Study reports

Data Center Growth and Proposals for Regulation

Lessons from the Paris Region

Data centers have become an infrastructure that is consubstantial with digital uses over about the last 15 years, notably boosted by the explosion of virtualization (clouds, platforms). However, they remain almost invisible objects for the general public, and relatively ...

March 2024 Cécile Diguet, Maximilian Gawlik, Nicolas Laruelle

Renaturing Cities

Method, examples and recommendations

The loss of soil functions and ecosystem services is one of the major environmental challenges Europe is facing. Despite a reduction in the last decade, land take in EU28 still amounted to 539km2/year between 2012‐2018. Since the mid‐1950s, the total surface area of cities ...

December 2023 Gaëtane Debœuf De Los Rios Serrano, Marc Barra, Gwendoline Grandin

Barcelona, Metropolitan Avenues

C-245 and Meridiana Projects

Barcelona is a dense and compact city of 1.6 million people living on a small territory of 100 km² framed by the Collserola mountains, the sea and the Besos and the Llobregat rivers. Together with 35 other municipalities, it makes up for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (Àrea ...

July 2023 Paul Lecroart, Louma Ismail, Joan Caba Roset

Action for biodiversity

Ten years of exemplary actions in the French Capital of Biodiversity competition

Since 2010, the French Capital of Biodiversity competition identifies, promotes and disseminates the best actions of French municipalities and inter-municipalities in favour of biodiversity. Launched as part of a European programme, the French Capital of Biodiversity ...

April 2023

Warsaw, Green Streets?

Jana Pawla II Avenue Project

The aleja Jana Pawła II (John Paul II Avenue) crosses through the centre of Warsaw, the capital and largest city in Poland, home to 1.8 million inhabitants in an area of 517 km². The Jana Pawła II Avenue upgrade project is part of a comprehensive renovation plan for Warsaw's ...

March 2023 Paul Lecroart, Louma Ismail, Maciej Sulmicki

World Cities Culture Report 2022

The World Cities Culture Forum is a network of over 40 city partners (Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Austin, Barcelona, Brasília, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Chengdu, Dubai, Dublin, Edinburgh, Guangzhou, Hamburg, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Lagos, Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, ...

October 2022 Carine Camors, Odile Soulard

Ecology of green roofs

Summary of the GROOVES study

Since the 1990s, the escalation of nature-oriented urban policies has been coupled with renewed interest in green roofs. Many ecological advantages are generally associated with planted roofs—hosting biodiversity, water retention, carbon storage, etc.—, but these benefits ...

August 2022 Hemminki Johan, Marc Barra

Brussels. From expressways to avenues

The Delta/Herrmann-Debroux project

With a population of 1.2 million, the Brussels-Capital Region is the European Union (EU) Capital and one of Europe’s major metropolitan hubs; it lies at the heart of a metropolitan region of over 2.7 million residents living across the Capital Region and the two provinces of ...

March 2022 Paul Lecroart

Montréal. Bonaventure project

From expressway to city boulevard case study

With 1.8 million inhabitants within the City of Montréal and almost 4 million in Greater Montréal, the capital of the Québec Province of Canada is a sprawling, car-reliant, metropolis as well as a major economic and cultural hub in North America. In the last decade, both the ...

January 2021 Paul Lecroart

New York. West Side Highway

From expressway to city boulevard case study

Starting in the late 1920s, New York adapted to the fast growing automobile use: with the white middle-class moving to live in the suburbs, new highways were carved through the working-class minority neighbourhoods to allow fast access to downtown job, shops and ...

January 2021 Paul Lecroart

Helsinki. City boulevards strategy and projects

With a metropolitan population of almost 1.7 million and 656,000 inhabitants in the city itself, Helsinki is Finland’s major urban hub and capital-city. Located on the Baltic Sea, the city is a major national gateway for maritime traffic, with passenger and goods traffic ...

December 2020 Paul Lecroart

Lyon. Regaining the riverfront

Transforming M6/M7 highway corridor

Lyon is France’s second largest metropolitan area with 1.4 million inhabitants in Greater Lyon (Grand Lyon), and 3.36 million in the larger urban region. In the last decades, Lyon has witnessed a rapid growth and has emerged on the international scene as a dynamic and ...

December 2020 Paul Lecroart

Oslo. Rethinking city fringe highways

Hovinbyen and Østre Aker vei projects

Oslo is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe today. In 2019, population reached 680,000 in the City and 1.3 million in the former Akershus region (now part of Viken). The City’s population has increased by 22 percent over the last ten years and keeps on growing at a ...

December 2020 Paul Lecroart

The spatial and energy impact of data centers on the territories

Synthesis of the ENERNUM project

The spatial and energy impact of data centers is becoming more and more impacting for territories, given the unprecedented and massive growth of data creation and exchanges, leading to large storage needs. Data centers are very diverse in size, use, stakeholders and sitings. ...

