Ten thirty had struck, Annie Delrieu-Tourtoulou was preparing to return to the town hall, when, on the first floor of an old building, a man in a white undershirt appeared at the window: « Hep, Madame! » She's in a meeting, she replies calmly. He restarts. He insists; she finally let go. “I heard that when the place is finished, we won't be able to park anymore? I have back problems, I'm out of breath, I can't go forever! »
The mayor of Vic-sur-Cère, in Cantal, 1,862 inhabitants, a twenty-minute drive from Aurillac, had just detailed to us the ongoing redevelopment of the village, where the car would soon no longer have all its comforts, when this apostrophe stopped her in her tracks.
Linked for five centuries to the Grimaldi family, a center of hydrotherapy in the 19th centurye century, the town had its hour of glory. Then the windows closed. There remains a butcher, a press house, two bakeries, a grocer, a florist, but, recently, the pharmacy moved to the commercial area at the entrance to the town without the elected official being able to stop it. “People who don’t drive, what do they do? They leave with their wheelchair on the national road? », she gets annoyed.
The hope of reconnecting with a lively town all year round rests partly on the team of architects and landscapers at Le Rouget, one of whose employees, this autumn morning, is checking the good progress of the work. At the foot of a lime tree and a fountain, a parking lot becomes a square. No more cars around the church, but, on their advice, the town bought a house below, “with 3,000 square meters of land, to recreate parking and a park”, details the mayor. On the ground, pebbles and local stone replace the coating. Perennials are planted wherever possible. Everything seemed obvious until this arrest. “It’s my daily life, she said. We dream of a world without cars, but how to do it? You will talk about it with Simon Teyssou. »
Same imperatives as cities
You have to take the national road 122 towards Aurillac, drive for half an hour on this diagonal which irrigates the department in the middle of the pastures, turn right at the Le Rouget-Pers sign, to meet the man she is talking about.
No need for GPS: after the service station and the three-in-one esplanade – town hall, church and market square – a wooden building stands out from the neighboring houses. It is there, on the first floor, that the Atelier du Rouget team imagines the future of Vic-sur-Cère, and many other towns in France, preferably rural. With a method that is now becoming a standard: the owner of the place, Simon Teyssou, jeans, t-shirt, thin glasses, 51 years old, received the Grand Prix de l'urbanisme (The World is a member of the jury) in 2023.
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