Elsevier

Cities

Volume 38, June 2014, Pages 57-68
Cities

City profile
Lyon City Profile

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2013.12.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We explore the development of Lyon as an industrial and international city.

  • We demonstrate the complex and multi-layered governance structures that characterise the city.

  • Lyon faces challenges in reconciling economic competitiveness and social cohesion.

  • The city has taken proactive steps to implement an action plan to address the challenges of climate change.

Abstract

Lyon is France’s second city, located in south-eastern France at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers. Historically, it was a significant European trade and financial centre during the 15th and 16th centuries, and from the 16th century, also became the largest producer of textiles in France, particularly associated with silk weaving. By the 19th century Lyon had become an important industrial city with a diversified base and associated tertiary activities. The 20th century saw the city expand further, particularly into its hinterland beyond the administrative boundaries. As a result, in relation to governance, there is a range of complex and multi-layered structures that characterise the city and the surrounding agglomeration. This profile documents these governance arrangements, and sets out some of the key challenges that the city faces today, including economic competitiveness, social cohesion and issues related to environmental sustainability. It shows that despite the city being a player on the European stage, with a number of high-profile urban development projects, including La Confluence regeneration area, there are still high levels of social polarisation in the city, with significant socio-spatial disparities between neighbourhoods. The challenge for Lyon is to make connections between high-profile development projects and disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the city, in order to address some of the key structural challenges that urban areas in many countries of the global north face in the 21st century.

Introduction

Lyon is France’s second city, with an important industrial legacy which is still very much in evidence today. However, it has traditionally been seen as playing second fiddle to the French capital of Paris, in relation to economic, political and cultural activity (Fig. 1). What this City Profile will illustrate is that Lyon has forged a certain independence from the dominant capital, founded on its strong economic base and expressed in the network of governance arrangements that have built up in the city region. These have led to a certain autonomy for the city, with Lyon finding its way on the international stage as a European partner city as well as a potential location for international investment in a number of high-profile urban development projects. However, as this City Profile will demonstrate, the presence of international capital investment and high-profile building projects does not necessarily impact on some of the most disadvantaged areas of the city, and Lyon is characterised, as are many other major cities in western Europe, by a number of significantly deprived neighbourhoods, demonstrating serious problems of economic and social exclusion.

Following this introduction, the subsequent section provides the geographic context for the development of the city, followed by an outline of Lyon’s historical development. The next section focuses on the particular issue of governance within the city, highlighting the millefeuille of governance layers that operate in the city region. With this governance context as background, the following section then explores the key challenges for the city, which are related to economic competitiveness, social polarisation and environmental sustainability. The penultimate section takes the example of a key urban development project in the city, La Confluence, and explores some of the issues that it raises in relation to sustainable urban development. The final section draws out some conclusions, highlighting the tensions that exist between high-profile urban development projects, and pressing socio-economic needs in other parts of the city.

Section snippets

Geographic context

The city of Lyon, created in Roman times as Lugdunum, capital of Gaul, is situated strategically in the infrastructure network that connects the north of Europe to the South. It is situated in the south-eastern part of France, at the confluence of the rivers Saône and Rhône (see Fig. 2). The historical crossroads formed by the transport axes of these two rivers is a key element for understanding the emergence and the evolution of the city of Lyon. The Rhône connects the city of Lyon southwards

Historical development

As Bonneville (1997) argues, since its creation in 49 BC during the Roman Empire, the city of Lyon has been marked by alternating periods, where for a time international connections have been important structuring elements for the city’s development, and periods where regional exchanges have dominated. Important as capital of Gaul in the Roman period, the city combined administrative, commercial and political roles. During the Middle Ages, the city lost a part of its importance, although during

A multi-layered institutional organisation

Because of the mis-match between the metropolitan area of Lyon and its administrative boundaries, the governance of Lyon is characterised by a multi-layered, partly formal and partly informal institutional organisation. The City of Lyon (Ville de Lyon) with a population of 440,000 is the central municipality of the Greater Lyon (le Grand Lyon) area. The budget for the City of Lyon in 2012 was 717 million euros, with a staff of around 8000 people, covering competencies including culture,

Economic competitiveness

In comparison with many other French cities, the development of Lyon is largely influenced by private economic actors (merchants, bankers, and those associated with industry) (Jouve, 2009). The period between 1945 and 1975, with reconstruction after the second World War and the three decades of economic and demographic growth that followed it, was more marked by the central State playing an important role in urban development. But since the beginning of the 1980s, following the decentralisation

La Confluence

The different challenges for the city come to the fore in the area of La Confluence, a centrally located brown-field site that has been the focus of public and private investment in recent years. The area lies at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône rivers, directly adjacent to the city centre of Lyon, but historically cut off from it by a railway line and more recently, the A6-A7 motorway (Fig. 14). As a result of this, and of the presence of a river harbour and railway station, the area

Conclusions

Lyon has developed a system of urban governance that, over the years, has allowed the city to build up strong partnerships with the private sector, with political and business elites coming together to find consensus on developing the city. Coming from both political and business sides, there has also been a clear will to ‘internationalise’ the city, proactively taking part in European networking, building partnerships with other cities, and striving to put Lyon on the international stage. With

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