National Entrance and Urban Fringe Reconquest Competition

Transition zones, commercial zones, activity zones, zones of intense circulatory exchanges, interfaces between urban and rural, city entrances focus on major development issues.
Today, city entrances often present «provisional architectures». Beautiful cities are too often damaged by their disfigured entrances and marked by a chaos that opposes the efforts made in city centers. Urban fringes are expanding and compete with city cores, on the one hand, and consume agricultural land and natural areas, on the other hand.

Yet these spaces represent a real challenge for the qualitative evolution of our cities and to think of the city as a whole: links between the centre and the suburbs, shops, travel, living environment.
Urban renewal is necessary for city entrances and requires an active research and innovation policy. This project involves us and concerns us all.

Through this competition, Sites & Cités remarquables de France and the Fédération Patrimoine- Environnement, wish to make known and promote initiatives in favour of quality spaces in city entrances and urban fringes.

This competition is a means of sharing experiences and ideas and of advancing, at the national level, the quality of the design and development of city entrances and urban fringes.

WHICH OPERATIONS ARE CONCERNED?

This competition, organized every two years, aims to distinguish communities that conduct one or more exemplary operations in terms of reconquest of urban fringes and development of city entrances.

All the city entrances and all the sectors located in the urban fringes are concerned:

– Fallow Heritage Sites
– Areas of activity or trade
– The agglomeration crossings
– More generally, peripheral territories suffering from a lack of urban and landscape identity

Only operations which have been completed or a sufficiently significant tranche of which has been completed for less than five years, at the time of application, are eligible. There may be one or more operations that express a coherent vision of urban development.

WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?

The contest is open to local authorities with more than 2,000 inhabitants.
The application must be submitted and filed by the urban authority.