Planning the Impossible: Urban Development and Spatial Strategies in the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport Region 9783035621525, 9783035621518

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Planning the Impossible

Eirini Kasioumi

Planning the Impossible Urban Development and Spatial Strategies in the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport Region

Birkhäuser Basel

Preface and acknowledgments The beginning of this book can be traced to the summer of 2011, when I was first introduced to the research at Professor Kees Christiaanse’s Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at ETH Zurich. At the time, the Chair had just initiated the “Airports and Cities” research platform, aimed at investigating the relationship of major airports and their urban regions through case studies. In joining this platform, I engaged in a multiyear, meandering and interweaved yet ultimately rewarding exploration of planning in ­relation to major airports and their regions. The case that I ended up closely investigating, and that is presented in this book, is that of the Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG ) airport region. Located in one of Europe’s largest, most complex and fascinating metropolises, ­Paris CDG is the continent’s second busiest airport after London Heathrow as well as an important regional economic center, handling 76 million passengers in 2019. However, the airport has yet to be considered as a well-functioning part of metropolitan space, with its surroundings featuring persistent land use conflicts, traffic congestion, and spatial incoherence. The airport region exemplifies the struggle with the contrasting impacts of airport operation and the complexity of contemporary metropolitan ­peripheries affected by major transport infrastructures. In a long-term examination of spatial strategies and urban development trends in the Paris CDG airport region, this book exposes the fundamental difficulties that planning faces in dealing with this complexity, while providing a captivating story of plans, designs, projects, controversies, twists, and turns. This study would not have been possible without the support of numerous people. My deepest gratitude goes to Kees Christiaanse, who provided intellectual help and practical advice along the way. My colleagues at the ETH Zurich, including Benedikt Boucsein, Daniel Kiss, Simon Kretz, Christian Salewski, and Gyler Mydyti, offered stimulating discussions and insights that helped take the research forward. Nathalie Roseau arranged for several stays at LATTS in Paris and facilitated access to people and sources. In Paris, I had insightful exchanges with several people, among whom I should mention Gaëlle Bonnefond from DRIEA , Luc Pollet from ADP, Emmanuel de la Masselière from EPA Plaine de France, Jacques-Jo Brac de la Perrière from VTIF, and Léa Bodossian from ARC . Two people in particular contributed to my understanding of planning in the CDG airport region: Etienne Berthon, who shared his rich archive of ­related materials at IAU -IdF; and Jacques Grangé, who was a regular, engaging interlocutor. Many other people enabled access to information, processes, and planning materials, among whom are included Elisabeth Le Masson at ADP  /  Hubstart Paris ­Region; the organizing members of the third Sustainable Airport Areas International Seminar Pierre Vidaihlet, Solène Le Coz, Vincent Gollain, Annie Scaramozzino, and Eric de la Paillonne; the administrative staff of LATTS and ENPC ; the staff at the archives of Préfecture Ile-de-France; and Nolwenn Deviercy from ADP, who took personal pains to facilitate my navigation of the ADP archives. The study was carried out with the financial support of several institutions. A three-year grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF ) was the main life4

line of the research project. Funding in the initial stages was provided by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY ) and indirectly by the Dutch Research Council (NWO ) through my involvement in the “Better Airport Regions” (BAR ) project. Mobility scholarships by the EU Erasmus Programme and the French Embassy in Switzerland sponsored field research. Support from the Chair of Architecture and Urban Design at the ETH Zurich made the last stages of writing possible. Additionally, the ­Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme Ile-de-France (IAU -IdF), the Institut ­National de l’Information Géographique et Forestière (IGN ), and the European Environment

Preface and acknowledgments

Agency (EEA ) supported the study by providing data series. Special thanks go to the editors David Marold and Katharina Holas for their engagement and patience during the production of the text; and to the manuscript’s proofreader Alun Brown for his conscientious feedback. Last but not least, I am thankful to my family and friends who accompanied me on this intellectual and literary adventure over the years, sharing my joys, enduring my grouchiness, and providing support when most needed. Responsibility for any errors and omissions in this book remains mine alone.

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Foreword Kees Christiaanse In my practice as an urban designer and planner, I have been involved in consulting and designing for several airports, culminating in my appointment as “Supervisor ­A rchitecture and Urbanism” for Amsterdam Schiphol Airport from 2005 – 2010, where I worked on the large-scale urban development of Amsterdam airport in relation to the surrounding agglomeration. This work led me to consider the formative role of major airports in contemporary metropolitan areas and engage in research into airports and urbanization, which resulted in the foundation of the “Airports & Cities” research platform at my chair at ETH Zurich and the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore. Airports & Cities has produced several publications, in many of which Eirini Kasioumi played a substantial role, notably in the highly successful book The Noise Landscape. Eirini dedicated her own doctoral research project to the relationship of airports and urbanization in the Paris region; a complex and fascinating territory. This book is a reflection of Eirini’s research. In studying the planning of the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport region, it brings together several threads: a history of aviation and airport development including the emergence of phenomena like airport city, airport corridor and airport region; key evolutions in spatial planning; an outline of the planning culture in France; and an extensive analysis of airport- and surrounding territory-development in the airport region. Combining the topics and researching the different threads and paths as a complex braid work, whilst keeping control of the ­rationale, is a big challenge. Eirini Kasioumi has managed to review, filter, evaluate, integrate, and synthesize a very substantial mass of data and knowledge into a clearly readable and linguistically eloquent entity. The main narrative of the book focuses on the airport and territory development of Paris Charles de Gaulle and is divided into five periods between 1960 and 2013. It starts with the Golden Era, a period of mainly state-led urban and spatial planning: a time when substantial airport development in CDG was initiated quite ­autonomously from metropolitan planning, and there emerged what Eirini calls “diachronic” issues. While Le Bourget and Orly are typical European airports in close proximity and exchange with their home town, comparable to airports in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Zurich, ­Vienna, or Brussels, Roissy- CDG is what I call an “American airport,” far away in the countryside to avoid spatial conflicts, but at the same time creating conflicts through requiring enormous umbilical cords of infrastructures and amenities, of which in ­Europe only Munich airport is of the same typology. The following periods, between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, look into the gradual decentralization of planning ­approaches and the emergence of competitive spatial interests. Arriving in the 21st century, the narrative addresses the procedural frictions and conflicts in a collectively acknowledged airport region, specifically between local interests and sustainability and global competition in which the airport and its territory are key players. In synthesizing the narrative, Eirini addresses long-lasting tensions in the planning of airport territories and evaluates planning practices in relation to these frictions and the reality of urbanization processes. She shows how the impact of airports on their 6

metropolitan territories has been predominantly framed around the contrast between positive economic effects and negative environmental externalities. She writes: “Such contrasts have been diachronically influential in the formulation of public discourses, while at the same time insufficiently dealt with in spatial management practice. This inadequacy and mismatch seems to be at the source of the permanence of problems such as poor urban quality, spatial and social segregation, and conflicting use of space.” Interest mechanisms, oscillating with varying impact through time, provide an understanding of why planning outcomes are generally not very satisfactory. The observation that the centralized and state-led spatial production, focusing on the airport “as an object,” developed towards multi-actor, multi-process development in which the

airport-centered development among state, global and local stakeholders, but rightly poses the question of what this has produced in terms of qualitative development. Even for someone who feels at home in the complex planning processes of urban territories in airport regions, this book reads like a thriller: it is amazing how continuously new institutions, associations, stakeholders, territorial demarcations, planning instruments, masterplans, etc. reiteratively or “diachronically” oscillate throughout the planning and implementation processes of the airport region and how this sometimes results in enormous discrepancies between plans and the rather disappointing physical reality. It is also quite shocking that a region like Paris, which in the core city has developed a highly frequent and efficient public transport system, has not been able to produce adequate public transport accessibility to CDG and also does not manage to regulate extreme traffic congestion on the motorways. In the closing section of the book, Eirini states: “If spatial planning is failing to deliver with regard to airport regions, liberal social democracies may still prevent ad hoc liberal urbanization … For this, they should mobilize the range of statutory ‘braking factors’ and planning frameworks that they possess.” Here Eirini hints at my “Inversion and Subtraction” approach in urban design: that if there are sufficient physical and regulatory constraints in a territory, the different forces of development may settle in relative coherence by combining a self-evident urban design framework with the conscious mobilization of these constraints, collaboratively developed in a liberal social democratic context. The answer will probably not satisfy Eirini: In many projects the outcome of this approach is far from satisfactory, even “failing.” However, in complex territorial conditions there is often no alternative to a procedural, strategic approach guided by self-evident, resilient urban design structures. Concluding, I find this book an impressive piece of work, delivering a detailed birds-eye view of evolving planning intentions, rationales, visions, masterplans, ­implementations and the – sometimes counteracting – urbanization of the Paris CDG airport region. It explains the origins of the discrepancy between planning and the disappointing physical reality, as well as the reason why certain levels of consensus and more strategic approaches have not led to much improvement. Last but not least, the study of CDG constitutes a useful tool to evaluate other airport areas. Zurich, December 9, 2020

Foreword

position of the airport, the airport region and the city is subject to uncertain outcomes and negotiation, runs like a common thread through the book. Eirini argues that the recent era has brought a sort of mutual acceptance and the embracement of an open

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Preface and acknowledgments 6

Foreword by Kees Christiaanse 13 CHAPTER 1: The airport region as planning challenge



14 The spatial problematic of airport regions 16 The case of Paris Charles de Gaulle 18 Planning as investigative lens 24 The long narrative as study approach

31 CHAPTER 2: Airports and their spatial impacts



32 Air transport: a contemporary and evolving reality 37 Airports, global cities, and the “glocal” condition 39 Airports and metropolitan space 44 The economic importance of air transport 47 The negative externalities of airport operation 52 Asymmetries and controversies of airport impacts 54 Planning approaches to airport regions

67 CHAPTER 3: Planning in Paris



68 Institutional and planning change in France



82 Threads in planning discourse and action

76 The Paris metropolis: a portrait

93 CHAPTER 4: Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

94 Aviation and technocracy in the post-war period 98 Establishing the necessity of a new airport 101 Planning the deployment of Paris-Nord and the 1965 SDAURP 104 First ramifications of projected externalities 107 The airport as economic structuring facility 111 Channeling development: the working group Paris-Nord 117 Development versus planning 119 The autonomous airport site

133 CHAPTER 5: Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)



134 The airport region in the 1976 SDAURIF



139 Regulatory responses to noise impact



145 Attempts to enhance accessibility



151 An (un)planned urbanization and the Paris Nord complex

137 A green belt in Plaine de France? 141 Organizing ground access to the airport 147 Airport planning in a changing context

161 CHAPTER 6: Development in times of liberalization (1986 – 1994)

162 Emergence of a new competitive context 164 The airport area as development hub 168 Strategic sector, problematic territory? 171 The awakening of ADP 175 The awakening of local actors 181 Airport impacts and a difficult dialogue 183 The airport area enters planning discourses 188 In search of a development strategy 192 (Re)Designing CDG as competitive asset 195 The airport city takes off 198 A new wave of projects and a persistent stalemate 202 Planning the CDG region: the plan of Mission Roissy 207 Airports as centers of European caliber and the 1994 SDRIF 221 CHAPTER 7: Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

222 What future for the airport-area projects? 227 The airport city struggles 230 An intractable expansion

234 Promoting growth, managing impact: a compromise 236 Competitiveness by design 240 An undecided territory 243 The renewal of the discourse 247 Denial and acceptance: third airport and CDG Express 250 In search of spatial governance

253 A roadmap for planning?

267 CHAPTER 8: The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

268 A region and an airport in need of evolution 270 Articulating planning strategies 275 A new governmental impetus 278 A development boom 282 Grand Paris, Grand Roissy, and the “airport corridor” 287 In search of spatial coherence 292 Development as consensus? 294 Converging ideals and the 2013 SDRIF 298 The elusive governance of the airport region 307 CHAPTER 9: Planning the impossible: evolving strategies and tactics

308 The Paris CDG airport region over time: a synopsis of spatial change 315 Evolving planning approaches in the context of Paris 318 Diachronic airport-related wicked dilemmas 322 The rational, the strategic, and the spatial 323 Planning the impossible? 327 Annexes

328 1. Common Options For Airport Regions (COFAR ) 329 2. Current regulatory framework for aircraft noise in Paris

333

About the author 334 Bibliography 349

Illustration credits and data sources

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge The spatial problematic of airport regions The case of Paris Charles de Gaulle Planning as investigative lens The long narrative as study approach

The spatial problematic of airport regions The function of airports is a remarkable one: they are fixtures from which intricate devices are propelled into the sky, defying the laws of gravity. No wonder that in the first decades of aviation they intrigued the imagination of architects and planners, who envisaged them as islands, combined them with train stations or highways, even placed them on top of skyscrapers (Fig. 1.1). Decades of experimentation and technical evolution have produced the airports of today: vast sophisticated structures combining terminals, runways, and a host of other supporting or complementary functions. In the increasingly globalized economy of the Western world, airports are much more than the military accessories or places for the indulgence of a privileged few that they were until the mid-20th century. They are infrastructures essential for the connectivity, economy, and international status of their respective cities. In the largest among them, the growth of passenger and goods traffic has necessitated a development so extensive that they have become new kinds of centralities, with thousands of people populating them every day, whether as travelers or workers. But while airports have evolved, technically and organizationally, to respond to the ever-changing technological, economic and cultural conditions of modern societies, their relation with their territorial contexts has remained a point of contention. Testimony to this are the bitter conflicts by which almost every attempt at launching a new major airport or expansion project in the Western world over the last four decades has been plagued.1 Time and again, these conflicts have revolved around the juxtaposition of two types of airport-related impact and their associated proponents: On one side are those arguing about the economic benefits that would be lost if operation is not upheld or extension is not undertaken; on the other side, those lamenting the negative environmental effects of airport growth, whether experienced or anticipated. Both sets of impact are very real, and both have strong and specific spatial expressions. They reach far beyond the airport fence – through systems of access, aviation-­ related services, aircraft noise and other emissions, and regulations relating to operation. These contrasting impacts, and more broadly the ways in which major airports shape patterns of urbanization and socioeconomic configurations, have become a

Fig. 1.1  Left: Skyscraper Airport for City of Tomorrow, illustration in the magazine Popular Science in 1939. Right: “Aéroparis,” proposal by architect André Lurçat for transforming the Île aux Cygnes in Paris into an airport in 1932.

