NANTES: REGENERATING THE INDUSTRIAL TERRITORY AND FLEXIBLE PLANNING

Abstract

"The present is connected to the future by the possibilities of imagining alternatives; the present is connected to the past because of the necessity of imagining the future as a re-elaboration, however fanciful, of what has gone before" (Sabel et al, 1997)
The changes in the production system and in the organization and division of labor since the second half of the twentieth century have had major impacts on the structure of industrial cities, their social and economic spaces and the lives of workers and people. After an early economic stagnation, most of these regions began to undergo major social and urban declines linked to the loss of their productive base. Since then, there have been many attempts to stop the fall of industrial cities. This article discusses how this deindustrialization process has been dealt with in the region of Nantes, specifically highlighting the links between a new territorial scheme and the rehabilitation of one of the most run down industrial areas in the city: Île de Nantes.