In favour of lively and culturally mixed cities

David Mangin, the recent international winner for the redevelopment of the Les Halles area of Paris, also received the France Culture and La Ville à lire (town planning review) prize for his work La ville franchisée - Formes et structures de la ville contemporaine (The franchised city – forms and structures of the contemporary city). Away from architectural competitions surrounded by media attention, current urban development in France is essentially in the form of semi-urban dispersion, without the intervention of either architects or town planners. This urban growth has been left in the hands of infrastructure engineers, chartered surveyors who design housing estates, and geomarketing professionals. This has created a situation where the car is king and people isolate themselves. Urban development has the three following characteristics : division into sectors, privatisation of public space because of commercial town planning, and Jung’s concept of an individual’s safe environment. Against the tide of public opinion, David Mangin campaigns for a lively city rather than a dead-end, and one which is culturally mixed rather than being sectarian.