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challenge for spatial disciplines. The paradoxical nature of airports lies in the fact that, while their main role is to be nodes in a system of destinations accessible by air, they are also territorially and spatially embedded in specific places.2 International airports in particular embody a clash between global connectivity and local externalities, posing a conundrum for their functional and physical integration in metropolitan space. This conundrum has become more complex due to the changes that the metropolitan peripheries where airports are usually located have experienced in the last half-­ century, adding their own spatial complexities to those prompted by airport operation. Such complexities have been captured in analyses from the late 1990s and early 2000s that have described the conditions of sprawl, territorial enclaves, multiplication of infrastructures, and juxtaposition of scales in contemporary urbanized landscapes, with qualifiers such as “exopolis,” “Zwischenstadt” (in-between city), or “splintering With air traffic growing exponentially and airports becoming more interlinked with metropolitan space, airport regions have emerged as a new scale for policy-making and spatial strategy. They call for planners to make tough and value-laden decisions, since airports encapsulate a fundamental predicament that goes to the historic core of planning: that of the compatibility of economic growth, environmental protection, and social justice.4 Here, the scalar aspect is particularly important, as the positive economic effects of air transport are generally perceived at the scale of a city or even a nation, whereas the negative environmental or social effects are mostly manifested at the local level of airport surroundings. This predicament is associated with various topics: management of land use, regulation of building construction, provision of ground access, distribution of airport-related jobs, or functions associated with air connectivity. This book, in line with other recent analyses of airport-related spatial strategy-making, argues that these topics often constitute “wicked problems,” since the solutions to them can be neither easily identifiable nor optimal, let alone unique or definite.5 Although airport regions are associated with a tough, wicked set of problems for urban and spatial planning, this very problematic was hardly recognized until quite recently.6 Thus, the precarious spatial conditions, poor urban quality and persisting conflicts of many airport regions can be considered a failure of planning. It is precisely this consideration that lies at the core of this book. Using as study case one of the busiest airports of Europe – Paris Charles de Gaulle – located in one of its largest and most diverse metropolises – Paris –, my goal is to find out how spatial planners have regarded, projected, conceptualized, and designed the airport region over time. I aim to understand what we can learn from the past successes and failures of a discipline undergoing profound mutation, increasingly confronted with wicked problems in the context of our pluralistic Western societies. In the end, can we actually plan airport regions, or is it an impossible task? In tackling this question, this book joins a growing group of written works that have investigated airports and their spatial contexts in the last twenty years. A number of edited volumes have sketched the interest in the relation of airports and cities.7 Moreover, several doctoral theses have been produced in the fields of geography, urban planning and policy, political science, and management.8 These works have provided valuable understandings of the realities of airports and their metropolitan areas,

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge

urbanism.”3

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i­ nvestigated the challenges of airport-related planning and policy-making, and examined the experiences and representations associated with airports. Further, as this kind of research is based on case studies, we now have an extensive basis for comparing experiences across the (Western) world. Institutional and spatial-economic characteristics, as well as planning regime and culture, differ across cases, yet the similarities of problems and experiences in airport regions make it possible to derive generalizable insights. This study aspires to strengthen this basis, contributing to a shared understanding of the challenges of airport-related planning.

The case of Paris Charles de Gaulle The Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG ) airport has been the topic of some of the above-mentioned theses; however, there has not been, to date, a study examining spatial strategies and urban development in its region from the long-term perspective that this book does. This perspective allows the study of CDG to be positioned within the broader framework of the profound transformation of planning as a discipline and domain of public action over the last half-century; as well as an association of the specific issues arising in this case with the bigger problematic of airport-related planning. The history of the CDG airport is strongly anchored in that of the Paris region. As approached in this book, this is spatially synonymous with the Région Ile-de-France. Ile-de-France corresponds to a vast terrain, extending from the dense city of Paris to a sprawling periphery and rural hinterland. Almost one fifth of the total population of France and one fourth of its employed workforce live there. Paris can further be considered emblematic of the strong, spatially transformative French planning culture of grands plans and grands projets. But it is also emblematic of the profound mutations of this culture in recent decades, and of the complexities of planning in contemporary metropolises. The Paris metropolis epitomizes trends such as suburbanization, deindustrialization, gentrification, urban sprawl, and the emergence of specialized spatial clusters, while also featuring long-standing socioeconomic disparities. This multipolar capital region hosts two major airports, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Paris Orly, in additional to the business airport of Le Bourget (Fig. 1.2). Consistently among the busiest in Europe since the rise of commercial aviation on the continent, today CDG and Orly together handle more than 107 million passengers; with more than 76 million in 2019, CDG is by far the largest. Orly was de Jong, “The Airport Assembled s first truly international airport, but in the 1960s its expansion limitations led to the decision to construct CDG , colloquially also called Roissy from its location next to the village of Roissy-en-France, in the northern part of the Paris region. The airport opened in 1974, and, since surpassing Orly in 1992, has consistently ranked as Europe’s second busiest after London Heathrow. It has also evolved into a major regional economic center, with 85,000 jobs on the airport platform and more than 250,000 in its broader region. However, CDG has yet to be considered as a well-functioning part of the ­metropolitan space, with persisting land use conflicts, traffic congestion, and spatial incoherence in and around it. In the chapters of this book, the history of planning the CDG airport region is presented in the form of a narrative that covers the period between 1960 and 2013. The 16

Fig. 1.2  The Paris region and its airports.

substantial, as the regional plans are seminal documents that have, throughout this period, provided the main spatial orientations for the development of the Paris region, including with regard to its major airport. The narrative is structured with reference to the schémas directeurs along with other key plans, institutional changes and spatial planning events in the history of Paris that affected the CDG airport region. With the awareness that a global assessment of strategies and plans in a five decade-plus period risks oversimplifying a series of complex decision-making processes, this approach is nevertheless essential as it allows consideration of the longue durée of airport-related planning action and therefore its long-standing and inherent issues. Beyond the importance of the Charles de Gaulle airport and the interest in Paris as one of the major European metropolises, the selection of the Paris region as study case offers the advantage of rich empirical materials in urban development and spatial planning. The French planning system is an inexhaustible source of plans, analyses, reports, and all sorts of documents; and Paris, as the national capital, has been the focus of the public hand in terms of spatial visions, strategies, and large-scale projects. To produce the narrative, different types of materials were scrutinized: geographical and statistical data related to land uses, urbanization, population, employment, and noise impact;

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge

starting and ending dates correspond to the publication of regional plans, or schémas directeurs – the PADOG in 1960 and the SDRIF in 2013. This choice is both symbolic and

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planning documents retrieved from various archival and online sources, including general and project-specific plans, maps, reports, and communication documents; press excerpts; and insights from talks with urban planners in the Paris region who have participated in analyses or plan-making activity regarding the CDG airport region. The study of these materials allows the tracking of the perspectives of planning actors and public opinion, and the association of discourses and actions to their respective institutional backgrounds, underlying priorities, motivations, and ideological standpoints.

Planning as investigative lens Before delving into the history of the Paris CDG region, a consideration of this study’s investigating lens is in order. By using the term planning, I refer chiefly to urban planning, defined as the technical and political process concerned with the physical a ­ rrangement of human settlements.9 The focus on the physical certainly implies a lesser interest in domains such as economic or community planning; yet a complete separation is impossible since the activities are interlinked, as are the groups of actors exercising them. The various domains of planning action are rooted in the same ­administrative culture and subjected to the same institutional changes; as these evolve, the boundaries among them shift. In Europe, the concept of spatial planning has prevailed in recent years, providing a benchmark for the convergence of planning activities and systems stemming from different legal families and administrative structures.10 It denotes a broader and more encompassing field of activity than traditional land-use planning, town planning, or regional planning, and its enlargement from a technical task to a way of connecting knowledge and action.11 I use the term spatial planning to capture the general domain of public action, noting that my analysis focuses on the aspects most associated with physical spatial outcomes. When urban planning is used, it refers to the more traditional scope of the practice (land use, urban design and development, urban infrastructure), whereas regional or metropolitan planning generally denotes the larger spatial scale of reference (metropolitan space). Between the 1960s and the 2010s, planning in Europe, including in France, has been the subject of a long transition: from the state-led rational comprehensive model of the post-war decades to the multi-actor, multi-process practices of the 21st century, in which discourses and rationales are less predictably linked to spatial outcomes. Its scope and approach, as well as predominant discourses and practices, have mutated profoundly. The responses delivered towards the ever-increasing need for spatial management in airport regions have depended on these mutations; these have indeed problematized the very ability of planning to respond to the complexity and wickedness of the problems of airport regions. Next, I briefly outline the most important of these evolutions and the institutional transformations and economic restructuring forces that they are based on. Planning in transition: from unity to fragmentation In the starting period of the narrative, namely the 1960s, central governments in ­Europe exercised most of the spatial and urban planning activity, coordinating the 18

development of metropolitan areas and supplying infrastructure, amenities, and housing. State-led planning action responded to the conditions of the sustained economic and population growth of the time. Plans and planning documents typically followed a hierarchy of decision-making from the national to regional to local levels, setting priorities for each level.12 The metropolitan spatial structures produced from these systems were functionally defined and clearly delimited. The development and expansion of big airports at the outskirts of European cities was part of a wave of large-scale public works fueled by economic growth, transatlantic cooperation, and the techno-­ economic optimism prevalent at the time. The planning of this period was characterized by a widespread faith in rational

of planning was made possible by the sustained economic growth, stability of institutional systems, and unitary governments of the post-war period. There was pervasive optimism about the possibility of continuous betterment and the ability of skilled professionals to solve the problems on the way. Even though the goals of planning were defined by an enlightened professional elite sitting in central government offices, the social consensus of the era gave them widespread legitimacy. The erosion of this consensus by the early 1970s against the backdrop of shrinking growth rates, deindustrialization and growing social diversity triggered the demurral of predominant planning approaches. The societal failures of large-scale planning schemes gave birth to a widespread critique of top-down planning that was directed both at the process and its physical outcomes. The economic restructuring and political shifts of the time prompted an institutional transition that is encapsulated by three interlinked shifts.14 First, the proactive role of central government in the economy and in society was reduced. Second, decision-making spread from the government to a wide range of non-governmental organizations and the private sector. Third, ­intergovernmental relationships were restructured, featuring simultaneous processes of internationalization – with the enhancement of European coordination – and decentralization, with the strengthening of local administrations. Most countries in Europe enacted administrative decentralization reforms during the 1980s; France did so in 1982 – 1983. These processes deeply affected planning. The retreat of central governments from the provision of public services and amenities greatly reduced the discipline’s legitimacy. There was an almost complete abandonment of large-scale schemes in most European countries, including in France, and the loosening of state control on urban development and housing provision. The role of planning became less proactive and strategic and more regulatory. Also, due to decentralization, the responsibility for ­ rban development was transferred to lower tiers of government. The local solutions u that replaced top-down rational spatial production were less uniform and more locally adapted, but also more fragmented.15 The impacts of economic restructuring such as

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge

thought as the guide to the city’s future. One of the central tenets of the “rational comprehensive model” of decision-making was that planning was a process exercised by technical experts that followed discrete steps: the definition of the problems, the identification of alternative plans or policies, their evaluation, their implementation, and the monitoring of their effects. Planning also ought to be comprehensive; setting overarching goals, embodying a long-term vision for the future form of the city, and reflecting a consistent set of values sharing a common notion of “public interest.”13 This kind

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large-scale job loss forced many local administrations to find ways to safeguard their economic survival, among others by using their planning powers to promote projects bringing inward investment. Local authorities thus increasingly engaged in entrepreneurial activities, often establishing semi-autonomous agencies or partnerships with private actors.16 In parallel, as metropolitan economies became more dependent on their position in global networks, we have witnessed the rise of “global cities” capturing the high-level functions of the international economy.17 International airports have been one of the assets contributing to the positioning of cities in global rankings. Securing the competitive position of cities and regions through such assets has become a key concern of planning authorities. With corporations more footloose and globalized, cities have increasingly sought to provide the conditions for attracting and keeping them on their territory. In the larger European cities, focus shifted from overall metropolitan coordination to the development of particular districts or prestige projects.18 There has been a re-focusing of attention to urban development since the mid-1980s; this time not to respond to needs such as housing and amenities, but to facilitate property development so as to generate revenue and enhance urban image.19 In metropolitan peripheries, local entrepreneurialism found its expression in less glamorous retail, leisure, or office projects. It has not been uncommon for such large-scale projects to downplay metropolitan-wide planning rationales or bypass strategies in favour of their internal goals. Not surprisingly, these trends have intensified uneven geographical development. Towards strategic and collaborative planning The fragmenting effects of economic and institutional change started being recognized in the early 1990s, when efforts to coordinate public activities emerged around Europe. These included the allocation of more powers to regional or metropolitan-level authorities and the introduction of regional-scale plans. These tendencies have been discussed as indicating the (re)emergence of strategic spatial planning.20 But the strategic planning of the 1990s and 2000s was different from that of the 1960s and 1970s; it was no longer comprehensive, nor did it aim at organizing urban growth. Rather, it rose as a response to the perceived inability of planning practice to cope with increasing spatial complexity and persistent problems of governmental coordination. In particular, there was growing concern for the wasteful and haphazard urbanization of territories, for environmental issues more generally, and for how to treat these without compromising economic development.21 The concept of sustainable development emerged as an overarching goal for public action, presenting authorities with the challenge of finding spatial forms and planning processes that could promote its objectives.22 Strategic spatial planning signaled an evolution from regulatory towards “integrated” approaches, aspiring to balance economic development, social and environmental issues. The introduction of large-scale strategic plans in Europe was enabled by the reinforcement of regional administrations and their mediating role in intra-governmental coordination. The establishment of metropolitan-level planning authorities helped to address the splintering urbanization and weak spatial coherence that fragmented, decentralized planning action was unable to tackle. With regard to their strategic dimension, the new generation of plans tended to provide a framework for public action that is abstract but also selective. Patsy Healey has defined strategic spatial planning as: 20

self-conscious collective efforts to re-imagine a city, urban region or wider territory and to translate the result into priorities for area investment, conservation measures, strategic infrastructure investments and principles of land use regulation. The term ‘spatial’ brings into focus ‘the where of things’, whether static or in movement; the protection of special ‘places’ and sites; the interrelations between different activities and networks in an area; and significant intersections and nodes within an area which are physically co-located.23

mid-1990s, planning processes have been remodeled to involve a wider range of stakeholders – public authorities, private actors, interest groups, and the civil society – and to foster collaborative strategy-making. Collaboration and local community involvement are seen as necessary components of the multi-actor, multi-level governance of the 21st century.25 In the shift towards strategic and collaborative planning, though, it appears that discourse may have been poorly translated into practice. Despite the spirited efforts of the 1990s and 2000s to produce spatial strategies for metropolitan areas in Europe, many of the resulting frameworks seemed to do little actual “strategic work” in the sense of planning future development trajectories. The day-to-day work of planning actors is often characterized by more limited expectations, shorter-term collaborative ambitions, and a slower transformation of practices than is the normative i­ deal.26 Metropolitan governments have often been unable to successfully carry out their own strategic planning perspectives, making the issue of coordination pertinent.27 But the need for mediation among large numbers of stakeholders has increased complexity and slowed down decision-making. Healey has acknowledged that collaborative strategy making is “a messy, back-and-forth process, with multiple layers of contestation and struggle.”28 A related evolution concerns the emergence of new, generally non-statutory “soft spaces” and “arenas” of planning action that have “fuzzy” boundaries and are often constituted informally by the involved actors. It has been observed that “soft” planning processes encourage more creative thinking and strategic endeavors, and that “fuzziness” facilitates the coordination of planning across administrative borders; yet these practices also raise concerns about transparency, create a ­ mbiguity about areas of responsibility, trigger new organizational complexities, and may be used to promote political gain.29 Furthermore, the assumption that consensual, widely beneficial outcomes can be reached by means of designing a process that is inclusive and conducive to dialogue has been questioned. In claiming that differences can be overcome by rational debate, communicative approaches may downplay the enduring ability of politics and ­power to distort rationality.30 Allmendinger and Haughton have put forth a substan-

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge

Along with the embracement of strategic and multi-scalar planning, there has been a shift towards more collaborative and consensus-oriented approaches. The need for more collaboration arose as the number of territorial actors increased while the ability and competence of any single authority to inflict spatial change became more limited. Further, the “communicative turn” in planning theory raised a new generation of practitioners trained in managing public debates and enabling stakeholder participation in decision-making – the ultimate goal being to bridge disparate interests in the formulation of plans and produce strategies resulting in shared benefits.24 Since the

