Angers (FR)

How can the site contribute to the productive city?

The site is healthy and has maintained a diversity of activities at the entrance to the city centre: a food sector (M.I.N.), large-scale retailers and wholesale and retail trade, a concrete production site, and many other companies, but also an association, the Cité des solidarités, and a concert hall. The rational of the old manufacturing areas and remains of an industrial past permit a progressive hybridized development between existing uses and new forms of production. The risk of flooding restricts land use, affects new development and poses the question of adaptability and the recovery of flood-risk areas for production. The configuration of the site and its position at the heart of the municipality offers an opportunity to combine news ways of living, working, producing and consuming.

City strategy

The area’s economic role was confirmed in 2014. Its attractiveness will be strengthened by the mobilisation of the private sector implicated in future developments. By maintaining M.I.N., developing a new interchange and considering the many variable-use spaces that are under-used or soon to be vacated, this future entrance to the metropolitan area is a privileged site for imagining an active, innovative, negotiated city. The community expects process-oriented projects related to pragmatic intentions (rather than a master plan) as a means of exploring new forms of mixed-use and renewing the urban planning and architectural quality of the site. A progressive transformation (in space and time) could begin from several different experimental locations. EUROPAN’s approach will further enrich both the Angers Cœur de Maine and Monplaisir urban projects.

Site definition 

The site presents the characteristic landscape of commercial areas and major infrastructures developed in the twentieth century. In 2008, the opening of the A11 northern bypass helped start a process of renewal for the riverbanks and improving the Saint Serge sector (Cœur de Maine project) . The Europan project site centres on Gaston Ramon Boulevard that connects the social housing district of Monplaisir to the Maine. The site benefits from the proximity of the banks of the Sarthe and Maine rivers and the Tournerie kitchen gardens, accessible north of the site via the abandoned railway. This access remains, however, confidential. This area close to the city centre is in large part at risk of flooding from the Maine River and subject to the Natural Risk Prevention Plan (PPRN).

How is Production Considered in the Urban Diversity Program?

Several ways of hybridisation respond to specific actors rational:

Interface between the city and food-sector logistics and distribution: how to spatially organise mixe-use and new activities next to M.I.N? Is it possible to coordinate regional logistics, local production and local services? How to take advantage of time shifts (occupation and use) on a large commercial site?

Interface between the entrance to the city and industrial production: what forms of cohabitation can be developed between the new interchange, the social-housing district and the concrete production site? How to take advantage of little-used areas? How to rethink an industrial production site, taking into consideration the issues of pollution and constructability?

Urban and architectural qualities of industrial sites in an urban environment: what urban and architectural redevelopment proposals are there for an old but still very active industrial site that take into account new ways of living and working. What processes can be initiated that would motivate projects by the companies themselves?

Transit routes vs. productive, neglected ways vs. public spaces: a new interchange and development of a new entrance to the urban centre is an opportunity to rethink the role of Gaston Ramon Boulevard, to redeploy in space and time activities and urban or commercial facades in a logic of openness and continuity of uses from the Monplaisir district to the banks of the Maine.

Boulevard Gaston Ramon

Site of lime kilns

Cité of Solidarity

La Tournerie, bank of Sarthe and iron bridge, Segré