Lyon’s Confluence

A simplistic view of post-World-War-II French urban transportation planning would identify two very different phases.

In the 1950s and 1960s, and well into the 1970s, the government largely devoted itself to catering to the automobile. Limited-access highways were built to connect French cities and to speed movement by car in the suburbs that were growing rapidly in many urban areas. There was only modest investment in public transport.

By the 1970s, there was a widespread understanding of the limits and problems of a mostly car-based transportation system, and there was a radical change in emphasis. Since then, there has been much more investment in public transport. An intercity network of high-speed trains has evolved (the first TGV line opened in 1981); the Paris Métro began growing again (early 1970s); and rail rapid-transit systems were added in Marseille (1977), Lyon (1978), Lille (1983), Toulouse (1993), and Rennes (2002). Furthermore, tramways, which had come close to vanishing completely in the 1960s, have been added in 27 cities.¹ In addition, numerous cities have engaged in pedestrianization schemes in their centers and occasionally elsewhere. Bus, tram, and bicycle lanes as well as parking restrictions have also reduced the amount of space available to car drivers. Although most changes have been the object of huge amounts of discussion and not everything planned has actually been implemented, there really has come to be a consensus that it would be wise to push back at least a little against the hegemony of the automobile.

I don’t want to overstate the case for the chronology proposed above. There was no day in, say, 1975 when everything changed; the shift in emphasis occurred over several years. It’s also the case that there was one spectacular exception to the rule that there was little investment in public transit in the three decades after World War II. The first line of the Paris RER opened in 1969, and the RER continued to grow through the 1970s. It’s also true that limited-access highways continued to be added even after 1980, but mostly not in big cities. Note also that, with the exception of the creation of the Parc Rives-de-Seine to replace an expressway along the Seine in Paris, even the most obnoxious facilities for automobiles have generally not been removed.

Of course, there were similar trends throughout the Western world, but, with its long-term habit of having the government do more than in many other countries, France saw a particularly sharp break in what was emphasized, and it was definitely a pioneer in the creation of cross-city suburban rail transit (the RER), high-speed passenger rail (the TGV), urban bicycle sharing (Vélib’), and perhaps even facilities for pedestrians.²

I spent several days in Lyon last month. I’d visited Lyon quite a number of times over the years and had always appreciated its big-city feel and its hills (and views!), but I’d never been there for more than twenty-four hours at a time. I was particularly interested in looking at the Confluence, a more or less new neighborhood that has grown up over the last fifteen years and that, in some ways, exemplifies the general trends in French urban planning. I say “more or less new” because the Confluence—the southern end of the peninsula between the Saône and the Rhône—has been there for as long as Lyon has. But the area south of Perrache Station was a somewhat disreputable working-class and industrial area that was quite cut-off from the rest of Lyon in the decades preceding the current renovation work. It required a long walk “under the vaults” (the train tracks) to get to what is now known as the Confluence, and there wasn’t much there that would have been of interest to outsiders (except, it’s said, those in search of prostitutes). The addition of an only partly underground freeway in front of the Perrache Station during the 1970s increased the neighborhood’s isolation. The decline of much of the Confluence’s industrial facilities in the 1990s, however, presented an opportunity for Lyon’s powers-that-be.³ A decision was made to rejuvenate the area, leveraging, first, the scenic joining of two rivers,⁴ and, second, the Confluence’s proximity to Lyon’s central business district, which, arguably, begins on the north side of Perrache Station and whose center lies only a kilometer or two north. The Confluence, in other words, was similar in some ways to Hamburg’s HafenCity. There was a chance to extend the CBD and to create a new kind of neighborhood on a very large site.

Map of the Confluence and vicinity. GIS data from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap, somewhat modified.

Fifteen years later, work in the Confluence is far from finished, but enough of what was planned has actually been accomplished so that it’s possible to get a sense of what the “completed” area will be like.

The Confluence differs from HafenCity (and many other new neighborhoods) in that it was inhabited at the moment that work on its “rejuvenation” was begun. Its northeast fifth (roughly) was a working-class neighborhood called Sainte-Blandine, the site of numerous interwar public housing projects. French pre-World-War-II social housing facilities—called HBMs (habitations à bon marché)—were (and are) quite different from the mostly suburban, giant tower-in-a-park HLMs (habitations à loyer modéré) built after World War II that are now widely despised. HBMs, in contrast, were generally constructed flush with the sidewalk. They were basically plain versions of the middle-class apartment buildings of the same period and were in fact generally located in areas where most of the housing was privately built.⁵ A casual observer would not be able to identify them as public housing. HBMs have generally aged well, although, of course, they often need some renovation. A decision was made simply to leave Sainte-Blandine in place, offering improvements and replacements when necessary.⁶ One result of this decision is that the Confluence differs from most new neighborhoods in being quite socially and economically diverse; it’s a pretty good example of the new ideal of mixité. It also has a historical component that’s a little deeper than, say, the nautical symbols that dot HafenCity. There’s still a well-used pétanque (or maybe boule lyonnaise) court next to the 19th-century Église Sainte-Blandine, and there are still several very working-class cafés along the Cours Charlemagne, existing quite happily among half a dozen new midrange hotels that have been added to the area over the last decade as its respectability has grown.