21

tial c­ ritique of consensus-oriented planning, interpreting it as an expression of post-­ political attitude that substitutes antagonism with superficial agreement.31 According to their analysis of spatial planning practice in England, the consensus-oriented approaches have done little towards actual conflict resolution. Instead, they have promoted the dominant political ideology by using “win-win” discourses that carefully choreograph, displace or residualize conflictual viewpoints.32 Project-based planning action The reorientation of urban governance towards economic development and competitiveness from the 1980s fueled an interest in large-scale urban projects, leading many urban governments to be involved in projects ranging from business districts to cultural regeneration projects, mixed-use quarters around transport nodes, or prominent transport infrastructures. In recent years though, there has been a conceptual gliding of urban projects. Rather than exceptional development schemes, they are integrated in strategic agendas as place-specific strategies that include other components besides physical development. In the conditions of diffuse urbanization and spatial fragmentation since the late 20th century, urban projects have emerged as “strategic vehicles for creating better-balanced urbanization patterns and promoting urban integration.”33 They have been expected to function as apparatuses to encourage regional-scale governance, promote competitiveness, and embody the balancing of economic, social and ecological objectives. The rising importance of urban projects as strategic vehicles is reflected in the fact that they have evolved into guiding forces for metropolitan planning. The attitude of “the project precedes the rule” has become widespread among planning authorities, in contrast with the previously dominant approaches favoring the establishment of legally binding land use and zoning plans as a prerequisite for negotiations on specific projects in continental Europe.34 In the new normal, fixed plans are either postponed until after specific projects have been agreed, or replaced with strategic visions; often only of an indicative nature. The strategic character of urban projects has allowed planning to be liberated from a predominantly fixed and physical consideration of space, thus producing better responsiveness to the wide range of spatially manifested issues; accordingly, the urban project can act as an arena bringing together diverse visions, with more capacity for adaptation.35 However, it also appears that in practice, the negotiated visions and shared cognitive schemes developed in the strategic framing of urban projects may diverge from the collective action alliances leading to project implementation.36 As the relationship between spatial strategies and outcomes is less linear, the transformative ability of planning may become limited by the unfolding of project-specific dynamics. Furthermore, planning based on project-making risks accentuating the “splintering” of metropolitan networks into separately managed spaces and structures.37 Even though interest in more sustainable and open urban forms has borne fruit in the first decades of the 21st century, as evidenced in the flexible and inclusive design of new city districts in Europe and the creation of institutional frameworks supporting these logics, these “porous” urban milieus make all the more obvious the contrast with other parts of the metropolitan landscape that develop into “porridge,” as Kees Christiaanse has distinctively put it.38 22

Complexity, wickedness, and relational planning Based on the trends described in the previous paragraphs, my inquiry starts from the position that the profound transformations in the discourses and practices of planning in the Western world have deeply influenced its ability to deal with the spatial ­problematic of airport regions. But how has this influence been manifested, and can it be said to be positive? Overall, challenges for planning have become i­ ncreasingly c­ omplex. Economic competition among cities and regions, multiplication of a ­ ctors and pressure for greater democratization of decision-making have necessitated new p ­ rocesses, ­focus areas, and content. In this context, the spatial management of internationally significant transport infrastructures like major airports – most of which, including Paris CDG , were conceived at a time when centralized, rational, and ­comprehensive planning action prevailed – has emerged as a crucial, conflict-prone In planning theory, the imminent collapse of the modern-rational model was signaled in the now famous 1973 article of Rittel and Webber, where the authors suggested that the reasons for failed problem-solving in social policy and planning lie in the very nature of the problems.39 These are not “tame problems” – the kind of problems that can be resolved though scientific means; but rather “wicked problems,” which can neither be described in a definite way nor have an exhaustively describable set of solutions. Different parties involved in one issue have different opinions on the potential solutions; therefore, policies that respond to social problems can neither be meaningfully correct nor false, nor “optimal.” According to Rittel and Webber, wicked problems were an inherent property of the pluralistic and individualistic societies emerging in the 1970s, in which there was no longer an indisputable “public good.” Their analysis demonstrated that planning decisions were not objective and scientific solutions, but rather value-laden choices. As illustrated in this book through the lens of Paris CDG , airport regions are loaded with wicked problems. Nevertheless, public dialogue concerning them has been dominated by indicators and models, and by the specialists who master them. The assessment and the management of the impacts of airports have been assumed to constitute well-structured, predominantly technical problems; whereas in reality they are complex and idiosyncratic.40 To understand the predominance of this assumption among planning actors, their motivations for relying on specific forms of knowledge that dictate their rationales need to be considered. This leads to contemplating planning from a relational angle, focusing on planning actors and their interactions, and examining spatial strategies as the outcome of complex decision-making.41 The contrasting facets of airport impacts mean that in decision-making processes, conflicts about planning and development priorities arise among actors with different interests or political standpoints. The question of which actors or standpoints come to dominate the decision-making field brings us to that of their power relations. Far from being straightforward, such relations are shaped not only by the formal and regulatory authority of different government agencies, but also access to resources, political associations, the potential to impose agendas, and the ability of powerful individuals or coalitions to create frames of reference. The relations between planning actors illuminate the connection between knowledge and action, which is not necessarily linear and logic. This approach, according to Healey, “move(s) the discussion of ‘policy learning’ in

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge

arena.

23

episodes of spatial strategy-making into a complex understanding of the production of ­k nowledge, of framing conceptions and specific discourses as processes of struggle between different perceptions and epistemologies.”42 Airport-related spatial strategy- and project-making epitomize this struggle, as the involved actors are numerous and represent different, often sector-driven perceptions of planning, space, efficiency, sustainability, and growth. For their actions, they rely on specific sets of information about the airport, its projected growth, its real and anticipated impacts, and its associated projects; this information is framed through their perceptions, interests, power positions, and path dependencies. Their interactions result in dominant trends of urban development and spatial strategies in airport regions. With planning having been transforming since the 1960s from a practice with relatively clear boundaries – exercised in a comprehensive, rational and unitary way – to a practice of considerable complexity and fuzziness, the evolving relations of actors of the Paris CDG airport region have been expressed in evolving strategies, tactics, models and arenas of decision- and project-making. Whether this transformation has succeeded in coping better with the complexity, dynamic non-linear change, socio­ economic and environmental uncertainties, and mix of diffusion and concentration of power witnessed in contemporary Western societies, as much as their airport regions, continues to be debated. Haughton et al. have argued that “the reality of spatial planning is that it is producing better quality paper plans whilst still delivering poor quality physical development on the ground.”43 The study of the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport region shows that this may indeed be the case.

The long narrative as study approach The story told in this book concerns a single case: that of the Paris CDG airport region; nonetheless, the aspiration is to extract broader lessons from this single case. Through the case study, the role of airports as one of the most influential spatial actors in today’s metropolitan areas is fleshed out, and the ability of planning as a spatial discipline to deal with their complexity is assessed. The general question that motivates this study is: Why has planning seemingly failed to successfully spatially manage the growth of Paris CDG and its contrasting impacts on its region? To answer this question, I resort to what could be described as a “long narrative”: a story, over a long period, of the plans, discourses, and spatial changes that concern the Paris CDG airport, its surroundings, and the metropolitan area at large. A narrational and analytical framework This thematically broad and temporally long narrative has simple facts as its starting point. It is eclectic, in the sense that it attempts to draw as comprehensively as possible a picture of various, often simultaneous and overlapping, evolutions. But it is also selective, because it either sets aside or provides a reduced account of the facts that do not contribute to providing useful illuminations with regard to the main question. Rather than being topically organized, the narrative is simply structured along five periods, corresponding to time spans in which certain planning ideals and their related practices enjoyed relative dominance. 24

The first period is the “golden era,” the time between 1960 and 1974, during which Paris CDG is conceived, planned, and implemented. It is a period of centralized planning, technocracy, and the prolific production of large-scale plans, in which confidence in the total control of the development of metropolitan space prevails. The “golden era” is succeeded by a period of disillusionment between 1974 and 1986, when public action appears drained by the heavy investments of the preceding period, and the realization of the impossibility of total control leads to adaptation and corrective action. The next period, between 1986 and 1994, is a critical juncture in the development of the CDG airport and its region, as the imperative of competitiveness in expectation of the liberalization of the European market leads to new development-based discourses. The institutional restructuring processes set in motion multiply planning and development actors and highlight their different perceptions and frames of reference. Between 1994 and 2004, the continuing air transport liberalization and European-­ level competition expose the dilemmas of airport development. In an emerging context of participatory planning processes and with the notion of sustainable development on the rise, the integration of the CDG airport into its environment is reframed. Finally, the period 2004 – 2013 is marked by the “return of the State” in the planning of Paris, with important effects on the perception of the CDG region, and the intensi­ fication of attempts to tackle airport impacts through development projects. From 2013 until the publication of this book, further events have clearly ensued; but the ­decision to stop at 2013 allows for taking the distance necessary for a long-term account of ­planning and development. Space, its institutions, and its practices evolve slowly and in path-dependent ways; the lessons of past events are pertinent for decades later. The narrative thus adopts a “meta-historical” approach, in which explanatory and interpretative aspects are combined.44 While the specific story of the Paris CDG ­airport region is chronicled, plans, projects, and micro-narratives are continually assessed with regard to their broader significance. This results in the constructing of an explanatory grid for the observed inconsistencies, disconnects, and “failures” of planning that consists of three interpretative components. The first is contextual, concerning the specific context of Paris and France and the ways that it has affected the treatment of the airport region. The second component is substantial, regarding the complex nature and contrasting impacts of the airport as technical and spatial object, and the inherent wickedness of related problems. Finally, the third component is systemic: it concerns the changing nature of planning itself and its relevance in managing metropolitan space (Fig. 1.3).

Fig. 1.3  The narrative approach and its explanatory components.

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With the five periods and these explanatory components as the main framework, the narrative revolves around the main issues that have dominated planning discourse and action. These include, depending on the period in question: the localization of the airport in the metropolitan area; the main developments on the airport site and their logic; the attempts to design “airport cities”; the role ascribed to the airport region in regional plans; the main large-scale spatial interventions in the airport periphery; the positioning of the airport in transport systems; the attempts to channel airport impacts in regulatory and proactive ways; and the management of urbanization and land uses in the airport’s surroundings. Evolutions in these topics are interpreted with regard to the motivations and systematic positioning of planning actors: the central government, regional authorities, local administrations, and the airport operator. The single case study As my study focuses on the single case of the CDG airport region, the spatial, institutional, political, and cultural specificities of Paris and France inevitably hold a decisive role. On this basis, the study could be criticized for attempting in vain to extract lessons relevant to other cases. In defense of my approach, I turn to the writings of Bent Flyvbjerg, who has reproached the conventional wisdom that the “case study cannot provide reliable information about the broader class.”45 Flyvbjerg has claimed that case studies, when carefully selected, are extremely useful for deepening knowledge by “force of example” as well as for falsifying generally held truths. Further, he has highlighted the value of narratives, which is not about summarizing the findings into neat formulae and theories, but about achieving a closer understanding of the complexities and contradictions of real life. Flyvbjerg’s suggestion echoes what Lisa Peattie calls a “dense data case-study”: a case deliberately descriptive, rather than codifying, providing scope for readers to exercise their own judgement in drawing conclusions.46 For Peattie, the dense case study can be: more useful for the (planning) practitioner and more interesting for social theory than either factual ‘findings’ or the high-level generalizations of ‘planning ­t heory’. The dense data case-study can help the practitioner to look out for the pitfalls and potentials of particular institutional forms, and to consider social action at the small grain of actors and incentives.47 Both Flyvbjerg and Peattie argue for what the former calls phronetic planning research: a way of acquiring wisdom based on a blend of practical knowledge, reasoning, and skill. This contemporary interpretation of the classical Greek concept phronesis “involves not only appreciative judgements in terms of values but also an understanding of the practical political realities of any situation as part of an integrated judgement in terms of power.”48 This proposition is relevant for this research, as the analysis of the history of the Paris CDG region through the narrative provides ample room for deliberation about values and interests in planning. Hence, the findings lie in the narrative itself, rather than being general truths derived from the analysis. The extent of generalization is relevant insofar as answers are sought about the specific handling of issues as seen in 26

practice; extreme generalizations are “against the very value of the case study,” based on contextuality. Based on this framework, the interplay between general and specific contributes to the clarification of values, interests, and power relations in planning in relation to global infrastructures as a basis for praxis. Further, the case study provides possibly generalizable lessons on planning complexity itself. At the same time, whereas the model of a “dense data case-study” implies a preference for depth, this need had to be balanced here with the choice of examining a very large time period so as to paint an overall portrait of the planning rationales at play. This implies an overwhelming volume of material, where editorial choices must be made. These choices, rather than narrowing the inquiry down to very specific points, consisted in going into the “amount of depth” necessary so as to gain the pursued insights. Structure of the book This book is structured in nine chapters. Chapter 1 has sketched the contours of the challenge of airport regions from a planning perspective, and explained the approach taken in this study. The next chapter, Chapter 2, illustrates why airports are relevant for planning. Here, I discuss key evolutions in air transport, the various impacts of airport operation, their spatial expression, the controversies surrounding them, and the

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge

prevalent approaches in planning and development practices. Chapter 3 introduces the reader to the specific context of planning in Paris. It presents how the evolution of planning in France has corresponded to broader transformations in the field, before turning to the particularities of the Paris region and the dominant threads in its planning. Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 constitute the main narrative, telling the story of the Paris Charles de Gaulle region through the examination of its planning materials. The chapters correspond to the five periods outlined above. They are structured in sections that follow a loose chronological order. The book closes with Chapter 9, which synthetizes the narrative and presents explanations for the findings. It juxtaposes the reality of urbanization with planning rationales, derives persistent issues and dilemmas, and attempts to assess the (im)possibility of planning the airport region.

