Sustainable cities and territories

While the world’s population is now predominantly urban, the issue of the city is concentrating a number of major issues for the emergence of tomorrow’s living environment, in France and around the world.

In the continuity of the Grenelle de l'environnement, the theme of the sustainable city, which links sustainable development on the one hand and the construction of the city on the other, has gradually developed an action plan coordinated by the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition. It is a question both of defining a model for the development of the city of tomorrow and of identifying best practices and projects.

The 1977 law affirming that “architecture is of public interest”, the Minister of Culture and Communication, in charge of architecture by her decree of attribution, “promotes the architectural creation and ensures the promotion of the architectural and landscape quality in natural and built spaces”. As such and beyond the protected areas alone, the Ministry of Culture and Communication (MCC) therefore, its mission is to bring a qualitative dimension of architecture and landscape to the development of the cities of tomorrow and thus to participate in the emergence of cities that are sustainable in terms of resource management but also respond to cultural and quality of life.

The policy pursued by the MCC in the field of sustainable cities is therefore aimed at:

• on the one hand, to place architectural and landscape quality in a coherent partnership dynamic in order to allow it to feed current reflections thanks to its specific approach and expertise;
• on the other hand, to further support the decentralized departments of the ministry in their search for a fair place in the ongoing process of making the city sustainable, by identifying strategic partnerships and by disseminating knowledge.

This policy is based on three pillars:

• the inclusion of architectural quality in policy issues aimed at promoting sustainable building,
• taking into account the quality of the living environment in public spatial planning policies,
• the enhancement of French expertise in terms of architectural and landscape quality internationally.

Architectural quality and ecological transition

Following the Environmental Conference on 14 and 15 September 2012 and the Government Seminar on 4 December 2012, the Prime Minister sent ministers, on 23 January 2013, framework letters for the ecological transition for 2013. These letters set out the specific objectives to be achieved by each department. Within this framework, in order to achieve the objectives set by the Prime Minister to the Minister of Culture and Communication, the Interdepartmental Mission for the Quality of Public Constructions (MIQCP) participated during 2013 in the development of “proposals to improve the rules and practices of public project management”. This participation was defined by a letter of order sent by the Wealth Branch (DGP) to the MIQCP on April 12, 2013. A working group composed of representatives of the MIQCP, about ten persons designated intuitu personae and representatives of the DGP produced a first report, officially transmitted to the Director, Deputy to the Director General of Assets, responsible for architecture, by the Secretary General of the MIQCP.

Beyond the precise framework of the 2013 Green Transition Framework Letter, the report of which is the outcome, this work must also be placed in a longer-term production perspective. The task force set up in 2013 set itself the objective of finding extensions in 2014 within the framework of the sustainable city theme.