With transitional urban planning, Lyon's wastelands are regaining years of life

Using unoccupied buildings to set up workshops, offices or temporary staff while a new project takes shape has never been so fashionable.

Heir to the protest movements of the 1970s and 1980s and cultural squats, transitional urban planning results from a desire to occupy abandoned places in order to revitalize them or respond to certain unmet social needs, recalls urban planner Cécile Diguet.

Over the past fifteen years, the practice has become institutionalized, often at the initiative of public owners, to the point of becoming an obligatory step in urban planning operations.

In Lyon, around forty projects are underway, including "Etape 22D", which covers 4 hectares in the former silk district, on the borders of Villeurbanne and Vaux-en-Velin, the scene of a slow process of deindustrialization.

"When we arrived in 2020, we said to ourselves that we had to accelerate transitional urban planning. We adopted a framework with three functions: economic, cultural and hospitality," recalls Renaud Payre, vice-president of the metropolis responsible for housing.

Purchased for 21,8 million euros by the metropolis in 2021, the six buildings of the former Bobst and Thyssen factories were secured and fitted out at a cost of 1,9 million euros for occupation planned until 2027.

"Since the Covid crisis, the real estate crisis and the rise of the fight against urban sprawl, the question of reusing buildings and intensifying their use has become the number one topic in urban planning," observes Julien Meyrignac, editor-in-chief of the journal Urbanisme.

At Stage 22D, this involves in particular the creation of the professional third place "Grand Plateau" dedicated to cycling, where 37 small bicycle manufacturing, assembly or reconditioning companies coexist.

"Positively opportunistic"

“The idea was to bring together economic players to structure a bicycle and micro-mobility sector,” explains Anne-Gaëlle Clot, director of Grand Plateau.

In anticipation of the end of the lease, rents are increased every eighteen months with a view to a transfer to private real estate.

Nearby, a building has also been set up to help single mothers with children under three.

Large halls still awaiting occupants also house the first companies specializing in reuse, sorting of bulky items, but also the logistics warehouse of the Restos du Coeur, artists' workshops and a funeral cooperative.

"These players cannot find their place in the traditional real estate market, which is much too expensive," emphasizes Gautier Le Bail, technical director of the Plateau urbain cooperative, created in 2013 to find temporary occupation sites in buildings at the end of their life.

The fact remains that with poorly insulated premises and an electricity bill that has exploded to 55.000 euros in 2023, Stage 22D is also showing its limits.

"The objective is not to make the acquisition profitable but to be positively opportunistic in a context of land scarcity," assures Emmanuelle Sibué, project director at the metropolis.

Long the preserve of the Ile-de-France region, where more than 5,2 million square metres of office space were unoccupied in September, transitional urban planning has spread throughout France, even if it remains less developed than in Anglo-Saxon countries.

The main causes, according to Julien Meyrignac, are greater reluctance on the part of private players to take risks, and stricter French regulations on security.

"There is also sometimes a lack of clarity in the intentions of public actors, with a lack of clarity on the means to be mobilized and the final project," he emphasizes.

Urban planner Patrick Henry regrets that the various experiences of transitional urban planning and occupations do not serve to influence final projects and transform them.

Abroad, many transitional urban planning projects are used conversely by the private sector to "create a new urban dynamic and then develop real estate programs that will have every chance of succeeding because they will have been able to create desirability," observes Julien Meyrignac.