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1  Prominent examples of strong opposition to new air- ­gewachsener Flughafen? Entstehung, Kontroversen, Eigen­ ports include the Tokyo Narita Airport, the Denver Inter- schaften, Potenziale und Herausforderungen” (HafenCity national Airport, and the Athens International Airport. Universität Hamburg, 2015); Jacques Grangé, “Les terriNew runways have been debated for years in Boston toires aéroportuaires comme catalyseurs de la connais(since 1973), in Düsseldorf (since 1991), or in Frankfurt sance et source d’innovation pour les métropoles mon­ (between 1997 and 2012). At London Heathrow, expan- diales. De l’Airport City à l’Aerotropolis?” (Sorbonne sion has been a long-standing and deeply political con- Université, 2018). Roseau and Hirsh have studied how airtroversy; and the expansion of Paris Charles de Gaulle port design has reflected specific cultural representations, between 1994 and 2002 triggered a public discussion diachronically and in the case of Asian airports respecover the building of an entirely new airport, as will be dis- tively: Nathalie Roseau, “L’imaginaire de la ville aérienne” ­ aris cussed in this book.  2  Saulo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring, (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées – Université P and John Urry, Aeromobilities (Abingdon, Oxon: Rout- Est, 2008); Max Hirsh, “Airport Urbanism: The Urban Inledge, 2009).  3  Respectively in: Edward W. Soja, Postme- frastructure of Global Mobility” (PhD dissertation, Harvard tropolis. Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford: University, 2012). Halpern has delivered an analysis of the Blackwell Publishers, 2000); Thomas Sieverts, Zwischen- conflicts associated with airport development: Charlotte stadt. Zwischen Ort und Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Halpern, “La décision publique entre intérêt général et Land (Braunschweig [etc.]: Vieweg, 1997 ); Stephen Gra- intérêts territorialisés: les conflits autour de l’extension ham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked des aéroports Paris-Charles de Gaulle et Berlin-Schönefeld” Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban (Paris, Institut d’études politiques, 2006). Finally, WiedeCondition (Routledge, 2001).  4  Paul Ekins, Economic mann has examined the role of airports in rationales of Growth and Environmental Sustainability: The Prospects businesses: Mirjam Inga Wiedemann, “The Role of Infrafor Green Growth (Routledge, 2002); Petter Næss, “Urban structure for Economic Development in an Airport MetropPlanning and Sustainable Development,” European Plan- olis Region” (Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW , ning Studies 9 (2001). For the conflicts among the goals 2014).  9  Nigel Taylor, Urban Planning Theory since 1945 of sustainable development as challenge for planners, see (SAGE Publications, 1998).  10  European Commission, also Scott Campbell, “Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just “The EU Compendium of Spatial Planning Systems and Cities?: Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustain- Policies,” in Regional Development Studies (1997 ). able Development,” Journal of the American Planning 11  John Friedmann, “Toward a Non-Euclidian Mode of Association 62 (1996): p. 296.  5  For airport-related plan- Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association ning as a “wicked problem,” see also Bart de Jong, “The 59, no. 4 (1993).  12  Peter Newman and Andy Thornley, Airport Assembled. Rethinking Planning and Policy Making Urban Planning in Europe: International Competition, Naof Amsterdam Airport Schiphol by Using the Actor-Net- tional Systems and Planning Projects (Routledge, 1996). work Theory” (2012).  6  Robert Freestone and Douglas 13  John Friedmann, “The Future of Comprehensive Urban Baker, “Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Planning: A Critique,” Public Administration Review 31, no. Development,” Journal of Planning Literature 26, no. 3 3 (1971).  14  Willem Salet, Andy Thornley, and Anton Kreu(2011).  7  See for example: Sven Conventz and Alain Thier- kels, “Institutional and Spatial Coordination in European stein, Airports, Cities and Regions, Routledge Advances Metropolitan Regions,” in Metropolitan Governance and in Regional Economics Science and Policy (London; New Spatial Planning: Comparative Case Studies of European York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015); Ute City-Regions, ed. Willem Salet, Andy Thornley, and Anton Knippenberger and Alex Wall, eds., Airports in Cities and Kreukels (London and New York: Spon Press, 2003). Regions. Research and Practise (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific 15  Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe. Publishing, 2010); Bernd Buthe and Johanna Schlaack, 16  D. Harvey, “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialeds., Neue Perspektiven für Flughafen und Stadt, vol. 1, ism – the Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Informationen zur Raumentwicklung (Bonn: BSSR im BBR , Capitalism,” Geografiska Annaler Series B-Human Geo­ 2011); IAURIF , ed. Aéroports et Territoires, vol. 139 / 140, graphy 71, no. 1 (1989).  17  Saskia Sassen, The Global City. Les Cahiers de l’IAURIF (Paris: 2003).  8  From a geo- New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, New Jersey: Prince­ graphical perspective, see for example the theses of van ton University Press, 1991).  18  Stuart Wilks-Heeg, Beth Wijk and El-Mahkloufi: Michel van Wijk, “Airports as City- Perry, and Alan Harding, “Metropolitan Regions in the Face ports in the City-Region: Spatial-Economic and Institution- of the European Dimensions,” in Metropolitan Governance al Positions and Institutional Learning in Randstad-­ and Spatial Planning: Comparative Case Studies of EuroSchiphol (AMS ), Frankfurt Rhein-Main (FRA ), Tokyo pean City-Regions, ed. Willem Salet, Andy Thornley, and Haneda (HND ) and Narita (NRT )” (Koninklijk Nederlands Anton Kreukels (London and New York: Spon Press, Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, 2007 ); Abderrahman El-­ 2003).  19  Orueta Fernando Diaz and Susan S. Fainstein, Makhloufi, Spatial-Economic Metamorphosis of a Nebula “The New Mega-Projects: Genesis and Impacts,” InternaCity: Schiphol and the Schiphol Region During the 20 th tional Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32, no. 4 Century (London: Routledge, 2013). In terms of planning (2008).  20  Louis Albrechts, Patsy Healey, and Klaus R. and governance, the works of de Jong, Johann, and Kunzmann, “Strategic Spatial Planning and Regional GovGrangé merit attention: de Jong, “The Airport Assembled. ernance in Europe,” Journal of the American Planning Rethinking Planning and Policy Making of Amsterdam­ Association 69, no. 2 (2003); William Salet and Andreas ­Airport Schiphol by Using the Actor-Network Theory.”; Faludi, eds., The Revival of Strategic Spatial Planning ­Rainer Johann, “City-Airport Hamburg: Ein mit der Stadt (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nedelandse Akademie van Weten­

28

icization, Spectres of Radical Politics, 1st edition ed. (Edinburgh University Press, 2015).  32  Philip Allmendinger and Graham Haughton, “Post-Political Spatial Planning in England: A Crisis of Consensus?” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37, no. 1 (2012).  33  Willem Salet, “Rethinking Urban Projects: Experiences in Europe,” Urban Studies 45, no. 11 (2008): p. 2344 .  34  “Le projet doit précéder la règle.” Yves Lion and Laurent Théry, “Qu’est-ce que l’urbanisme de projet? Interview d’Yves Lion et Laurent Théry,” in Urbanismes de projet, ed. ­IAU -IdF, Les Cahiers de l’IAU -Idf (Paris: 2012).  35  Amélie Darley and Gwenaëlle Zunino, “Qu’entend-on par projet urbain?” ibid. 36  Salet, “Rethinking Urban Projects.” 37  Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition.  38  Kees Christiaanse, “Porous or Porridge City?” in Kees Christiaanse Textbook. Collected Texts on the Built Environment 1990 – 2018 , ed. Jessica Bridger (Rotterdam: nai010, 2018).  39  Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 , no. 2 (1973).  40  de Jong, “The Airport Assembled. Rethinking Planning and Policy Making of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol by Using the Actor-Network Theory.”  41  Healey, Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies.  42  Ibid., p. 26.  43  Haughton et al., The New Spatial Planning: Territorial Management with Soft Spaces and Fuzzy Boundaries, p. i.  44  Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).  45  Bent Flyvbjerg, “Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research,” Qualitative inquiry 12 , no. 2 (2006).  46  Lisa ­Peattie, “Theorizing Planning: Some Comments on Flyv­­­ bjerg’s Rationality and Power,” International Planning Studies 6, no. 3 (2001).  47  Ibid., p. 259.  48  Bent Flyv­ bjerg, “Phronetic Planning Research: Theoretical and Methodological Reflections,” Planning Theory & Practice 5, no. 3 (2004): p. 284 .

CHAPTER 1  The airport region as planning challenge

schappen, 2000).  21  M J Breheny, “The Renaissance of Strategic Planning?” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 18 , no. 2 (1991).  22  Patsy Healey, “The Treatment of Space and Place in the New Strategic Spatial Planning in Europe,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28 , no. 1 (2004).  23  Ibid., p. 46. 24  Judith E. Innes, “Planning through Consensus Building: A New View of the Comprehensive Planning Ideal,” Journal of the American Planning Association 62, no. 4 (1996). John Forester has proposed the concept of the deliberative practitioner, who has the political vision and pragmatic skill to advance the best interest of citizens against the constraints and distortions imposed by the political realities of Western societies. John Forester, The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes (MIT Press, 1999).  25  Michael Haus, Hubert Heinelt, and Murray Stewart, Urban Governance and Democracy: Leadership and Community Involvement (Routledge, 2004).  26  Peter Newman, “Strategic Spatial Planning: Collective Action and Moments of Opportunity,” European Planning Studies 16, no. 10 (2007 ).  27  Salet, Thornley, and Kreukels, “Practices of Metropolitan Governance in Europe. Experiences and Lessons.”  28  Patsy Healey, Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies: Towards a Relational Planning for Our Times, The Rtpi Library Series (Routledge, 2007 ), p. 182 .  29  Graham ­ Haughton et al., The New Spatial Planning: Territorial Management with Soft Spaces and Fuzzy Boundaries (London: Routledge, 2010).  30  For a related analysis, see: Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice (University of Chicago Press, 1998).  31  The notion of “post-politics” has been advanced by radical thinkers to capture what they see as the reduction of politics proper – to which conflict and antagonism are inherent in democratic societies – to social administration. See for example: Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (Psychology Press, 2005); Japhy Wilson and Erik Swyngedouw, eds., The Post-Political and Its Discontents: Spaces of Depolit-

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CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts Air transport: a contemporary and evolving reality Airports, global cities, and the “glocal” condition Airports and metropolitan space The economic importance of air transport The negative externalities of airport operation Asymmetries and controversies of airport impacts Planning approaches to airport regions

Air transport: a contemporary and evolving reality The development of air transport and commercial aviation is a phenomenon of the 20th century, especially its second half. Until the First World War, flying was the foray of courageous pioneers, and early airfields were places of spectacle and record-making. The war prompted the beginning of a larger-scale use of aircraft, as agricultural plateaus were transformed into incipient airfields for the landing and taking off of military planes. The first commercial passenger lines were put to service during the 1920s and 1930s. But it was actually the Second World War that enabled aircraft technology to flourish, making flying a widespread mode of transportation. After the war, stateled economic growth and rising private incomes fueled a boom in aviation, private and commercial, further enabled by the availability of war-surplus aircraft and trained ­pilots. Improvements to the range, capacity, and speed of aircraft permitted the multiplication of transatlantic flights, linking the large markets of Europe and North America.1 The development of the jet engine, culminating with the putting into service of the Boeing 707 in 1958, revolutionized international passenger movements, replacing propeller planes for long-distance routes. The contraction of space-time allowed by the jet plane enabled the development of mass tourism and of new trade relations across the world.2 Although shaken by the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, air transport continued to ­increase thanks to an increasingly global economy. In the 1980s, a revolution took place thanks to air freight. The development of Federal Express (FedEx) and air-­cargo

Fig. 2.1  Global air passenger traffic trend, 1950 – 2014 .

32

exclusive networks allowed overnight door-to-door delivery, first in North America and then across the globe. The explosion of e-commerce in the 20th century further boosted demand for international express freight. Apart from making companies like FedEx and DHL global players, air cargo has also become a significant source of income for airlines, who carry goods in the bellies of passenger jets. Further evolutions in aircraft technology, the entry into service of larger airplanes like the Boeing 747, network developments and the resulting economies of scale permitted substantial reductions in air fares, opening intercontinental air transportation to the mass market. The postFordist-era growth of air transport of both passengers and goods was thus prompted by several drivers: aviation technology; the increase of international tourism; the

and an important economic sector globally. The air transport industry accounts for about 1  % of the GDP of both the EU and the US ; air cargo represents almost 40  % of world trade by value, even though it represents less than 1  % by volume.4 Traffic has been growing at a consistently high pace throughout the last 70 years. Between 1990 and 2015, there was a 5.1  % average annual growth in revenue ton-kilometers (RTKs), corresponding to 4.5  % annual passenger growth, or a tripling of annual passengers.5 Although less than the astronomical rates of 10 – 1 2  % in the 1950s and 1960s, or even the 6 – 8  % rates of the 1970s and 1980s, this percentage still hovers above GDP rates and growth figures for most economic sectors. Additionally, air traffic has proven remarkably resilient to external shocks (Fig. 2.1).6 Today, we have an air transport network of global scale, involving over 3.7 billion passengers and 60 million tons of cargo worldwide each year.7 To accommodate the growing traffic since the 1950s, airports have been built, extended, and evolved in form and organization to receive a more diverse clientele traveling for a wider range of purposes. At any given year, about a dozen airport development projects worth at least one billion dollars are underway.8 In parallel, air traffic and airport growth have experienced a geographic shift. Whereas in Europe, North America and Australia, hardly any new airports have been constructed since the 1970s – the focus being on extensions and optimizations of existing infrastructure – Asia has experienced an ongoing wave of new airport construction, matching the radical expansion of its flying public. That said, most of the busiest airports continue to be located in the West. In Europe, the twenty busiest airports in terms of passenger traffic, among which Paris Charles de Gaulle and Paris Orly, together handle more than 830 million passengers and 11 million tons of cargo (2016) (Table 2.1). The implications of a changing sector The air transport industry has undergone fundamental transformations throughout its existence. For a long time, it was heavily regulated, economically and politically. Publicly owned or publicly controlled airlines9 had exclusivity over routes, states had absolute sovereignty over their airspace and international air connections were regulated by bilateral agreements. The liberalization of markets worldwide starting in the late 1970s prompted a wave of changes. The United States were the first to install a liberalized regime with the 1978 “Airline deregulation act,” which allowed new companies to

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

globalization of producers and costumers; speed-based competition; customization; worldwide enterprise networks; and the perishability of goods.3 As a result, air travel has become an indispensable part of contemporary ­mobility

33

Rank (2016) Name

IATA code

City

Passengers (2016) Tons of freight

1

London Heathrow Airport

LHR

London

75,671,863

1,591,642 (2015)

2

Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport

CDG

Paris

65,933,145

1,861,197 (2015)

3

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

AMS

Amsterdam

63,625,664

1,700,000 (2016)

4

Frankfurt Airport

FRA

Frankfurt

60,786,937

2,150,000 (2016)

5

Istanbul Atatürk Airport

IST

Istanbul

60,119,215

771,240 (2015)

6

Adolfo Suárez Madrid Barajas Airport

MAD

Madrid

50,420,583

415,773 (2016)

7

Barcelona El Prat Airport

BCN

Barcelona

44 ,154 ,693

132,754 (2016)

8

London Gatwick Airport

LGW

London

43,114 ,888

77,995 (2016)

9

Munich Airport

MUC

Munich

42,261,309

353,650 (2016)

10

Leonardo da Vinci Fiumicino Airport

FCO

Rome

41,744 ,769

145,017 (2015)

11

Sheremetyevo International Airport

SVO

Moscow

33,655,605

121,622 (2006)

12

Paris Orly Airport

ORY

Paris

31,237,865

115,440 (2016)

13

Sabiha Gökçen Airport

SAW

Istanbul

29,651,543

334 ,542 (2016)

14

Copenhagen Airport

CPH

Copenhagen

29,043,287

354 ,269 (2012)

15

Domodedovo International Airport

DME

Moscow

28 ,500,259

191,190 (2011)

16

Dublin Airport

DUB

Dublin

27,908 ,347

127,448 (2014)

17

Zurich Airport

ZRH

Zurich

27,666,428

430,000 (2016)

18

Palma de Mallorca Airport

PMA

Mallorca

26,253,882

10,453 (2016)

19

Oslo Airport, Gardermoen

OSL

Oslo

25,787,691

130,301 (2016)

20

Manchester Airport

MAN

Manchester

25,598 ,827

100,021 (2015)

833 ,136 ,800

~ 11 million

TOTAL

Table 2.1  The twenty busiest airports of Europe in terms of passenger traffic (2016 data)

be created and ticket prices and destinations to be freely determined. Europe followed suit, with the aim of creating a common aviation market. Here, deregulation or rather liberalization happened more gradually, starting with bilateral agreements among countries. At the level of the European Union, it was instituted in steps between 1987 and 1997, although some aspects of the industry continue to be regulated.10 The EU Internal Market for Aviation was born in 1992. The competitive environment that emerged forced airlines to develop strategies of economic survival, leading to innovation in services, increases in productivity, and drops in ticket prices – but also to the closure of national carriers that could not adapt to increased competition. Other implications of liberalization have been the formation of global airline alliances and the emergence of low-cost carriers since the 1990s. In the organization of the air transport network, a key development was the adoption of the hub-and-spoke system. Before, air routes were organized as point-to-point connections among destinations, not all of which were profitable. In the competitive environment, airlines were forced to lower ticket prices all while maintaining a large offer in destinations for their customers. The hub-and-spoke system, with the hub (large airport) functioning as correspondence platform among the spokes (medium-sized airports), allowed the serving of many origin-destination markets with fewer flights and thus lower operating costs (Fig. 2.2).11 Even though, with the appearance of low-cost carriers, the point-to-point logic made a comeback, the hub-and-spoke system remains 34

a dominant mode of organization for the air transport network worldwide. It implies the concentration of activity in space (the hub airport), as well as in time, with airlines adopting or intensifying wave-system time structures to facilitate correspondence among flights.12 The competition among airlines and the restructuring of the network have funda­ mentally changed the context of airport operation, notably by introducing more volatility. Analyzing the implications of deregulation for airport planning in Europe, Burghouwt and Huys name several facets of volatility.13 First, the abolishment of extensive financial state support to airlines has made it difficult for flagship carriers to cope with competition, often with devastating implications for their airports of reference.14 Second, since airlines are free to choose their routes, they are no longer committed to airports; the latter must therefore compete to attract them. Besides, the adoption of the hub-and-spoke system implies that in hub airports, even small changes in the quality of the connecting service may result in declining numbers of transfer passengers. Finally, the strengthening of global airline alliances creates further competition among primary and secondary airports. In this emerging volatile environment, traditional approaches to airport planning,

Fig. 2.2  The point-to-point and hub-and-spoke systems.

