Inventons la metropole du Grand Paris. Inventing the greater Paris metropolis

摘要

This is reporting and documenting an interesting planning and design experiment in the Paris region. A so-called 'consultation process' was conducted under the tutelage of three key actors: Metropole du Grand Paris, a public intermunicipal co-operative agency acting on behalf of 131 municipalities in France's capital region; the Prefecture of ile-de-France, which manages infrastructure, urbanization and regional development; and Societe du Grand Paris, the public agency that is steering the Grand Paris Express metro development, including the transit stations and their surroundings. Such a governance framework allowed the establishment of a regional planning programme which entailed the redevelopment of strategic sites. A call for proposals to municipalities first delivered 112 prospective sites, that were then reduced to 55 after analysis, including 19 in direct proximity to Grand Express stations. An international call for proposals generated 420 candidacies from consortiums comprised of architecture, development and investment firms. Of the 164 consortiums retained, 153 developed fully-fledged proposals for the 55 sites scattered in eleven neighbourhoods in the periphery of Paris. Those proposals, first exhibited at the Pavilion de 1'Arsenal, are made accessible to a wider audience in this beautifully illustrated catalogue.