Using unoccupied buildings to set up workshops, offices or precarious people while a new project takes shape has never been so fashionable. Heir to the protest movements of the 1970s and 1980s and cultural squats, transitional urban planning results from a desire to occupy abandoned places to revitalize them or respond to certain unmet social needs, recalls urban planner Cécile Diguet.
Forty projects underway in the metropolis
Over the past fifteen years, the practice has become institutionalized, often at the initiative of public owners, to the point of becoming a necessary part of town planning operations. In the Metropolis of Lyon, around forty projects are underway, including “Stage 22D”, which covers 4 hectares in the former silk district, on the borders of Villeurbanne and Vaulx-en-Velin, theater of a slow process of deindustrialization.
“When we arrived in 2020, we said to ourselves that we needed to accelerate transitional urban planning. We have adopted a framework with three functions: economic, cultural and hospitality,” recalls Renaud Payre, vice-president of the Metropolis in charge of housing. Purchased for 21.8 million euros by the Metropolis in 2021, the six buildings of the former Bobst and Thyssen factories were secured and developed for 1.9 million euros for occupancy planned until 2027.
“Since the Covid crisis, the real estate crisis and the rise in the fight against urban sprawl, the question of the reuse of buildings and the intensification of their use has become the number one subject in urban planning”, observes Julien Meyrignac, editor-in-chief of the Urbanisme magazine. At L’Étape 22D, this notably involves the creation of the “Grand Plateau” professional third place dedicated to cycling, where 37 small bicycle manufacturing, assembly or reconditioning companies coexist.
“Positively opportunistic”
“The idea was to bring together economic players to structure a bicycle and micro-mobility sector,” explains Anne-Gaëlle Clot, director of Grand Plateau. In anticipation of the end of the lease, rents are increased every eighteen months with a view to a transfer to private real estate. Nearby, a building has also been set up to help single mothers with children under three years old.
Large halls still waiting for occupants also house the first companies specializing in reuse, sorting of bulky waste, but also the logistics warehouse of Restos du Cœur, artists’ studios and a funeral cooperative.
“These players do not find their place in the traditional real estate market, which is much too expensive,” underlines Gautier Le Bail, technical director of the Plateau Urbain cooperative, created in 2013 to find temporary occupancy places in buildings in end of life.
The fact remains that with poorly insulated premises and an electricity bill which has exploded to 55,000 euros in 2023, L’Étape 22D also shows its limits. “The objective is not to make the acquisition profitable but to be positively opportunistic in a context of land scarcity,” assures Emmanuelle Sibué, project director at the Métropole.
A reluctance of public actors?
Long the prerogative of Île-de-France, where more than 5.2 million square meters of offices could not find takers in September, transitional urban planning has spread throughout France, even if it remains less developed than in Anglo-Saxon countries. In particular, believes Julien Meyrignac, a greater reluctance of private actors in the face of risk, and stricter French regulations on security.
“There is sometimes also uncertainty in the intentions of public actors, with a lack of clarity on the means to be mobilized and the final project,” he underlines. The town planner Patrick Henry regrets, for his part, that the various experiences of transitional town planning and occupations do not serve more to influence final projects and transform them.
Abroad, many transitional urban planning projects are used conversely by the private sector to “create a new urban dynamic and then develop real estate programs which will have every chance of succeeding because they will have been able to create desirability », observes Julien Meyrignac.
France
Related News :