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

based on rational comprehensive models of thinking, have proven inadequate. Reliance on detailed traffic forecasts and the assumption of having all the necessary information to make informed decisions about airport development were belied by loosening state support and shifting network dynamics. In many cases, miscalculations have led to cost overruns, budget deficits, and technical mismatches.15 Thus, many scholars have advocated for, and airports have gradually adopted, more flexible approaches. Richard de Neufville has extensively written about the need to replace traditional airport planning with “dynamic strategic planning.”16 The main tenet of this approach is the necessity to recognize uncertainty, taking into account a broad range of possibilities and thus considering different scenarios. According to de Neufville, “[airport] development plans should be strategic, making investments that insure the future; incremental, phasing modest investments according to proven opportunities; and flexible, providing the insurance to adjust easily to future situations.”17 Naturally, the physical layout of airports and their buildings has also evolved in response to the changes in the aviation sector. Designs for passenger buildings have moved away from closed-system logics and adopted more expandable concepts to ­respond to uncertainty about future needs. Airport terminal buildings of the 1960s

35

and 1970s originally hailed as architectural successes proved to be operational failures, needing vast adaptations. In hub airports in particular, the pressure to achieve peak hour capacity at the terminal, the runways, and the landside infrastructure has grown. The minimization of walking distances between gates and the provision of direct access to aircraft have become important goals.18 The growth of air freight has also posed new demands in space, requiring large tracts of land for goods handling. Finally, there has been a growing need to provide efficient ground transport links between airports and central cities or other regional destinations. The commercialization of airports The liberalization of air transport and changing network dynamics have transformed not only airport planning approaches, but also airport management structures. For much of the history of commercial aviation in Europe, airports were publicly owned and operated; they were utilities with public service obligations, often within the jurisdiction of transport ministries. Their management revolved around the core competence and responsibility of providing infrastructure for national purposes; few other capacities were necessary.19 However, public funding for airport operation came increasingly under criticism after the 1970s, leading airport authorities to look for ways to ensure their financial autonomy. Many airports were gradually (partially) privatized or corporatized, shifting from a branch of government to autonomous businesses.20 In the case of Paris Charles de Gaulle, the airport authority, Aéroports de Paris (ADP), was privatized in 2005, whereas the national carrier, Air France, had been privatized in 1999 (Fig. 2.3). Privatizations permitted a reduction in public sector investment and provided airport operators with access to commercial markets. Consequently, they reinforced the commercialization process that had started with the opening of markets and the appearance of new airline customers (hub-based carriers, alliances, and low-cost carriers), forcing airports to adopt strategies to gain a competitive advantage. The formulation of such strategies has been a complex task, as airports operate in tight conditions: they are constrained by their fixed location, their infrastructure, the size and wealth of the population they serve, regulatory frameworks, and the practices of airlines. The possibilities of increasing competitiveness and revenue through adjusting the costs of aeronautical services are narrow due to safety and security regulations, as well as the limited price elasticity of airlines. Airport operators have more leeway for applying their own strategies on the side of business not directly concerning aviation; namely, in the pricing and provision of non-aeronautical services and facilities in the terminals and on the surrounding land.21

Fig. 2.3  Logos of ADP , Paris Aéroport (new brand name since 2016), subsidiary ADPi, and Groupe ADP .

36

With traditional sources of revenue – landing charges, passenger and cargo fees, security, and parking and hangar charges – falling short in supporting ongoing investments, airport operators have increasingly turned to such alternatives. Non-aeronautical income sources are generally of two sorts: commercial facilities and real estate development. The former include car parking, rental car concessions, and retail both in passenger areas and in the “landside”; the latter concerns property income from leasing airport land, usually for hotels and aviation-related offices (Fig. 2.4). According to Airports Council International, whereas non-aviation-related income amounted to 30 % of gross airport revenues in the beginning of the 1990s, it reached 50 % in the 2000s; even 60 % in large airports.22 Taking advantage of their pivotal function for traffic, several large hub airports have further invested in conference and meeting facilities, and even leisure and healthcare centers. Thus, commercialization has contributed to the emergence of a new generation of megastructure airports hosting a range of functions, as will be further discussed later in this chapter. In addition to the diversification of the airport “products,” the evolution of airport authorities towards agencies operating in a competitive context has been underscored by the adoption of business-like approaches, the growing role of marketing and the introduction of skills like financial and quality management.23 Several operators have also ventured outside their narrow area of responsibility, using their expertise to establish branches that design and manage new airports and/or provide airport services around the world. In Europe, airport companies with a global business scope include Fraport in Germany, BA A in the UK , the Schiphol Group in the Netherlands, and the Groupe ADP in France.

Airports, global cities, and the “glocal” ­condition Air transport has made the world more interconnected, but also more polarized. Airports are the anchor points of a network that overcomes geographic distance. Their “gateway” function has been recognized since the 1970s, when it was argued that “gateways,” providing links to regions via their international transportation function, were

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

Fig. 2.4  Left: Extensive parking facilities at Paris Orly airport. Right: The newest hotel development at Paris CDG airport.

37

alternative centralities and indispensable components for the development of large centers.24 In the era of the “network society,” airports have become key nodes in a system of global networks enabled by information, communication and transportation technologies. According to Castells, the network society is organized around the space of places and the space of flows.25 Air travel is a primary channel enabling material flows of people, goods, and capital, operating next to immaterial channels of information flows. Airports are thus nodes that bridge the space of flows represented by air travel, and the space of places represented by cities. Over the last decades, especially with the adoption of the hub-and-spoke paradigm, the air transport network has become quite hierarchical. The position of an airport in the network hierarchy (large, medium or small hub, primary, peripheral, freight-­ oriented) often reflects the role of the host city (global city, national center, holiday destination, peripheral city, or transshipment hub).26 While cities with hub airports are highlighted, low-traffic areas may be marginalized.27 Hence, all while enabling access to the remotest of areas, air transport also shows the concentration of power in a small number of places. A reciprocal relation can actually be traced between air transport and the “global city” paradigm, in which certain cities are posited to acquire a commanding role in operating, coordinating, and articulating economic activities.28 These “global cities” feature dense patterns of interaction between people, goods, and information. It is thus there where the need for most air connectivity emerges. Inversely, elaborate networks of transport services and infrastructure facilitate the interactions sustaining global cities, reinforcing their global control-and-command function.29 Thanks to the link between air transport and global positioning, airports have become strategically significant assets in urban competition. The presence of a well-functioning international airport can enhance the image of a city and its attractiveness for tourists or businesspeople. Besides, the international air connections are a prerequisite for many contemporary cultural manifestations, like global sporting events, international conferences, and music festivals – in turn used by cities and regions to boost their attractiveness and competitive position. In the hierarchical network represented by air transport, international airports are thus both products and agents of globalization; products, because their accelerated rise is a consequence of the expanded mobility associated with global economic practices; and agents, because their existence inspires the generalization of flying as ­embedded

Fig. 2.5  Left: Typical duty-free airport shop in Zurich airport. Right: The interior of the Terminal 2F in Paris CDG ­airport with recognizable roof structure.

38

social and economic practice across the world. In his work on mobilities, John Urry sketched the contours of the relationship between airports and the global condition, stating that “flights, aeroplanes, airports and airport cities are central to an emergent global order. Without the rapid development of the complex extended systems of mass air travel, what is now termed ‘globalization’ would be utterly different, possibly non-existent.”30 Airports are rife with contradictions, reflecting the ­paradoxes inherent to the global condition. Their function as facilitators of flows requires efficient and globally harmonized processes, producing a “sameness” also encouraged by the ubiquitousness of global brands and the predictability of waiting rooms and s­ ecurity processes that make them familiar to the frequent traveler. At the same time, airport and urban authorities often strive to project an image of uniqueness through visual, architectural, or functional variations. The materiality of airports thus oscillates between uniformity and singularity (Fig. 2.5). Likewise, airports have both an elitist and a democratic nature. They have often been depicted as premium network spaces of the “kinetic elite,” designed to accelerate its seamless movement through exclusive transport infrastructure such as high-end airport facilities and dedicated accessways.31 But access to air mobility by increasing socioeconomic strata has also made airports places of cultural hybridity and “meetingness,” and even necessitated the development of new facilities parallel to those serving elite clients.32 The greatest contradiction probably arises when juxtaposing the global role of airports with the local context in which they are embedded. There exist two partly parallel, partly intersecting “universes” in conjunction with large airports, which, in analogy to Castells’s terms, can be described as the universe of global air movements and the universe of local places.33 The impacts of the processes unfolding in each of them materialize at different scales. Global air movements bolster transnational networks and contribute to national and regional economies. Their administration however imposes demands on the local social, physical, geographical and environmental contexts of airports. The coexistence of the two universes is characteristic of the “glocal” complexity of airport regions, to use the recent term capturing the simultaneity of universalizing and particularizing tendencies.34 As air transport grows, so do the numbers of people both benefitting from its global reach and subjected to its local externalities.

In this section, I turn to how evolutions in air transport are reflected in the relation of airports with metropolitan space and the qualitative characteristics of airport regions. In geography and transport studies, airports have been hailed as representing, together with containerships, the fifth wave of transport development.35 Each wave is associated with a new technology that fundamentally affects the mobility of ­people and goods, while its infrastructure constitutes a crucial factor in channeling urban growth (Fig. 2.6). Thus, seaports led to the flourishing of coastal cities, canals spread development inland, railways created centralities around train stations, and highways encouraged suburbanization. Airports, the anchors of late 20th century global mobility, clearly contribute to the growth of their host cities; but how do they affect urban form and structure?

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

Airports and metropolitan space

39

Fig. 2.6  Cumulative waves of transport development.

The impact of transport on urban systems was a recurring topic in studies from the 1960s and 1970s. Each transport revolution was considered to have prompted an expansion of the city surface, and the deployment of transport infrastructure in space to have affected the distribution of urban development and the structure of the built ­fabric.36 Cities were depicted as a series of expansions made possible by modes of transport (Fig. 2.7). This representation remains valid for many of the oldest cities in the Western world. Yet the changes brought by the jet age are missing from such models. One major difficulty in depicting the impact of air transport on urban space lies in that its movement channels are outside the urban realm, while there is extreme concentration of flows at the node-airport. The node, however, “captures” a vast zone around it whose main role is to support its function: access and provision infrastructure and areas under the approach and departure paths of airplanes. Besides, airports cannot exist independently of the ground systems that reach them; their spatial influence thus occurs in conjunction with that of the other modes of transport. This points to a broader issue: transport development, and therefore its impact on space, is not fractional, but cumulative, with each new mode supplementing the previous one. In the post-Fordist era of expanding and varied mobility, mobilities and infrastructures are superimposed, making clean-cut spatial differentiations difficult. The suburbs that have emerged from the expansion of the automobile evolve and diversify; high-speed train stations in urban peripheries re-assert the impact of rail transport; and airports change the character of large parts of metropolitan space. The age of hyper-mobility has thus imposed increased spatial complexity. But as the speed of transport and its territorial extent reach novel levels, the process of cumulative transport development appears to come to a peak.37 Fig. 2.7  Model of urban development as a function of changes in transport modes.

40

This may well be a symptom of the global trend conceptualized in recent years as the “Great Acceleration”:

an era of unprecedented growth of human ­activities at a global scale, reflected in material consumption, trade, transportation, telecommunications, extraction of natural ­resources, and energy use.38 The implications of the Great Acceleration for urban form and structure are just starting to be grasped. With traditional modeling proving insufficient, even irrelevant, it is mostly qualitative approaches that help understand the spatial expression of modal acceleration and infrastructural accumulation that airports exemplify.

The observation of such settlement tendencies in airport areas dates from the 1980s. In his description of the “edge city” phenomenon in the USA , Joel Garreau explored the hyper-concentration of commercial activities in urban peripheries that tend to develop near highway intersections and increasingly near major airports.40 His list of edge cities included places such as Scottsdale Edge City near Phoenix International Airport or O’Hare-Rosemont near Chicago O’Hare International Airport: large car-­ oriented ­clusters featuring offices, shopping, hotels and entertainment functions, at least some of which profited from their proximity to the airport. In Europe, such concentrations are less distinct, but similar tendencies have been observed. Architects Güller and Güller, in their book From Airport to Airport City, monitored the clustering of aeronautical and non-aeronautical activities on and around airports in several European ­cases.41 The book became an unconventional classic in the field, popularizing

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

Functional distributions in airport areas One way to evaluate the character of airport regions is by observing the influence of the platform operation on the use of surrounding space. Due to their surface needs, operational and safety requirements, and various emissions, airports have traditionally been delegated to sparsely urbanized metropolitan peripheries. In these places, the negative Fig. 2.8  Rubbish dump west of London Heathrow effects of airport operation have ­constituted ­airport. push factors for uses such as housing and schools, effectively “neutralizing” large surfaces in terms of urban functionality. At the same time, airports exercise pull forces for other uses, such as on-site retail, as seen earlier, but also businesses having a direct relation to aviation, or attracted to airport vicinities thanks to the easy access to flows of people and goods, the good land transport connections, or the synergetic effects of economic clustering. Low land prices and the availability of large surfaces may further entice economic activities with big space requirements, such as goods storage and distribution. Also, regional-scale functions perceived as undesirable in other parts of the metropolitan space, such as power stations, waste processing and recycling facilities, or noise-generating functions may settle in the least accessible parts of airport regions (Fig. 2.8).39

41

Fig. 2.9  Left: The Squaire in Frankfurt Airport, considered as an example of “airport city” development. Right: The Zuidas business district in Amsterdam, often referred to as part of the Amsterdam Schiphol “airport corridor.”

the term “airport city” as capturing the concentration of activities typical of urban milieus. In addition to on-site urban development as part of real estate ventures by airport operators, the authors indicated that urbanization often stretches in the zone between the airport and the main city. Schaafsma et al. later used the concept of “airport corridors” to ­describe the attraction of activities along the infrastructural spines connecting airports with city centers.42 Corridor-like geographical distributions have been observed in several cases in Europe and North America (Fig. 2.9). An additional tendency since the late 1990s has been the development of landside intermodal transport nodes for high-speed, regional and light-rail networks; such provisions have made airports “double hubs” (airside and landside), as will also be seen with Paris Charles de Gaulle (Fig. 2.10). These concentration trends in airport regions have announced them as emerging centralities. Indeed, it has become commonplace since the mid-2000s to recognize the mutation of airports from transport nodes to urban centers anchoring mixed-use corridors and zones.43 Yet analyses of the distribution of economic activities in airport ­regions are often permeated by a pro-aviation undertone. In reality, though we are certainly dealing with novel spatial concentrations, their characteristics can vary wildly across cases. A recent analysis of Salewski et al. suggested a more dispassionate way of conceptualizing settlement trends in airport regions as products of various effects of airport operation.44 Analyzing Amsterdam Schiphol, Zurich Kloten, and Singapore Changi airports, the authors found that such effects had markedly different spatial expressions in the three cases, making the application of “one-model-fit-all” concepts impossible. Metropolitan centers or infrastructural suburbia? Complementarily to “functional” analyses, stud­ies of the evolving morphology and structure of metropolitan peripheries can contribute to appreciating the character of airport regions. In this approach, airports are understood as one among several actors in the mutation of urban space towards more complex and less easily classifiable forms. The concept of “Zwischenstadt” (in-between city), invented 42

Fig. 2.10  Airports as double hubs.

