Paris 3 University will join Picpus-Nation in 2020. The environment is not very dynamic but has spaces with great potential.
Under the obligation to leave the historical site of Censier in 2019, the Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle University will move to the 12th district, onto a 11,000m² land plot made available by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Once finalised, the campus will bring onto one site the dozen or so currently occupied by Sorbonne Nouvelle. This is made necessary by the increasing number of students and departments since its creation in 1970. The new facility will be able to accommodate 6,000 students, teachers and researchers on a daily basis. This new construction will lie less than 500 metres, as the crow flies, from the new AP-HP campus where over 1,000 students have enrolled since its opening in autumn 2017. This mini big-bang within a residential area in the 12th district gives rise to numerous questions:
- How is the area preparing to welcome these new incomers?
- Is the commercial fabric of the area able to satisfy the needs of young, mobile people with low incomes?
- Does the urban context lend itself to relaxing, moving around, meeting local people?
This study aims to provide answers by documenting the present day commercial offer and its recent developments, by analysing the commercial fabric and its transformation in two other university neighbourhoods (Jussieu, Diderot) and by devising lines of thought based on the sector’s assets. With as a starting point the observation that the commercial occupation of ground floor premises does not, today, have a profile that corresponds to students’ needs, the study suggests making good use of one of the areas principal characteristics. The dimensions of public space in this relatively quiet neighbourhood with not too much traffic leads one to imagine setting up light and reversible experiments which could allow spaces to be rethought, while offering new facilities to students and local inhabitants (food-trucks, bookshops, games libraries…)
All these initiatives could serve other people as well as those examined here.