The sustainable town as viewed by the City Factory

11 August 2010 - Sustainability

How to limit the social and environmental impact of towns and their activities?
To what extent might new types of community action and attitudes contribute to reducing our cities’ ecological footprint? How – and at what price – might we adapt our built heritage? These were just some of the many fundamental issues tackled at the City Factory’s second seminar. From 1-3 April last, forty experts (town planners, architects, researchers, politicians and representatives of the business community, etc.) and twenty VINCI managers met in ­Copenhagen (Denmark), at the initiative of this think tank created by VINCI, to consider: “Sustainable cities: from ideas to action”. Their discussions contributed to a sketching out of ways in which our towns might be transformed into ecological cities, and also looked at questions relating to governance, social inclusion and how urban space should be organised.

Those present benefited from a preview of the results of a critical study of experimental sustainable neighbourhoods undertaken by Yamina Saheb, an engineer specialising in energy issues. Based on a survey of various examples of eco-neighbourhoods, such as Vesterbro in Copenhagen, Bed-Zed in London and Vauban in Fribourg, the author suggested a typical example of a sustainable neighbourhood – a very tangible contribution to the task of inventing the tomorrow’s city. After a first seminar focusing on mobility and a morning session devoted to the Greater Paris region in 2008, the City Factory thus confirmed its ambition to make a useful contribution to the debate on the future development of our towns.Its next meeting, a further regional morning session, is scheduled for October, in Lyons.
For further information and to see the presentations: www.lafabriquedelacite.com