De « l’atelier » à « l’agence » d’urbanisme de Lyon : nouveaux regards sur les quartiers anciens (1961-1983)

• Published in: Territoire en Mouvement Vol. 2; pp. 31 - 43
• Main Author: Gilles Bentayou
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Lille 1 01-02-2009
• Subjects: housing improvement policy; traditional neighbourhood; urban knowledge; urban planning public agency of Lyon; urban renovation
• ISSN: 1950-5698
• DOI: 10.4000/tem.625

The current « Agence d’urbanisme de Lyon » was set up in 1978, whereas the urban planning was previously led by the « Atelier d’urbanisme », a mixed private and public studio, headed by the architect and city-planner Charles Delfante. At the same time, national housing improvement policies arise through urban rehabilitation. These new policies deeply change the types of the preliminary studies required afterwards to define the public strategies of urban rehabilitation. This paper examines then the part played by this new body, in this specific and emergent field.The reasons of the changes that occurred in 1978 for the public city-planning structure of Lyon have first to be reminded. They rely on both personal and organizational issues, that have been called into question since the middle of the 1970s. They also have been emphasized by the rough debates concerning the latest urban renewals that had been decided on many central areas by the former mayor of Lyon (Louis Pradel, who died in 1976).From 1978 until 1983, the city-planning agency strongly weighs on the decision-making process, in order to make effective the new theoretical schemes required by the rehabilitation, linking preliminary studies to the final strategies. This public agency helps thus the inter-communal authority to become a real public contractor, less relying on the expertise of semipublic or private project management companies.Compared with the “Atelier d’urbanisme”, the “Agence d’urbanisme de Lyon” can also be considered as an innovative body: the studies and surveys carried out, the methods as well as the narrative processes involved have deeply changed from the one to the other. The city districts that had been called “disorganized” or “delapidated” areas in the former studies (before 1977), come to be described afterwards, in the new ones, through the model of the “traditional” and “popular” neighborhood, that still has to be preserved.