...mensionner.jpg
http://www.a-lta.fr/wp-content/uploa...mensionner.jpg
http://www.a-lta.fr/wp-content/uploa...mensionner.jpg

Mad respect and thanks a lot to Maxou.

Effectiveness here. I like it a lot. You see, they're building a bunch of 50m-tall buildings, 15 to 20-floor structures over the area thus turning into a fine example of mixed-use contemporary fabric.

Here's an advertising video that was released over 6 months ago yet, for the fun of it.

Video Link

Now that's how to redevelop a post-war district that was all bland, definitely lacking social diversity and kind of desperate. It's going to gentrify as something turning into some new hot spot, but remains open to lower incomes by some social housing at the same time, so unhealthy social ghettos are now avoided. Some narrow-minded complain about the prospective cost of the social housing policy that's not market-friendly, but the most important is by far to spread social diversity IMHO. And there's still plenty of room for the regular market-rate stuff anyway.

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3 Black Swans still U/C.













Pics by Alsa67, Fr-speaking subforum of SSC.

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I'm a little astonished by the relatively large scale of this project in Huningue, a French suburb of Basel, Switzerland that I'd simply never heard of before.
Municipal population is of 7000.

Video Link

Huningue lies on the Rhine river right on the spot where France, Switzerland and Germany meet. So they call it an international location, although I assume neither the Swiss nor the Germans feel so international locally. This is just regular daily Europe.

Anyway, they expect all of this to be completed by 2022. It appears perfectly mixed-use, including offices, a 4-star business hotel, some 300 condos in all and retail at street level, for a €90 million investment. This is meant to further develop transit on the river, most likely for goods in particular.

Huningue's population is expected to grow by 10% in a couple of years from this project alone.

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Updates of 3 Black Swans and Elithis Danube by fool.







One of the swans closer to completion.









Still waiting for the red/black one to bring a touch of warm colors, but materials developed over that site are looking neat already.

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Wish there was more high-rise construction news to bring on here, but at least, transportation development is still doing pretty good over the country.

Most noticeably, Nice recently started construction of their new tram lines.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_t...ned_extensions

Except the yellow line, I believe everything dotted is U/C.
Although I'm not sure because this is so large and I'm getting lost. It's all related to the huge (partly nationally funded) master plan of post #6, which seems gigantic and confusing to me. Nice is merely quadrupling the size of their tram network.

On a different but related note, their new lines will be the very first to feature Alstom Transport's new tech to avoid the use of catenaries.

• Video Link

They call it "ground-based electric charging". I assume it was more or less inspired by Bombardier's Primove system.
Prior to these things, we had "ground-level power supply", some method based on some sort of so called 3rd rail, like those of Bordeaux and Dubai, but these latest gadgets appear more flexible and less expensive.
I think all this stuff to avoid overhead power lines is actually significant, as I was a bit shocked by pictures of the streets of Milan's old downtown messed up by wires. I incidentally read that an Italian corporation was developing their own system to get over those invasive wires. So several options are now available, and the same technologies can apply to buses.
In short, tram manufacturing is more lively than ever.

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Short travel film of Tourists discovering Paris
• Video Link

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^ That's why I like foreign people coming over here so much. They are fond of or amazed by what seemed gigantic to me as a little kid when I walked the streets with my mom holding my hand so carefully...

Don't move! Stay here! Don't cross the street by yourself or I'll spank you silly!! Don't walk too far away! You'd get lost and cry after me again!
How many times do local little kids get scolded like this through their childhoods..?
Didn't count but it has to be well in the hundreds.

Central Paris belongs to them tourists. That's my gift to them cause they're so gentle.

Now locals like myself have other duties. Namely working in/on the suburbs to enlarge it all.

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Oh wow, Elithis Danube designed by XTU Architects in Strasbourg is supposed to produce more power than it needs.













Credit to 3locations.

Thanks to solar panels all over the façade.



Each rental unit in there is provided with some gear to warn tenants about wrong power use (e.g. heating while windows are open).



The landlord also plans to reward tenants whose power consumption statistics are good enough.

Article in Fr: http://www.20minutes.fr/strasbourg/2...ergie-positive

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Looks great, but is it really that simple? then why do you need so many nuclear power plants?

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^ Heavy lobbying. The nuclear industry stands for tens of thousands of jobs and some big oldish engineering tradition over the country. It's true that France has been dangerously addicted to this crap, just like some others to oil or coal.

Fact is you simply can't give up on an entire sector of the national industry overnight, just like that. Especially when it's an essential strategic business such as power supply for the entire nation, and when technologies to produce renewable energy are not quite effective enough to replace it all yet.

However, the transition got started, as shown by this type of projects. I think some large corporations of the sector like EDF, Areva and Total SA are now working on it. First because they have to if they want to survive and sustain their businesses in the future. Second, because they're more and more under the pressure of political environmentalism that's growing bigger and bigger locally.