Most of the rest of the Confluence has undergone substantial change.

The northwest quarter of the neighborhood, for example, has become a more or less upper-middle-class apartment district, with some offices. One could argue that a government project to house the well-off isn’t quite fair, but those living in the area are generally paying a substantial amount for their housing, and it’s hard to imagine a successful urban-renewal scheme that catered only to the poor.

Upscale apartment buildings across from the Confluence shopping center, Lyon.

Halfway south is a gigantic shopping mall, with a Carrefour, a Monoprix, and numerous other shops. These shops generally seem to be catering to those who are well-off, but, as is true of big shopping malls all over the world, people from all classes are certainly welcome to come and buy things. The shopping mall was built on a man-made inlet that’s often used for recreational boating.

The Confluence shopping mall. Note the well-used seating area. The bridge carries the century-old railroad line through the mall.

The southwest part of Confluence—which is identified by the English-language name “The Docks”—has become predominantly an office district, with some apartment buildings and restaurants and a large art gallery in an old sugar warehouse mixed in. The new architecture here is quite eccentric. Several of the buildings, the headquarters of Euronews for example, have what might be termed exoskeletons.

Euronews headquarters, one of several somewhat eccentric office buildings in the fashionable “Docks” area along the Saône in southern Confluence.

The southern end of the Confluence (near the actual confluence of the two rivers) has acquired an impressive museum.

The Musée des Confluences near the actual confluence of the Saône and the Rhône.

There is also a small, rather austere park where the rivers come together.

Park at the confluence of the Saône and the Rhône.

Infrastructure has been very much part of the plans for the Confluence. Tram line 1 has been extended south through the Confluence. It runs quite frequently along the middle of the Cours Charlemagne. Signal preemption means that it almost never has to stop for red lights.

Tramway line T1, Confluence. Note the mix of older and new residential and commercial buildings along the Cours Charlemagne.

South of the Confluence the line runs over the Rhône on a tram/pedestrian bridge to Gerland, another neighborhood where old industries have given way to other things, in this case office buildings devoted to technology firms as well as apartment blocks and a major concert hall.

Map of the Lyon and vicinity. GIS data from the Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap, somewhat modified.

The Confluence (like many other newly-built or newly-renovated places in the Western world) is quite self-consciously “green.” It has been planned to be as little oriented to the automobile as possible. One of the major features of the Confluence is a new walking/bicycling path along the Saône. This path has been extended (with two medium-sized gaps) far north of the Confluence so that it’s now possible to walk north along the Saône for dozens of kilometers.

Walkway along the Saône, Lyon.

In the areas where the Saône and its walkway pass by Vieux Lyon on the right bank and Croix-Rousse on the left bank, the river valley is quite narrow, and the views of a dense, hilly, and relatively old city are very pleasing. I don’t know quite what to make of the fact that many more people use the walking path for sitting than seems to be the case along recreational trails in urban areas in the English-speaking world. As a result, while the path along the Saône is marked as a piste cyclable (bikeway) on official maps and while some cyclists do use it, it’s often not possible to bicycle much faster than at walking speed here.⁷

A similar, but generally wider, path, often with a separate piste cyclable, has also been built along the east bank of the Rhône, that is, across from the Confluence. Like the path along the Saône, the creation of the Rhône path was not strictly speaking part of work on the Confluence, but it certainly grew out of the same view of the ideal city as being friendly to what the French call “modes doux” (literally, “gentle modes”), that is, transportation modes other than the automobile.

Walkway and bicycle path along the Rhône, Lyon.

Both paths get a huge amount of use on pleasant weekend days. A measure of the number of kilometers of off-road pedestrian paths per million inhabitants would end up ranking Lyon quite high.⁸

Work on the Confluence is continuing. A large section of the southern Confluence that once held giant factories consists today mostly of open fields and weeds. Unlike in the rest of the Confluence, pedestrians are, naturally, scarce here. There are plans to fill this area in with apartments and office buildings, and (I’m afraid) a giant parking facility.⁹ There’s also quite a substantial railyard in the southern Confluence that was supposed to be moved elsewhere but that remains in place.

The Confluence’s greatest problem has been the failure to dislodge the partly elevated 1970s A7 freeway that blights its Rhône shoreline.

The A7 in the southern Confluence, Lyon.

When the Confluence was being planned, the idea was to move the A7 to somewhere in the western suburbs, but this move (which would have been expensive and which would have damaged a substantial swath of territory) has never been carried out. The highway is incredibly noisy and polluting and really limits what can be done with the Rhône side of the neighborhood. The feeling is that the road is such a key link that it can’t simply be torn down.

Despite the presence of the A7, I was pretty impressed by the Confluence and the associated paths along Lyon’s rivers. Government set out to change a substantial swath of city, generally in a direction that made it far less oriented to the automobile, and it’s actually accomplished a great deal of what it planned to do and seems primed to continue the work.