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St-Étienne productive ecosystem

A wi(l)der river = a renewed neighbourhood

2022 / 23
Saint-Étienne - FR
Ministery of Ecological transition, CEREMA, PUCA

Program: Urban strategy, flood resilience, transformation
Area: 45 ha
Team: Léa Soret & Robert Younger
Status: Competition - 1st place

How to transform a city using flood risk as a lever? This plan for the transformation of the Valbenoite and la Rivière districts in Saint-Étienne holds two ambitions simultaneously: the social and spatial goals of a resilient, active city, and the ecological recovery of the Furan valley, currently buried under the urban fabric, rendered invisible, and therefore more vulnerable to flooding.

The valley becomes the driving landscape of the transformation. The vision uses the Furan as its primary intervention territory: water as spatial material, flood risk as design opportunity rather than engineering problem, and the river's productive and creative force as the guiding thread. The Valbenoite and la Rivière districts become pilot projects toward a productive, resilient, and attractive ecosystem."

The latter focuses on 4 strategies: a resilience strategy that guides the Furan and rainwater safely away from the neighborhood, a landscape strategy that uses the Furan valley as an activating column of life and attractiveness for the neighborhood, a mobility strategy focused on multiplied accessibility of soft modes of transportation, and finally, a flexible urban strategy that generates an economic, educational, intellectual, and supportive fabric.

In the Valbenoite and la Rivière districts, the Furan valley characterizes the neighborhood and its spaces, between nature and urbanity, drawing new intensities from the site towards the grand landscape of Pilat and the city center. This new Furan landscape crosses and activates the site in 4 sequences, between heritage, craftsmanship, industry, and creation towards a peaceful, industrious, active neighborhood, anchored in its geography.