May 2019 Cécile Diguet, Fanny Lopez

MetroAirports

Planning, governance and economic development in airport areas

Planning, governance and economic development in airport areas is the final report of the project "METROAirports; Socioeconomic impact and uses of new-generation airports", led by the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, with the Atlanta Regional Commission and L'Institut Paris ...

March 2019 Sergi Alegre, Javier Ortigosa, Jonathan Tuley, Martin Hervouët

World Cities Culture Report 2018

Cultural and city leaders from 32 major global cities around the world came together in San Francisco from the 14th to the 16th November 2018 to show how cities are tackling the issues they face with cultural policies and share best practices. The theme of the conference ...

December 2018 BOP Consulting

Autonomous Vehicles

Acceptability and impacts on society

The idea of automated driving is not new, it dates back to the 1930s. Autonomous vehicles are held to be the next shift in the automotive and mobility fields. These vehicles are likely to have a broad spectrum of impacts on our society. Yet, public authorities haven’t really ...

April 2018 Dany Nguyen-Luong, Jérémy Courel, Cédric Cariou

Dynamics of the Paris Region economy

Paris Ile-de-France, the French capital city region known internationally as the "Paris Region", remains relatively unknown. On the basis of the latest available statistics, this report provides an overview of the Paris Region economy and describes its major transformations ...

September 2016 Pascale Leroi

Sustainable Airport Areas

Second workshop of the Metropolis initiative “How can we produce a sustainable airport area?”

This report presents the outcomes of the second workshop held in Atlanta on September 20, 2016. This workshop took place almost one year after the October 2015 Paris workshop. Participants in the workshop included representatives from six international airports (Atlanta, ...

September 2016 Teodora Nikolova, Martin Hervouët

The environment in Ile-de-France in 2015

Executive Summary

The last few years have contributed a fair amount of new data on the environment, in particular since the latest edition of the Mémento in 2011. This new data has been produced, in particular, through regional plans being drawn up in the fields of climate, ecological ...

August 2016

The challenges encountered in producing an ideal airport area

First workshop of the Metropolis initiative “How can we produce a sustainable airport area?” The initiative “How can we produce a sustainable airport area?” proposes, by exchanging experiences, to identify and to transfer the good practices enabling public managers and ...

November 2015

Location dynamics of cluster formation and public sector response

Can planning influence the process?

The present report is the contribution of an expert group formed within the METREX(1) network. This group of 7 members led by IAU île-de-France and the city of Helsinki addressed the issue of clusters regarding planning(2). The background question was: It is well known, but ...

June 2015 Douglas Gordon, Thierry Petit

The French Tram School

At its peak in 1925, trams were the main means of passenger transport in France and the network comprised 1,100 km of track for the Paris region alone. With the spread of the motorcar, the networks were dismantled in Paris from 1925 to 1937, and until 1966 in Valenciennes. ...

April 2014 Lieu du Design, L'Institut Paris Region

World Cities Culture Report 2012

The World Cities Culture Report 2012 is a major global initiative on culture and the future of cities, set up by the Mayor of London. The level of detail of the cultural data collected across the cities is unprecedented, and represents the primary achievement of this ...

August 2013 BOP Consulting

The environment in Ile-de-France in 2011

Executive Summary

In response to the lack of data on the environment and to the weak dissemination of such data beyond the specialist circles, the Regional Council decided to develop and make available a collection of data on the environment in Île-de-France. Production of the document was ...

April 2013

The environment in Ile-de-France in 2006

Executive Summary

There is large amount of data on the environment of the Paris Region, and most of it is produced by bodies that are specialists, each in its own theme. In order to produce this 2006 summary of the state of the environment in Île-de-France, IAU îdF has thus used several ...

April 2013

Tripoli City Centre’s Urban and Architectural Charter

Land Use Regulations. Urban and Architectural Guidelines

The study of the “Tripoli City Centre’s Architectural & Urban Charter” has been developed by ECOU with the IAU île-de-France technical assistance. This first report focuses on updating the land use regulation in the study area which includes the city centre of Tripoli, whose ...

September 2010

Tripoli City Centre’s Urban and Architectural Charter

Green Plan. Lighting Plan. Street Furniture

The study of the “Tripoli City Centre’s Architectural & Urban Charter” has been developed by ECOU with the IAU île-de-France technical assistance. This second report focuses on the development and networking of public green spaces in Tripoli within a real green urban ...

September 2010

Tripoli City Centre’s Urban and Architectural Charter

Synthesis report

The study of the “Tripoli City Centre’s Architectural & Urban Charter” has been developed by ECOU with the IAU île-de-France technical assistance. This last report gives a bird’s eye view of our proposed regulation. The identity of a place is partly given by shapes that are ...