Fig. 2.11  Examples of “heterotopias,” enclave-like elements hosting alternative functions. Left: Horse-riding farm south of Munich airport. Right: State prison east of Paris CDG airport.

two decades ago by the German urbanist Thomas Sieverts, is pertinent in portraying the urban-rural fabric that now dominates many metropolitan peripheries.45 Sieverts has illustrated how traditional concepts such as urbanity, centrality, density, mixeduse, and ecology, become obsolete in conditions of constant change and a lack of dominant city planning paradigms. The distinctive features of the well-established city are progressively replaced by “urbanized landscapes” formed by the juxtaposition of independent clusters, interconnected by systems of infrastructure networks. For Sieverts, transport infrastructures can be disrupting as much as connecting; they can be divisive and trigger the formation of enclaves as much as they can facilitate centrality and define urban form. Airports do not escape this pattern:

The disrupting impact of transport infrastructures on space is echoed in more recent analyses. In advocating for a historically informed understanding of the spatial implications of air transport in the era of Great Acceleration, Benedikt Boucsein affirms that “[t]he general increase in speed means that connectivity is polarized … The ­h igher the travel speed, the more unobstructed and closed the movement system must be, and the more extreme are the disruptions caused by traffic infrastructures on the ground.”47 Boucsein draws from the work of Albert Pope, who claims that, contrary to the traditional “centrifugal” development paradigm, the city of the late 20th ­century has been determined by “centripetal” tendencies. The resulting forms of organization are “ladders”: spatial patterns that introduce hierarchies and boundaries into the urban structure.48 These observations problematize the association of airports with urbanity. In a sense, airports are culturally embedded spatial expressions of the contemporary city. But contemporary airport regions challenge us to redefine urbanity as we know it. The superimposition of infrastructures renders them into a kind of “infrastructural suburbia” and into emblematic spaces of diffusion and fragmentation. This characterization is nevertheless not antithetical to their role as metropolitan centers; airport

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

[Transport infrastructures] transformed from a modest, but crucial servant to the city to become a dominant master of city-development. … The airport … developed to the huge ‘machineries’ we have today, in form of self-isolating systems, confronting the city and dominating it not only with large fenced-in areas, but also with heavy noise.46

43

­regions embody both conditions. Whereas they may host essential functions, the spatial expression of these functions evades traditional definitions of centrality. The activities attracted by air connectivity often congregate in “enclaves” separated from the surrounding urban fabric, such as “big-box” developments and car-dependent office parks; while the existence of “special” conditions is fertile ground for the appearance of “heterotopias” (Fig. 2.11).49 Recently, the book The Noise Landscape constituted an attempt to systematize these observations by deriving a series of patterns typical for airport-affected spaces based on the examination of eight major European airport regions.50 These patterns are: technocratic operational logics; complex policy frameworks; interrupted urban structure; heterogeneous visual appearance; unplanned mix of uses; recreative landscape; temporary architecture; distinct movement patterns; and polarized modality. But while these patterns may describe the general spatial properties of airport regions, the contrasting impacts of airport operation trigger local variations requiring local responses. The next paragraphs are devoted to these impacts and their spatial expressions.

The economic importance of air transport Air transport has become a significant economic domain; big airports contribute not only to the prestige of cities but also to their economic growth. This link has been ­established since the 1960s, when the rise of air traffic highlighted the contribution of air connectivity to wealth creation in terms of trade opportunities, the settlement of international firms, and tourism. There also emerged an interest in the relation between airports and agglomeration economies. The geographer Allan Pred, writing about the clustering of business services in metropolitan areas in 1977, professed: “The time and cost savings available in large urban centers [thanks to clustering] are compounded by the superior air-transport connections those places possess.”51 In parallel, first attempts were made in assessing the demographic and economic zone of airport influence. As airports shifted from national to regional assets, establishing their contribution to regional and local economies was crucial to justify public investment in airport development.52 By the mid-1970s, the contribution of airports to economic growth had become an article of faith among many public authorities. However, it was not until well into the 1990s that the economic impact of airports was empirically assessed using indicators. A key study by Brueckner in the early 2000s provided definitive evidence of the link between airline traffic and employment in US metropolitan areas. It estimated that a 10 % increase in passenger traffic led to an approximately 1 % increase in employment in service-related industries – even though it had no effect on manufacturing and o ­ ther goods-related employment.53 Later, Green confirmed the positive causal relation between passenger activity and population and employment growth, using several measures of airport activity, including boardings, originations, hub status and cargo volume.54 In Europe, ACI (Airport Council International) has been providing official assessments concerning the economic impact of airports since the early 1990s. This is measured in terms of jobs in airports and related businesses (direct and indirect economic 44

Fig. 2.12  Total economic impact of European airports according to ACI Europe in 2015.

The extent of airport-related economic growth Beyond the easily measurable on-site airport jobs, the evaluation of the extent of ­airport-related economic impact is an intricate matter. Spatial observations across airport regions vary. In an early study combining data on airports in Europe, Japan, and North America, Weisbrod et al. maintained that employment growth within 6 km of most airports was two to five times faster than in the suburban ring of the respective metropolitan area. They modeled features like the airport’s market orientation, economic makeup of the metropolitan area, and transportation access to provide a framework for evaluating potential economic impacts in the surrounding area.60 More recently, Appold and Kasarda analyzed employment data for the areas around 25 major US airports, finding that employment within 2.5 miles (approx. 4 km) of these airports

is approximately half the employment within 2.5 miles of the corresponding Central Business Districts.61 There are certainly many indications that proximity (physical or in time distance) to a major airport, and the connectivity it provides, works beneficially for some economic sectors. In recent years, business concentration tendencies in airport regions have been described as variations of “regional economic clusters”: concentrations of interconnected companies that expand their competitive advantage through spatial synergy.62 But contrary to the expectation of some that airports would attract international headquarters, the sector most strongly associated with air transport has been

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

effects), and jobs generated by the added economic value generated in the respective regions thanks to air connectivity (induced and catalytic effects).55 The first detailed report by ACI Europe, published in 1998, estimated that 1,100 direct jobs were created for every million passengers on average; up to 4,000 jobs altogether.56 In 2004, this estimate was revised to 2,950 jobs at the national scale; 2,000 jobs regionally.57 In 2015, a study by InterVISTAS commissioned by ACI Europe concluded that all European airports together provide for the employment of 12.3 million people and generate 675 billion euros in GDP each year, corresponding to 4.1 % of European GDP (Fig. 2.12).58 Further, the fact that a significant part of jobs are located on the airport site (direct jobs) means that many airports are local hubs of economic activity. With reference to the study case of this book, in 2014 over 119,000 people were directly employed at the Paris airports (CDG , Orly, and Le Bourget), of which 88,600 were at CDG alone.59

45

l­ogistics (distribution, warehousing, and forwarding of goods). Logistics-intensive clusters have emerged around major airports in recent decades, attracting firms that deal with time-sensitive, high-value goods.63 Beyond traditional mail services, these increasingly concern business-to-business transactions for select perishables such as seafood and flowers, and high-value low-weight products such as microelectronics, automobile components, mobile telephones, fashion clothing, pharmaceuticals, optics, and small precision-manufacturing equipment.64 Whereas logistics clusters also exist around ports and rail or road junctures, those in airport vicinities stand out due to the high value of transported goods and the growth dynamic of e-commerce. The economic development that stems from airport operation is thus often associated with the growth of aviation-dependent logistics. A prominent example is Memphis Airport: since Federal Express (FedEx) chose it as its main US hub, the region has attracted scores of logistics-dependent firms and enjoyed considerable growth (Fig. 2.13).65 Nevertheless, the fact that warehouses are increasingly automated and that related jobs tend to be low-paid means that air cargo, even though faster growing than air passenger traffic, may have smaller predictive power for economic development.66 More broadly, there are good reasons to question the widely used quantifications of airport impact in terms of jobs, especially when it comes to their localization. Studies that produce results based on large samples may hold general validity, but do not account for local specificity. For example, the InterVISTAS economic impact assessment study takes into account airport size and traffic type to explain variations in the number of direct jobs, and uses different multipliers to calculate indirect and induced effects depending on several regional economic indicators.67 But the use of multipliers introduces questions about the predictive power of assumed trends. The problem becomes more obvious when assessing the spatial reach of economic impact. A number of locally specific factors, such as distance from urban centers, availability of land, topography, type and efficiency of ground transport, existing economic sectors, population distribution, or land use regulation may limit the economic impact of an airport or skew its geographic distribution. Moreover, the role of airport proximity in the settlement of business activities may be questioned. For instance, Prosperi found large differences among business types and employment in three US airport area cases, concluding that the aggregation of economic activities does not necessarily imply purposeful clustering.68 Other research suggests that although high-value economic functions prefer to locate in regions with hub airports, they are not necessarily interested in proximity, but rather in accessibility, which may be ensured with good ground transport links.69 I will get back to the distribution of economic activities in airport regions when discussing airport-cenFig. 2.13  View of FedEx Super Hub in Memphis International ­Airport.

46

tered urban development models later in this chapter. For now, the above

concerns are important to consider, because the link between airport traffic and economic prosperity does not merely constitute an abstract relation. It is an everyday mantra in the airport industry, often used as an argument to support airport operation and development against dissonant voices. Airport and airline representatives have indeed a strong incentive in demonstrating a solid link between their activity and broader benefits. Already in 1976, de Neufville was noting that, due to airport and air transport representatives’ interest in securing public subsidies, “estimates of the benefits of airports to a region are … almost unavoidably inflated,” and “the theme [of airports affecting economic growth] is pervasive and widely repeated in planning documents,” even though “the available evidence actually indicates … a modest effect on the local economy.”70 With the liberalization of air transport and the privatization of airports, the investment of public funds is no longer the main stake – even if the aviation industry still benefits from various public subsidies.71 But ensuring public support for airports remains politically important. Even when airports can be shown beyond doubt to contribute to a particular regional economy, their support may need to be justified against alternative economic policy options. This is why allusion to positive economic effects features consistently in airport promotion and communication campaigns – for example, to support the extension of facilities or to counteract reactions about detrimental externalities of airport operation. Besides, the discussion becomes all the more important precisely because of the extent of negative effects from air transport and airports, to which I turn next.

For all the global connectivity that air travel has delivered, and the economic benefits brought to airport regions, its growth has come with serious consequences. This section is devoted to the “darker side” of aviation and its infrastructure. Starting with the big picture, there is a growing recognition of the detrimental environmental impacts of air transport, with regard to air quality, land use, and increasingly energy use and reliance on fossil fuels. In developed countries, transportation accounts for roughly 30 % of total energy consumption. Of this, about 11 % concerns air transport: Although this share is low in comparison to the 80 % attributed to road transport, it generates concerns due to aviation’s consistently high growth rates surpassing all other modes, and the lack of obvious alternatives to air travel and its energy sources.72 Air transport strongly embodies the carbon economy, accounting for 2 % of CO 2 emissions worldwide. In addition, a number of other pollutants, either contributing to climate change or harmful on other levels, are emitted from aircraft engines during the stages of a flight: nitrogen oxides (NO X), sulphur oxides (SO X), unburned hydrocarbons (HC), carbon monoxide (CO ), particulate matter (PM ), and soot. Due to these other emissions and the high altitude at which many are distributed, the cumulative effect of air transport on climate change is estimated to be between 4 % and 9 % of the total impact of human activity. If continuing to grow at the current rate, even given technological advances, this effect will reach 15 % by 2050.73 Indeed, according to a

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

The negative externalities of airport ­operation

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2016 environmental report on European aviation, even though continuing improvements in aircraft technology are expected to reduce fuel consumption per passenger ­k ilometer by at least 43 % until 2035, the expected traffic growth will still result in increases in pollutant emissions of between 10 % and 61 % (depending on the pollutant) over the same period.74 Recognition of the devastating effects of aviation has drawn attention to airports as the epicenters of an unsustainable practice. Large airports accumulate adverse environmental effects: hundreds of airplanes approach or depart from them every day, filling the air around them with harmful emissions. And this is only one aspect of the local negative impacts of airport operation. But although the locally manifested externalities of aviation may be of most interest from an urban planning perspective, considering its global impact provides the context in which the debate has increasingly been taking place in recent years. Local protests have been merging with regional, national, and international groups to oppose the expansion of aviation.75 If not going as far as to campaign for a flying halt, environmental advocates have been calling for tighter regulations on aircraft emissions and measures to curtail demand for air ­t ravel – including pricing policies, carbon emissions trading, and the removal of fiscal distortions.76 Adverse airport effects: disrupted land and air In a 2001 article in World Watch, editor and environmentalist Ed Ayres poignantly asserted that “in its total impact on climate, ecology, and health, today’s mega-airport may be one of the most ill-conceived forms of large-scale infrastructure humankind has ever devised – yet it is also one of the least accountable.”77 This may sound exaggerated, but it is probably not. By their sheer size and needs in ground infrastructure, major airports represent massive land consumption and a violent interruption in the landscape. The first generation of large-scale commercial airports, built close to old city centers, were often engulfed by urbanization, prompting clashes with the surrounding communities as their needs in space grew bigger.78 The second (1970s – 1990s) and third (2000s–2010s) generation of airports were constructed further away from city cores to allow room for expansion and avoid conflicts with the urban structure. But this has meant larger investment and greater needs in land and ground access. The tendency for airports to “get bigger and go further” is translated into wastefulness, with projects “cut[ting] sharply into each country’s declining environmental assets.”79 Furthermore, airports distort the spatial structure of their environs, interrupting connecting ground networks and blocking urban development.80 Their presence impacts ­ rea’s biodiversity and character. Access infrastructure in particular, such as highan a ways, may d ­ egrade local spatial quality through traffic congestion, physical barriers among neighborhoods, and visual blight.81 The environmental externalities of airports do not stop at their hardware infrastructure. The daily by-products of airport operation are a source of degradation for the environment and human health. Discharged waste and water can lead to pollution of the surrounding land; for example, the antifreeze chemicals used for de-icing airplanes often escape the airport perimeter along with surface water run-off, contaminating the aquifer. Airplane fuel, solvents, and other toxic chemicals used for aircraft processes have been found on the ground around major airports.82 A larger-scale prob48

lem is local air pollution, accentuated by several ground processes in addition to CO 2 and other emissions from approaching and departing airplanes (Fig. 2.14). When ­aircraft are on the ground – landing, idling, getting de-iced, taxiing, or taking off – jet engines operate at poor efficiency, emitting into the atmosphere carbon particulates and volatile organic compounds (VOC s). Extensive aircraft supply and maintenance facilities, and evaporation from the fuel depots and refueling facilities, also Fig. 2.14  Airplane producing emissions during take-off. contribute to air pollution. Airport-related road traffic generates a ­ dditional toxic emissions, such as nitrogen oxides, VOC s and ground-level ozone.83 In recent years, several studies have provided evidence for both

The most persistent pollutant: noise In the list of adverse airport effects, noise pollution is the oldest and probably most contentious. While it may take years for the effects of contaminated air or water to become obvious, the scream of air turbines triggers instant irritation. The air transport growth wave of the 1960s and 1970s first exposed the noise-induced conflict between airport operation and urban life, with aircraft noise becoming henceforth a major complaint of flown-over residents, often leading to painful disputes with airport authorities. Aircraft noise is also most relevant from an urban planning perspective, as the alleviation of its consequences largely lies in the management of land uses. Noise is nevertheless challenging to evaluate, because of the considerable subjectivity involved in its perception, and the particularities of its territorial reach. Intensity, frequency, and personal and cultural sensitivities play a role.85 In fact, it took decades until universal standards of measurement and assessment of the impact of large noise sources like airports were applied. Nowadays, in Europe alone 145 million people are estimated to be exposed to average transport noise levels (roads, railways and aircraft) above 55 decibels (dB) (A) L den, considered as the threshold of high annoyance.86 More than 70 % live in urban areas. Of those, the estimated 5 million subjected to high aircraft noise pales in comparison to the numbers of those affected by motorways and railways, yet there are several reasons why they merit attention. First, noise from airplanes is considered more distressing than other sources due to its low frequencies. Second, the number of people affected by aircraft noise can be assumed to

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

the extent of air pollution in airport areas, and its contribution to various health problems, especially heart and lung diseases as well as cancer.84 The recognition of these negative effects of airport development and operation have brought about certain responses by national governments, the EU , and international aviation-monitoring bodies such as the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO ). Environmental impact assessment studies have become the norm for every new airport project; fees are imposed on violators of limits and airlines are given incentives to replace older aircraft. Operators have thrown themselves into the competition for the “greener” airport. However, the sector’s inherently polluting nature casts doubt on the sufficiency of these measures.

