Dr Olivier Sykes, Discipline Lead for Planning in the Department of Geography & Planning, has just returned from a trip to Lille:
Urban planning colleagues from the Universities of Liverpool and Lille have a long history of collaboration such through the French and British Planning Studies Group with a series of research seminars and publications on themes of common interest.
My recent trip to the Université de Lille offered an opportunity to become reacquainted with the characterful and always surprising capital of Hauts de France.
Industrial and Urban Legacies
Lille's economy from the 19th. century onwards was based on textiles, heavy engineering, and being the main business and service centre of a wider coal mining region.
It became a rich city, and like Liverpool was able to express this through opulent public buildings, often designed in a neo-regionalist style to emphasise the status of the city as the capital of French Flanders.
To this day the city boasts a rich and diverse array of styles of architecture and like nearby Brussels often seems to blend the urbanism of French 'Haussmannian' boulevards with that of the proximate low countries.
Conservation legislation has protected key areas of the city such as Vieux Lille which has gradually transformed from a dilapidated area into a focus for tourism and urban living with restaurants and high-end boutiques lining its main thoroughfares and smaller bars and eateries along side streets.
This popular area was where University of Liverpool planning students stayed when they last visited the city in 2023 as part of their international planning studies and spatial planning and design project modules.
Reinvention Through Infrastructure and Culture
Like Liverpool and its city region, Lille and the wider 'Nord' were strongly affected by the deindustrialisation of the 1970s and 1980s. The decline of these key sectors left the city with many of the characteristics challenges of the post-industrial city like unemployment and a rundown urban environment. But even in those years forward thinking and planning was at play with the new automatic 'VAL' Métro developed by the Université de Lille opening in 1983 as a structuring and spatially binding project for the city and later wider Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing conurbation.
The 1990s was about maximising Lille's place in a more open and connected Europe. The completion of the Single European Market in 1992 and arrival of Eurostar services in 1994 made the city into key node on the expanding northwest Europe highspeed rail network. A place which had been somewhat peripheral in national space now became more central in a redefined European space providing an object lesson in how shifting relational geographies can create new locational advantages.
At the urban scale this wider reconfiguration manifested itself in a new station district laid out by the Dutch architect and urbanist Rem Koolhas. This outcome had not been a given though. Originally the Paris to London highspeed line had been planned to head directly to the French coast, bypassing Lille completely to save a few minutes off the journey. The fact this did not happen was a testament to the determination of local actors and the power of local governments and elected mayors in France to define and defend a regional interest.
Lille therefore also offers a compelling case of territorial governance often studied comparatively by researchers from the UK. The accessibility resulting from these strategic long term planning decisions is one reason the city is often chosen as a natural host location for joint France-UK research gatherings!
With infrastructure investments and physical regeneration strongly underway, the 2000s saw Lille focus on regenerating its image to shift external imaginaries of the city as a fusty post-industrial place.
Lille sought and secured the status of European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2004 leading to a hugely impactful year that saw culture projects and programming across the city and wider area. The legacies of this endure with the lille3000 festival currently on its 7th. edition which focusses on the theme of Fiesta - 'the universal theme of the Party' - to foster togetherness in a world fractured by conflicts and the 'increasing individualisation of society'.
A striking feature of this is the installation of the 'Golden Monoliths' by Spanish artist SpY - (pictued above) fourteen golden shipping containers placed upright along the Rue de Faidherbe, which runs from Lille Flandres station to the heart of the city. The use of culture as a key regeneration tool in Lille and Liverpool has created opportunities for research exchanges with joint seminars hosted in each city during Liverpool's own year as ECoC in 2008 and subsequent publications on the theme of culture-led regeneration.
Delivering Sustainable Urbanism
The city is also pursuing a programme of extensive public space works to develop active travel networks and promote urban greening. These appear to have a 'lightly engineered' and natural feel that conveys a sense of being authentically nature-based solutions. The restoration of historic buildings continues too with the recent renovation and re-opening of the Palais Rameau (1878) as an engineering school with a focus on urban agriculture.
Urban Greening and Active Travel Measures
During the recent visit public spaces were busy, with people enjoying the sunshine along a branch of the Canal de la Haute Deule now repurposed for recreation and in the park around the Citadel of Lille designed by the military engineer Vauban who also lends his name to the Jardin Vauban.
Interestingly it seems that the city has chosen not to pursue the UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) listing of the Citadel - which would be the city's second WHS - even though other similar sites designed by Vauban elsewhere are already so listed. The reasons given are that the buffer zone for the site might restrict certain sustainable urban development projects such as a new north-south tramline destined to serve working class districts.
Here one finds echoes of debates in Liverpool around WHS status and differing views on the appropriate balance of heritage and other development concerns.
Green and Blue Infrastructure in Central Lille The Canal de la Haute Deule and Jardin Vauban
Lessons from Lille?
One of the lessons of comparative international planning studies is that 'context dependency' plays an important role in shaping both the issues that planning is called upon to address and the planning solutions developed in response.
However, useful comparisons can still be drawn between approaches to different aspects of planning and regeneration, so long as these are carefully constructed and contextual factors such as institutional structures and planning cultures are accounted for.
It was great to spend time in Lille again to catch-up with how the city is continuing its regeneration journey and responding to new international planning agendas of delivering greater urban sustainability, resilience, and inclusivity.
Planning at Liverpool will continue our collaboration with colleagues at the University of Lille to research these issues and work through the French and British Planning Studies Group to explore the similarities and differences between and draw lessons from approaches to urban planning in our two cities.
For more on international aspects of planning see Oliver's (2023) book with David Shaw and Brian Webb International Planning Studies: An Introduction | SpringerLink.
Olivier is also co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Companion to International Comparative Planning.
Palais Rameau
