Commitment 08Read more
City-Port Interface
The City-Port Interface: A Resource for Diverse Development Projects
Developing public spaces and recreational or cultural amenities in City Port interface zones to create an appealing new area.
How can residents, visitors, and businesses be attracted to rehabilitated Port City areas?
Creating cultural clusters is an effective way to promote economic development and enhance an area’s attractiveness, especially during a crisis. By combining and expanding cultural projects and facilities, a vibrant new movement that revitalises old port areas and attracts visitors and residents can be created. This improves the quality of life not only for residents in the Port-City interface but also for the city as a whole. In Nantes, an old industrial neighbourhood was revitalised using a cultural cluster as an incentive for transformation.
This good practice also includes objective 8.2 (Revising the status of port and Port City heritage to properly reflect the historical significance of sites) of the AIVP’s 2030 Agenda.
The industrial activity once present in the western part of the “Ile de Nantes”, an island located in the centre of the city of Nantes, was mainly devoted to shipbuilding. The last company still operating in the industry, Dubigeon, closed in 1987. It prompted the municipal authority to begin considering what to do with the industrial land left empty and unused, and the district as a whole, which has strong potential thanks to its riverside location in the centre of the city. The first step was to introduce a cultural policy for the site, with a cultural festival organised annually between 1990 and 1995. The strategy was continued in subsequent years, with more cultural events held in new locations. The policy laid the foundations for the creative district now found on the island. The idea was to establish a cluster bringing together businesses from the cultural and creative sectors. SAMOA, a semi-public company, was set up in 2003 to develop the “Ile de Nantes” project as a whole. The goal was to build a new metropolitan centre in the heart of the city, giving the Loire a central role in the city, renewing the public spaces network, and creating a mixed city. The project brings together the City of Nantes, the metropolitan authority Nantes Métropole, and the architects, urban planners and landscapers Smets/Uaps, who managed the project.
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