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be bigger, as applied measurement logics are contested. Third, sound accumulation in airport surroundings is exacerbated by the presence of other transport infrastructures ­connecting to the airport. Finally, due to the comparably high rate of air traffic growth and the slow advances in noise reduction technology, airport noise is expected to remain an important issue in the future.87 Exposure to aircraft noise has been shown to have negative implications for health and local economy. Health effects range from psychological discomfort, through stress and anxiety, all the way to blood circulation problems and cardiovascular disease.88 Aircraft noise has been explicitly associated with sleep disturbance, severe irritation, high stress levels, and hypertension.89 Further, several studies have found that children living or going to school under the flight paths of large airports have poor longterm memory and reading comprehension.90 Finally, growing evidence indicates that noise pollution can interfere with the vital functions of many wildlife species that rely on acoustic communication for food finding, reproduction, etc. As for the economic damage associated with noise, there is a connection with health implications in terms of “increased medical costs and the cost of lost productivity in the workplace due to illness caused by the effects of noise pollution.” 91 Further, noise has a negative impact on local property values. Real estate studies in different countries have shown that residential properties exposed to higher noise levels typically have lower market value than similar properties exposed to lower noise levels.92 On average, a loss of between 0.5 % and 1.5 % of property value per decibel can be expected above 50 – 55 dB L den . The depreciation of property values in turn has social implications; it is often the most low-income and vulnerable households that settle in airport vicinities, a process that can in turn reinforce socio-spatial segregation.93 The spatial extent of airport noise, its representation, and regulation The imprint of noise impact on space is considerable, though the affected population obviously depends on the degree and type of urbanization of the respective area. Paris Charles de Gaulle is actually one of the most “annoying” European airports, with 265,200 people living in high annoyance zones (2015).94 Airport noise has a distinctly shaped spatial extent whose geometry follows aircraft movements. Clearly, an airport’s runway layout and orientation are the main determinants of noise geometry; yet flight paths are subject to constant optimization and adjustments that can substantially alter the distribution of noise. Their adjustability makes them a topic of negotiation between aviation authorities and the inhabitants of surrounding communities. For this reason, in most major airports flight path regimes are fixed for several years at a time. The intensity and extent of noise exposure is generally assessed through measurements retrieved from monitoring stations placed under flight paths combined with the modeling of data on the frequency of operations, flight altitude, and aircraft types. The spatial distribution of noise is depicted as areas encapsulated by noise contours: “line[s] of constant value of aircraft noise exposure averaged over a given period of time (typically one year) for a traffic mix of aircraft under typical operating conditions.”95 The “constant value” is the average level of sound intensity over a period of time, called L eq (equivalent level). Its widespread use is rather recent; until the 1990s, each national or even regional authority used different indexes to define noise contour thresholds. 50

Fig. 2.15  Example of notional airport noise contours.

which all member countries have progressively complied.96 The END defined two main indicators: the L den, corresponding to average noise levels over 24 hours, and the L night, corresponding to average noise levels overnight, setting the thresholds of high annoyance to L den 55 dB and L night 50 dB respectively.97 Most airport noise mappings in Europe nowadays make widespread use of these values (Fig. 2.15). The L den 55 dB contour is often used to define the area within which inhabitants are eligible to compensation and / or subsidies for soundproofing their homes. But although international and European-level standardization has contributed to more global assessments of airport-related noise impact, it has been far less easy to achieve universal regulation. Pressure from the aviation industry has resulted in l­ imits only being applied on an airport-by-airport basis.98 Noise exposure during night time received the most attention from early on, and today about 70 % of the 69 airports governed by the END restrict operations via curfews, one third of them being a full nighttime traffic ban. Moreover, large airports are advised to follow the “Balanced Approach” concept for noise management established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ), which contains four elements: reduction of noise at source (quieter aircraft), operating restrictions on airplanes (withdrawal of noisy aircraft), land-use planning and management (building restrictions), and noise abatement operational procedures (adjustment of flight paths and continuous descent procedures).99 Measures concerning land-use planning and management include restrictive regulatory frameworks for construction and/or population increase within the areas encompassed by noise contours. Such restrictive regulation started being instituted in the 1980s. Here again, there are no universal standards across Europe (even less the world). Usually, generalized restrictions apply across certain noise zones: commercial buildings are not allowed above L den 65 dB, residential buildings not above L den 55 dB, and so on. Overall, there exists a strong territorial dimension to airport noise impact, since both noise itself and noise-related regulations are spread over localities with potentially different geographic, political, and socioeconomic characteristics. This t­ erritorial dimension lies at the heart of politically charged arguments on airport noise, seen

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

Since 1993, the European Union has been introducing a series of standards and regulations. A major step towards the standardization of noise assessment and representation was the publication of the Environmental Noise Directive 2002 / 49 / E C (END ), to

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with most major airports in the Western world. For one, the fact that flight paths are ­malleable means that they become the object of “turf wars” at local, regional, or even national levels. The job of technical experts often becomes to devise flight path regimes that trigger the fewest reactions possible – and not necessarily those that affect the least number of people possible. It is usually the most politically connected, vocal, or wealthy neighborhoods that manage to divert flight paths from their airspace.100 Conversely, localities with fewer resources may more easily become noise “dumping grounds,” often exacerbating their already disadvantaged situation. Thus, aircraft noise emerges as an arena for planners to address issues of environmental justice.

Asymmetries and controversies of airport ­impacts The contrasting impacts of airports make for a contentious field. Airport development projects are routinely plagued by controversies, added to day-to-day friction, ­re-kindled every time a flight regime is modified or operational changes threaten to augment negative impacts. Related debates often revolve around the question of whether economic benefits counterbalance the environmental and social costs. But this question cannot be easily answered. Certainly, it is possible to examine specific subsets of airport impacts; for example, whether the benefits of connectivity outweigh the costs of aircraft noise in property values. Yet simple cost-benefit analyses are inappropriate bases for airport-related decision-making, as they do not take into account who benefits and who loses. The problem with reducing the impacts of large airports to simple dualities lies in their inherent asymmetries. Largely, these asymmetries stem from the intersection of the global reach of air transport with local realities. While airport growth reinforces economic development and the positioning of cities in global networks, localities do not necessarily receive direct benefits from it. Moreover, they often endure its negative effects in the form of air pollution, congestion, and noise, while their members may even be financially or socially excluded from flying. This can be conceptualized as a socioeconomic asymmetry: the people most benefiting from flying, whether by traveling themselves or by bearing the economic fruits of air transport, are generally wealthier and more mobile; whereas those enduring the local consequences of airport operation are generally also those less physically and socioeconomically mobile.101 The corresponding spatial asymmetry is reflected in the fact that economic impacts are generally distributed regionally, even nationally, whereas environmental impacts are specifically localized: airplane noise affects areas under flight paths, pollution affects areas geographically closer to the airport, and territorial disruption occurs around ground access infrastructure. This uneven distribution of negative and positive effects means that proponents and opponents of airport operation operate with “incompatible problem frames.”102 While stressing these asymmetries is essential, one should avoid lapsing into new simplistic dualities: environmental externalities are not exclusively local nor only detrimental to the poor and immobile; and economic benefits are not only regional nor only captured by the wealthy and mobile. In fact, the increasing affordability of 52

­ ying and the relaxation of travel restrictions worldwide has offered a wider range of fl ­socioeconomic classes the possibility to partake in air mobility.103 The aviation industry offers jobs to thousands of people, many of whom reside in airport surroundings. And communities whose territory is used by airport facilities usually have considerable fiscal benefits thanks to taxes and special fees. But the fact remains that distinct places and populations are strongly impacted by different facets of air transport. The impossibility of simply outweighing positive and negative effects makes their evaluation even more important. But this begs questions: who evaluates, with what criteria, and how are evaluations translated into policy and planning decisions? To ­answer these questions, we need to consider the relative positions of actors participat-

excluded from assessment and decision-making processes. In the contemporary multi-actor context of pluralistic policy-making, their views tend to be r­ ather downplayed or devalued, and the field remains largely dominated by technocratic elites. Even when arenas for negotiation and dialogue exist, not all viewpoints are g ­ iven equal weight in discussions and ultimately policy formulation.104 Second, there are distinct asymmetries of jurisdiction and power (often reinforced by knowledge asymmetries). There are frequently territorial-administrative public action ­m ismatches: higher government levels promote airport growth as part of regional or national economic policies, but local levels must mitigate the costs of these decisions.105 The policy responses of the latter are more fragmented than those of central administrations, and may be skewed by financial or political dependencies. In countries whose economy relies heavily on aviation, central governments tend to adopt a stronger pro-aviation stance. Often, coalitions involving government representatives, airport authorities and key players of the aviation industry are formed in order to promote pro-aviation agendas. These coalitions employ various devices to maintain a regime of airport expansion, such as hegemonic reference to specialist knowledge, or partisan assessments of impact by highlighting the statistics or indicators that support their discourses. They also use populist rhetoric on the cultural power of air travel, the essentiality of airport growth for the city’s or region’s competitiveness, or its connection with economic opportunity, while only superficially responding to the concerns of opponents.106 Clearly, anti-airport campaigners can also be biased, i.e., by narrowly focusing on negative airport effects and their speculated future; yet they are usually much less powerful. Therefore, coalition-backed allusion to the positive economic effects of airport growth, especially in terms of jobs, often has a bigger influence on public opinion than arguments alluding to its less tangible environmental consequences, dismissed as local NIMBY ism. In recent years, the concept of “sustainable aviation” has been highlighted as a possible compromise between diverging positions. Yet its meaningfulness is questionable. Environmental critics differentiate between “eco-efficiency,” represented by reductions in environmental impact per unit of performance, and “sustainability,” which implies the possible necessity of overall limits to growth.107 In the growth-oriented industry that is air transport, savings from efficiency are certain to be outweighed

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

ing in airport-related policy decisions and assessments, also characterized by asymmetries. First, given the fact that impact assessment relies on scientific estimations that are often obscure or unavailable to non-specialists, there are asymmetries of knowledge. In much of the history of commercial aviation, non-specialists have been ­a ltogether

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by new resource consumption, implying that aviation is an inherently unsustainable ­industry. More meaningful change has been triggered by the formation of novel coalitions of previously isolated local opposition groups, social movements, and scientific bodies, brought together by an increasingly shared recognition of the contribution of aviation to environmental problems, particularly climate change. Griggs and Howarth, in their study of aviation-related policy in the United Kingdom, talk about how the “cultural resignification of aviation as an ‘emblematic issue’ of climate change” ­prompted the transformation of national policy from an open support of airport expansion to the suspension of several major expansion projects in the London airports.108 Another remarkable example is the recent ruling of the Federal Administrative Court of Austria against a third runway for Vienna’s Schwechat Airport, stating that its negative effects on climate change weighed stronger than the expected economic benefits.109 More common though are long-lasting decision-making stalemates. Oosterlynck and Swyngedouw have analyzed the inherent difficulty of compounding positions on airport impact in their treatise of the political impasse concerning the flight regime at Brussels Zaventem Airport.110 In this case, the attempt of the government to resolve the contentious issue of DHL -operated nighttime flights in a consensual way, finding the “right balance” between economy and ecology, floundered, with the insistence of the involved actors in their respective positions leading to successive political stalemates. The failure to find a win-win solution was sealed with the decision of DHL to leave Brussels, since its ambition to expand operations could not be fulfilled. Therefore, while compensating for noise annoyance through the promise of growth and jobs had proved unconvincing, the “[reduction] of properly political stakes to a question of technomanagerial negotiation” proved equally counter-productive, failing to bring about a consensual outcome.111 This case shows that the very idea that negative and positive effects can be counterbalanced or negotiated in a democratic way is belied in practice by the persistence of deep divisions. Controversies over airport impact thus expose the impossibility, or at least difficulty, of reconciling airports with their contexts. The desire of various actors to be considered in related policy and planning decisions and in assessments of impact leads to complex and pluralistic decision-making processes. But discussions can remain biased. The perceived weight of different impacts will vary depending on the evaluator’s position: at the individual level, this includes her living environment, socioeconomic status, political values, and interests; at the institutional level, it may depend on administrative power and political aspirations. The involved actors will then tend to use legitimizing mechanisms to support their viewpoints, with decision-making affected by their respective positions of power. This ambivalence plaguing the assessment and handling of airport impact is reflected in the spatial management of airport regions, discussed next.

