From urban wastelands to sustainable neighborhoods
In its last issue, the journal "La Revue Durable" publishes a report on the topic of sustainable neighborhoods, the development of which is noticeable in many European countries. Amongst the authors invited for their expertise, one can find Prof. Emmanuel Rey of the Laboratory of Architecture and Sustainable Technologies (LAST). Based on the results of recent research, his paper deals more specifically with the potential of urban wastelands as being priority land in response, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to the emerging aspirations of returning into urban areas.
The sustainable neighborhoods give rise to a vast and ambitious urban evolution presently mobilizing researchers, professionals, elected representatives, public administrations, technical advisors and associations. In a number of European countries, initiatives are taken to yet again develop operations in urban areas. The sustainable neighborhood thus appears as being a potential means of encouraging this background movement, with the idea that an urban area can simultaneously be a vector of sustainability and an attractive life frame for an important number of users.
At this early stage of their history, sustainable neighborhoods tend to bring a simultaneous contribution to improve energy and ecological standards, to increase density and quality of life, to get a better coordination between urbanization and mobility (public transport, soft mobility) and to favor an intergenerational and social diversity.
In this context, urban wastelands represent strategic opportunities to create new neighborhoods, which integrate various dimensions of sustainability in a creative way. If these areas, of which the industrial, railway, military, port or infrastructural purpose has been questioned, often have complex barriers to curb, they also contain unexploited opportunities.
Rey Emmanuel, « Les friches urbaines, lieux privilégiés pour créer des quartiers durables ». La Revue Durable, 2012, num. 45, p. 26-28.