The Council of the Inter-municipal Cooperation Establishment - EPT - for Grand Paris Grand Est recommended, on 3rd July 2018, that its Inter-municipal Local Urbanism Plan (PLUI) be drawn up.
The provisional schedule planned that 2019-2020 would be the period for the territorial diagnosis to be made. The EPT sought the assistance of Apur, in the context of making the diagnosis as well as a Sustainable Development Project - PADD - based on its knowledge of the territory and its experience in carrying out similar projects.
Thematic workshops were held between March 2019 and January 2020. Their aim was to enable a shared reflection extending across the entire territory with public authority representatives and technical experts of each theme, in view of enriching the PLUI diagnosis work.
The 6 workshops addressed the following themes:
- The environment, nature, landscape
- Demographic trends, the living environment and housing offer
- Urban fabrics and urban morphology
- Mobility and travel
- Economic and commercial activities
- Facilities
The workshops brought together public authority representatives and municipal technical departments to exchange on the aspects of the diagnosis presented, to address them with their practical knowledge and experience in the field thus contributing to the diagnosis on the scale of the Public Territorial Establishment (EPT). A brief summary presented by Apur concluded each workshop.
ACCOMPANIMENT BY THE PARIS URBANISM AGENCY - Apur -
In the context of its partnership work program, Apur accompanies territorial dynamics by, in particular, helping to reinforce knowledge and awareness and for this to be shared.
In that concerning Grand Paris Grand Est, Apur produced preparatory documents, bringing together data and studies related to the subjects in question from its own databases and studies among which are extracts focusing on the Grand Est territory. The data and files provided by Grand Paris Grand Est from their own departments completed the panel of documents used.
In this way, for example, for the workshop dealing with the living environment and housing, a summary of files from the New National Urban Renewal Programme - NPNRU- was provided to enrich the preparatory dossier. Likewise for the workshop - Mobility and travel” a study on travel needs in the territory by EPT was included.
Provisional versions of these dossiers, were sent by the EPT to each participant about ten days before the workshop along with 2 or 3 questions related to the themes to be addressed. The town could therefore plan for the workshop with prior discussion within their departments. Apur dealt with hosting the workshops.
During the workshop, after an introductory presentation had been made highlighting the elements of the dossier and a few questions enabling the discussion to be structured, the representatives of the public authorities and technical departments involved were invited to speak and debate on their various experiences, their ways of functioning, their projects and their expectations… At the end of the workshop an oral summary of the discussions that had taken place closed the session.
Following each workshop, the preparatory dossier that had been put together was consolidated. And a little later a summary of the workshops was drawn up by Apur.
The preparatory dossiers for the six workshops as well as the summary of the municipal steering committees and the workshops are online here.
The synthesis of the workshops brings to light the high quality of the living environment thanks to the widespread presence of nature, the qualities of suburban residential areas of detached housing and the numerous town centres that provide a network of local life. On the other hand, the area suffers from social fragilities and a tendency for the standard of living of its inhabitants to decline. Insufficient job centres, with few existing jobs in the area, and insufficient public transport services (two Grand Paris Express stations are planned) are also underlined. This reveals the necessity to develop more diverse types of employment, to introduce new economy into the territory and to develop the employment capacity of companies in existing business zones. Finally, the necessity to develop a different housing offer and to make better use of existing facilities in order to meet the needs of the population leads to an original way of thinking about the future of the territory which by amplifying its environmental and ecological qualities could develop a new attractiveness around, for example, outdoor leisure activities and urban agriculture.
