Environments by Design

Abstract

In this communication, we propose to observe the case of Lyon Métropole, France, where the evolution of the relationship between rivers and the metropolis is exemplary for understanding the transformation of the nature-based solutions from the metropolitan to the neighbourhood level. In France, planners have become accustomed to adapting the elements of nature to urban constraints. And a “French know-how” has been developed to control watercourses and vegetation since the work undertaken in Versailles, then in Paris with the work of Baron Haussmann. The results of this mastery of blue and green infrastructures are now being questioned. Climate change and the need to alleviate anthropogenic pressures on the earth system are forcing planners and designers to propose new planning practices and designs. 

Through three emblematic projects carried out by Lyon Métropole over the last three decades, we observe how, by successive increments, the development of the banks of the Rhone and Saône rivers testifies to a renewal of the relationship between nature and the metropolis. From the 1990s, Lyon Métropole seeks to regain its rivers, and the first project the, Anneau Bleu, attest to a “rising power of renaturation” of rivers. In the 2000s, with the project Berges du Rhône, the appetite of nature of the city dwellers is satisfied with a relatively mineral place of relaxation in a frame of natural and ecological appearance. From the 2010s, with the third project, Rives de Saône, water became the natural and ecological liaison element of the metropole. The project takes into account the fact that river overflow and proposes to adapt intelligently to the river. And thus, the evolution of Lyon Métropole ‘s practices shows how a metropolis learns to adapt to the character of its rivers, and no longer to adapt rivers to urban constraints.