September 2010

Local innovations in skill-building and employment for low-skilled workers in the United States

The main goal of this study in the United States is to identify good practices and programs to help low skilled workers to find or keep their jobs and programs that can be good examples for the Paris Region. Helping low-skilled workers In a country where the public system ...

April 2010 Laure Thévenot

“Science Cities” : Science Campuses and Clusters in 21st Century Metropolises

Keynote

Creating science campuses that draw on an exchange of knowledge generated by different disciplines is a major focus for all cities seeking to attract innovative and creative R&D activities to their regions. These places are widely viewed as essential resources for the ...

March 2010 Odile Soulard, Laurent Perrin

Science Cities: Science Campuses and Clusters in 21st Century Metropolises

Zurich: ETH Science City and West Zurich

The choice of Zurich is justified by the quality of the scientific and urbanistic project being developed by the Federal Polytechnic School (ETH) on its Hönggerberg campus. ETH Zurich is one of the most prestigious engineering schools in the world and is consistently at the ...

January 2010 Laurent Perrin, Odile Soulard

Science Cities: Science Campuses and Clusters in 21st Century Metropolises

Helsinki: Nature City and Living Lab

The Finnish society has genuine assets to form an innovative milieu: openness to new technologies; pragmatic approach to problem-solving, consensus building, ability for self-criticism... Helsinki: real networking of actors in R & D and innovation The Helsinki region ...

December 2009 Laurent Perrin, Odile Soulard

Large-scale projects

What can we learn from Europe?

The analysis of a dozen case studies of large-scale urban development projects conducted by other European metropolises This presentation was first made on November 2008 at the Thames Gateway Forum in London in the context of the economic crisis starting to affect real ...

November 2008 Paul Lecroart

Global Clusters

Executive Summary

For some years now, cluster-focused strategies have been warmly embraced in academic and political circles. The term "cluster" is something of the flavour of the day with the concept proving to be of considerable appeal. Looking beyond the current fashion for "clusters", the ...

June 2008 Sylvie Lartigue, Odile Soulard

The Plaine Saint Denis Regeneration in the Paris Ile-de-France Region

Lessons from the 1998 World Cup

The Stade de France, a new multi-use venue built for the Word Cup 1998, was used as a powerful driver in the regeneration of the Plaine Saint-Denis area, 750 hectares of industry and brownfield immediately to the North of Paris. This was made possible because the local ...

June 2007 Paul Lecroart

Paris Rive Gauche - 3rd Millenium area of culture, research and education ?

Learning from a mega project

Paris Rive Gauche (1990-2020) is one of the most outstanding urban developments in the Paris Region aiming to focus regional development towards the East. Along the banks of the Seine, on the edge of the City, a series of railtracks are being covered since the mid-'90s to ...

October 2006 Paul Lecroart

The Motion Picture Industry in Los Angeles

The study, sponsored by the regional Council of the Paris Ile-de-France Region, aims to widen our understanding of Motion Picture Industry in Los Angeles and its challenges in the age of globalization. It was made possible through a partnership with University of California ...

May 2005 Carine Camors

The Metropolises of North-West Europe in Figures

One of the aims of the GEMACA II project is to produce comparative data on the economic evolution of the metropolises of north-west Europe. A selection of the data gathered on 14 metropolises is presented in this document. It is original and innovative in that it covers ...

October 2002 Dominique Lecomte

Growth Sectors / Cluster in Dublin, London, Paris, and Rhine-Rhur

This study was conducted in the framework of the GEMACA II project (Group for European Metropolitan Areas Comparative Analysis, second project), which addresses the competitiveness of the major metropolitan areas in Europe. The different works were made possible thanks to ...

August 2002 Vincent Gollain, Dominique Lecomte

Managing the developing cities

New practices

Since 1975, the number of cities with populations of over 10 million has grown from 4 to 25, essentially in developing countries. The fundamental issue of urban governance About forty major metropolises constitute major relays for the world economy, while the other large ...

December 2001 L'Institut Paris Region, APUR

Science and Technology in the Functional Urban Regions in Northwest Europe

In an economy where knowledge is becoming increasingly important (OECD, 2000), science and technology stimulate economic development, job creation, the improvement of products and services as well as public health initiatives. Three quarters of the international community’s ...

September 2001 Vincent Gollain

GIS for involvement and decision-making

30 French experiences

The Geographic Information System (GIS) has become today’s ideal decision aid instrument for territories as different as a city, a conurbation, a region and sometimes even an entire country. Not only information and management… A GIS is basically the necessary combination ...

June 2001 L'Institut Paris Region, CNIG, ISTED