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Old Posted Jan 12, 2015, 4:24 PM
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mousquet mousquet is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Greater Paris, France
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Nice

Largest city on the Côte d'Azur, what the English-speaking nickname the Riviera. There's a crazy large plan they call Éco-Vallée, registered as an OIN (opération d'intérêt national, national interest plan), which means the national administration, thus all taxpayers of the country will be involved in supporting and funding the related public projects and infrastructures to some extent. Lucky locals will pay the most for it anyway, and I think it's quite some smart investment given the fame of that coastline as a whole, which makes a highly strategic city of Nice from my perspective.

So Éco-Vallée spreads over some 100km² (38 sq mi). Here's the affected area.



It stretches along the Var river down to the coastline. Again, that is madly large, encompassing several suburban towns as seen on that map. A real long-run plan that is supposed to keep the metro area busy for at least the 3 decades to come.

It is centered on eco-friendly and sustainable development, apparently making an obsession for it. It aims both at restoring and promoting the natural setting of the area that's been a little messed up, probably mainly by sloppy post-war development, and at comforting the economy and the vibrancy of the metro area.

This is what the Éco-Vallée area looks like for now.

A too wide panorama of it: http://www.ecovallee-plaineduvar.fr/...uche-light.jpg



Includes some traditional Mediterranean villages like these.





Implementation has slightly begun yet. Of course, owing to the scale of this whole thing, it will be divided in several sub-master plans over the course of development that will be gradual. These are the current priorities.



Grand Arénas is an international business district to help the city in taking its place in the global competition, located on the edge of the city of Nice proper and nearby the international airport. It will be developed around a large exhibition and convention facility and a multimodal transit hub (pôle multimodal on the sketch) that will serve both the district and the airport. Although focusing on business, it is planned to be widely mixed-use and socially diverse, providing all kinds of housing (from affordable to better standing), hotels and commercial activities. Obviously, they will not repeat the post-war mistake of a fully purpose-built business district experienced in Paris with the district of la Défense.

They've got these approximate master plan renderings and mockups that seem rather meaningless to me.











They only let us see that the district will be built around the transit hub indeed, but we'll have to wait for the renderings of each individual approved project to understand more accurately what's going on. The transit hub includes high-speed and regular trains to Paris, Marseille and Italy, a urban and interurban bus station, a straight connection to historic Nice through the tram, some parking spaces for bikes and ecars... Access from the airport is outright immediate. Hopefully parking spaces will be hidden underground like shameful things you don't want to see. In fact, Éco-Vallée as a whole plans a wide extension of the transit network.

On the sketch is mentioned the 2nd priority master plan, Nice Méridia, still on the edge of Nice proper (see the 1st map above). It is completely mixed-use as well, aiming at attracting businesses and R&D specialized in sustainable development and healthcare in particular.













These give an idea of the envisioned urban feel, but do not expect any highrise anywhere in there for now. The tallest approved project I heard of so far is a 17-storey mixed-use building in Méridia.

In addition, 2 more master plans have officially been defined, but nothing accurate for now. One in Saint-Martin 20km north of Nice proper (see the 1st map above), another focusing on food industry and horticulture over la Gaude and Saint-Laurent.

Again, all of this has been planned just for the last couple of years and is only beginning. We'll be following the developement. The Côte d'Azur is some of the biggest concentration of money in the country, so I assume we'll see some cool things happening there.

I took all pictures from the website of the official public body in charge of Éco-Vallée, l'établissement public d'aménagement de la Plaine du Var, assuming they won't mind about the hotlinking, since we're talking about their business here.
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