Planning approaches to airport regions Back in the post-war decades of commercial aviation expansion, the first fully functional commercial airports were key infrastructures for the development of European national economies. Their design had to reconcile their infrastructural-technical “port” 54

function with their symbolic value as showcases of air mobility. As long as the flying clientele remained limited, this reconciliation was a challenge that could be resolved by design resourcefulness. But as air traffic grew, airports acquired more diverse needs, requiring more elaborate approaches. It was a golden time for technocrats: manuals, guidelines, and technical specifications were amply produced.112 In parallel, the question of the integration of airports in metropolitan space surfaced in the late 1960s; as they became relevant destinations for a greater number of people, their needs in space increased, and the first reactions against aircraft noise emerged. In the rationality-dominated spirit of the post-war decades, integration was treated as a problem that could be rationally solved. An article by geographer Jean Labasse published in

This model of decision-making based on cost-benefit analyses and rational criteria worked rather well in the first three post-war decades of centralized planning action. Yet it grew increasingly problematic. For one, airport operation became subject to more uncertainty and volatility. The recognition of the changing context instigated the adoption of more flexible and strategic approaches to airport planning from the side of airport operators, as seen earlier.114 The liberalization processes of the 1980s and 1990s, making financial viability a key consideration, had distinct implications for airport design, as commercial facilities were prioritized. Regrettably, most airport authorities remained rather indifferent to the growing physical and functional assimilation of airports in metropolitan space. Although their spatial isolation from the cities and populations they serve has decreased, airports have generally remained enclaves with special rights or powers and their own development logic.115 Commercialization seems to have accentuated this trend, as airport city developments are usually symbolically and socially, if not physically, detached from their surrounding areas. From the viewpoint of planning authorities, the technical rationality-led model of decision-making remained predominant for most of the 20th century. Well into the 1980s airports were still treated as large infrastructural objects, with socio-geographic aspects of their operation ignored or sidelined. Airport development is still largely seen as responding to the demand for air travel with supply of infrastructure.116 A parallel trend though has been the growing recognition that due to their physical expansion, complexity, and interrelation with their surroundings, airports can no longer be dealt with as technical objects alone; they constitute urban spaces of concern not just to engineers but also to planners. This recognition has often prompted the appointment of planning commissions or task forces involving central and local governments. By the 1990s, technocratic, sectorial approaches were showing their limits, as airport operation was triggering a host of impacts manifested beyond the airport fence, involving

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

1972, outlining the factors to consider in the localization of a major airport, illustrates this approach.113 The first factor was capacity: the airport should have the possibility and technical means to deploy all the facilities needed to handle growing traffic. This includes the space “neutralized” by noise-related restrictions. The second factor was accessibility: the airport should be no more than 45 minutes away from the respective central city, presumably the destination of most passengers. Once these two major factors were addressed, a series of other considerations entered the picture: site topography; the extent of land appropriation and/or displacement of residences or activities; the possibility to plan related uses in the airport vicinity; the cost of these interventions; and lastly, the place-specific sociopolitical wishes and aspirations.

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a range of interests and actors. Besides, augmented opportunities for public participation enabled members of the civil society to be more vocal in planning processes, in an evolution coinciding with a growing awareness of the environmental externalities of airport operation. In many Western countries, arenas for negotiation and deliberative bodies concerned with airport area planning were put in place. Exploit versus protect versus defer The resolution of the asymmetries of airport operation analyzed previously has been a persistent challenge in planning airport regions. Despite the fundamental nature of these asymmetries, in most major airports planning authorities experience chronic diffulty in taking a clear stance towards them. One of their most enduring predicaments is deciding whether land development in the airport region should be discouraged or promoted. This has been described as the exploit-the-site versus protect-the-site dilemma.117 The exploit-the-site approach suggests capitalizing on air traffic growth to generate additional economic benefits. It highlights the connectivity provided by the airport node as an opportunity for the implementation of access-drawn economic activities.118 Its proponents support public investment in airport-site or airport-area projects as a strategy for boosting regional competitiveness along with local economy and job creation. Conversely, the protect-the-site approach prioritizes the core aviation business. The focus lies in enabling the airport to expand in accordance with the growth of traffic and in minimizing disruptions to it. Therefore, development is limited to platform-­ related activities such as cargo handling and aircraft maintenance. Broader area development is discouraged so as to avoid congestion, conflicts, and eventually cause the airport to fall victim to its own success. A direct outgrowth of this approach is the restrictive building regulation instituted around various airports since the 1980s, aimed not only at protecting populations from nuisance, but also at sheltering airports from urbanization. A third approach could be added to exploit-the-site and protect-the-site: the defer-the-site. Its proponents want to minimize development on both the platform and its surroundings: not to optimize performance, but to minimize impact or annoyance. This approach is most often prompted by the subjection of airport area residents to emissions and poor spatial quality, but also speaks to broader concerns about the contribution of aviation to climate change and environmental pollution. The three approaches are advocated for by different stakeholders, yet interests often overlap and clear-cut choices are rare. The defer-the-site approach is principally represented by local inhabitants, but also planners and politicians wanting to protect local populations from nuisance. These local actors share the desire of aviation specialists to avoid the clash between urbanization and airport operation; but with the former fighting against airport operation and the latter against urbanization. At the same time, the economic potential implied by global connectivity intrigues investment-anxious local governments as well as airport operators who see their aviation-related revenues shrinking. The latter may further see local development projects as a way to render ­local populations more favorable to airport operation. Thus, the three approaches usually co-exist. The involved parties generally choose a vulnerable balance between exploiting the airport’s economic spin-off while protecting the core business to the extent that reactions remain manageable. 56

“Airport cities” and airport-centered development concepts In recent decades, there has been growing interest in the possibilities of urban development in airports and their surrounding areas; this trend is encapsulated by “airport-driven” or “airport-centered” development models.119 Such models are basically an extension of the exploit-the-site approach. While the idea of including “urban” activities on airport platforms is rather old,120 it was the time of vast expansion of Western metropolises in the 1980s that revealed the interest in locating zones of economic activity near airports. Initially similar to industrial zones found elsewhere in metropolitan peripheries, they increasingly attracted specialized firms such as those handling microelectronics and chemical products, while some evolved into office parks with administration and management functions.121 In the USA , the idea was taken further, with certain airport authorities experimenting with “airport-linked activity zones”: areas hosting multinational corporations, typically offering special tax conditions and often literally linked to the airport through exclusive taxiways.122 The first

Fig. 2.16  Business park development in the Amsterdam airport area by SADC .

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

such international trade zone was at Dallas/Fort Worth airport. In Europe, the trend mainly concerned the localization of large activity zones near major airports, usually in conjunction with good highway access, such as in London Heathrow or Frankfurt.123 The “airport city” concept mentioned earlier was first spelled out as an urban development concept in a 1980 book entitled The Airport City: Development Concepts for the 21st Century. Written by the pilot and entrepreneur McKinley Conway, the book gave an enthusiastic account of “fly-in” development, American-style: industrial, office, and even residential projects inside or in close connection to an airport.124 Several variations of model communities were proposed, typified by degrees of dependence on air connectivity and direct runway access: from the airport business park and fly-in residential community, through the master-planned airport town, to the futuristic “Jet

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City.” Though Conway’s toolbox of model types found limited application, the popularization of airport-driven development arose thanks to broader evolutions: the structural changes in the airline industry and airport operation and concomitant urbanization forces linked to globalization and economic competition. Growing investment in non-aeronautical activities de facto transformed many airports to mixed-use megastructure complexes, where terminals are interlinked with shopping areas, hotels, office buildings, conference centers, and parking facilities. In the 21 st century, operators have further diversified their economy, with services such as medical and educational centers, sports and entertainment facilities, casinos and golf courses, often aiming to attract as much a flying clientele as a local one. In Europe, the term “airport city” as a qualifier for such development emerged in the late 1980s. The Schiphol Airport was the first to use it to promote its office facilities to prospective tenants. It was also the first to promote, in collaboration with local governments, the creation of a dedicated authority – the Schiphol Area Development Company (SADC) – to oversee real estate development in the airport region (Fig. 2.16).125 Such real estate development, usually in the form of master-planned business parks, gradually merged with spillover urbanization, with the emerging makeup of many airport regions leading to further development concepts. One of the most ­widely used ones is the “aerotropolis,” coined by the American business economist John Kasarda. It is rooted in his 1990s research concerning the implications of the globalizing economy for the competitiveness of businesses.126 Observing the rise of speed as a primary determinant of competition, Kasarda and his colleagues argued that logistical support systems and multimodal transport infrastructure were key factors for the success of manufacturers in the global market. They anticipated the growing importance of air freight in an economy based on international sourcing, just-in-time production systems, and speed-based delivery. Therefore, they saw air cargo industrial complexes as a way to foster manufacturer agility and responsiveness to competition. By 2000, ­Kasarda had developed this idea further. Arguing that the surroundings of international airports are advantageous locations for clustering time-sensitive activities and logistics for low weight/high value goods, he advanced the aerotropolis as an ideal urban form leveraging speed and connectivity.127 Schematically, the aerotropolis consists of an airport city at the core, surrounded by clusters of aviation-related industries and associated residential development. These stretch outwards up to 30 km along dedicated highways and high-speed rail lines (Fig. 2.17). Kasarda’s zealous promotion of the aerotropolis, supported by the founding of a consulting firm and a dedicated website, has given him worldwide fame as an expert on airport-centered development. A ­ irport operators and regional authorities around the world call on his expertise to devise blueprints for airport regions of varying characteristics. These calls are characteristic of a larger demand for ideas on how to 58

Fig. 2.17  Visualization of the “greater aerotropolis.”

plan and develop airport regions since 2000. Alongside the airport city and the aerotropolis, a range of concepts – airport corridor, sustainable airport area, airea, etc.128 – have become popular. The reasons for this popularity can be traced to three factors. First, airport regions have been neglected in regional planning agendas.129 Many have thus urbanized in a spontaneous way, with projects developed without overall coordination. The ensuing lack of cohesion, urban quality, and local accessibility raises concerns from both local residents and airport users, who thus welcome models promising to improve the ­environment of the airport area. Second, regional and local authorities are eager to adopt such models based on their promise to harness air connectivity for competitiveness. Indeed, Kasarda’s followers claim that development in airport areas is not only inevitable due to the growth of air transport, but also very desirable for city-regions wanting to maintain their global competitive advantage.130 Third, airport-centered development promises to localize the otherwise diffuse economic benefits of air transport,

Critiques of normative models and challenges for planning The adoption of airport-centered models is reflected in many airport city or aerotropolis-like projects developed or projected around the world, even if qualifiers often constitute marketing concepts rather than denoting actual “urban” properties.132 For many projects, it is still too early to judge their success or failure from an urban or economic perspective. But whether success can be captured in normative concepts is a question worth asking. Airport-centered development models have indeed received growing criticism, which has somewhat limited their popularity in recent years. A first, fundamental set of critiques concerns the very desirability of a type of development closely associated with a practice deemed unsustainable; namely air transport. Charles et al. for instance have questioned the long-term sustainability of the aerotropolis model due to its reliance on a growth scenario that may soon prove problematic.133 This is because of the problematic reliance of aviation on fossil fuel, the security risks evoked by concentration of “critical infrastructure,” and the falsely presumed superior importance of air transport in export economies. Another set of critiques concerning airport-centered development concepts point to their problematic applicability in different contexts, overoptimistic “build and growth will come” attitude, and simplistic outlook about economic benefits.134 As Freestone points out, the “diffusionist idea” of economic growth inherent in such models is prone to challenge; it is legitimate to ask “just how many airport growth poles can be viable?”135 The aerotropolis literature has been accused of lacking realistic ­economic assessments and offering a disproportionately optimistic, overly generalized outlook. The relevance and applicability of the concept varies wildly depending on the nature and scale of airport activity, the airport’s location and its integration into the respective metropolitan area, the cost and availability of land, etc.136 These critiques are underlined by the limited empirical evidence supporting the economic gravitational pull of airports, at least to the extent presumed when advocating for airport area development strategies. The continuing urbanization of airport

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

thus essentially tackling the scalar asymmetries of the positive and negative effects of airport operation. Although this argument is rarely put forth so forthrightly, the motivation to outweigh the locally felt negative effects with economically beneficial urban development is often implicit in related discourses, as will be seen in the case analysis.131

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­regions can also be attributed to metropolitan expansion impetuses, channeled to areas with a high availability of low-cost land and a dense land transport infrastructure. The assumption that the environs of major airports attract economic activities was tested by Cidell and Adams in 2001 in a comparison of twelve airport areas in the United States. The authors found that certain uses are common (hotels, warehouses, large sports facilities, etc.) but suggested that their mix is unpredictable and context-dependent, and that airports are unlikely to substantially change the character of economic development within their geographic sector.137 In another study concerning the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, Cidell noted that the touted economic benefits from airport expansion were neither located near the airport nor evenly spread in the region, but localized in geographic sectors already experiencing growth.138 In Europe, a study by Warffemius et al. showed that 40 % of distribution centers around Amsterdam Schiphol Airport are non-airport dependent and are rather attracted to the area by economies of agglomeration.139 Also, inquiries about the localization preferences of firms in airport regions have provided inconclusive results. In a recent thesis, Wiedemann demonstrated that although companies consider the presence of an airport important, they value other factors more, such as physical and social infrastructure, the existence of like-minded industries, availability of workforce, affordable housing market etc.140 The desire to locate near an airport was found to depend on connectivity, centrality and accessibility, making those features priority considerations in the planning of projects in the airport region. These studies show that the ideological bases of airport-centered urban development models – the primacy of air transport, its sustained growth, and the spatial magnetism of airports as a prerequisite for successful area development – are questionable. More fundamentally, we can challenge what these models have to offer in addressing the conflicts most central to airport areas, among those benefiting from airport operation and those incurring its negative externalities. Raising this question is key, because airport-centered models are among the few, if not the only concepts available to planners and urbanists concerned with airports. Whether concerning the development of the airport site, its respective city, or its impact on and interaction with the surrounding area, there are hard choices to make and several parameters, certainly not fully covered by airport-centered models, to consider. Even if we accept that assertive urban development concepts are needed to channel an inevitable urbanization trend, and/or to maximize the economic benefits of airport operation, such models are still prone to criticism regarding their fit as urban design blueprints and the mechanisms for their implementation. In terms of urban quality, most models are conspicuously devoid of elaboration on spatial design principles, rather adopting schematic real estate “business as usual” layouts with vague references to concepts like sustainability and efficiency. As Freestone puts it, “the aerotropolis model also tacitly endorses … an extensive ‘sprawl and scatter’ pattern of suburban land use development.”141 As for implementation, the success of aerotropolis development presumably relies on madeto-measure governance and massive investment in infrastructure. However, this alludes to a top-down planning model that can be legitimately questioned in democratic contexts.142 Besides, models focusing predominantly on economic development tend to overlook the day-to-day problems that are the reality of many airport areas: sprawl, functional deadlocks, spatial segregation, and environmental deterioration. 60

Competition: The European Experience, ed. P. Forsyth, et al. (London: Routledge, 2010).  22  ACI ­Europe, “The Social and Economic Impact of Airports in Europe,” ed. York Aviation Research (ACI , Airport Council International Europe, 2004)., p. 5.  23  Anne Graham, Managing Airports 4th Edition: An International Perspective, 4th ed. edition ed. (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2013).  24  See for example James Bird, “Gateways: Slow Recognition but Irresistible Rise,” Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 74 , no. 3 (1983).  25 Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society (Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 378 / 412.  26 Maurits Schaafsma, “Airports and Cities in Networks,” DISP , Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft (Zürich) 154, no. 3 (2003). 27  Varlet, “La déréglementation du transport aérien et ses conséquences sur les réseaux et sur les aéroports.” 28 Saskia Sassen, “The Global City: Introducing a Concept,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 11, no. 2 (2005). 29  David J. Keeling, “Transport and the World City Paradigm,” in World Cities in a World-System, ed. Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).  30  John Urry, Mobilities (Cambridge: Polity, 2007 ), p. 149.  31  Graham and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition.  32  Saulo Cwerner, “Introducing Aeromobilities,” in Aeromobilities, ed. Saulo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring, and John Urry (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009); Max Hirsh, Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). 33  Michael Droß and Bart de Jong, “Planning Airports in an Era of Glocalisation: A Spatial Economic and Institutional Comparison between Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS ) and Munich Airport International (MUC )” (2007 ). 34 Roland Robertson, “Chapter 2: Glocalization: TimeSpace and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity,” ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, Global Modernities (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1995), under “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Hetero­ geneity.” http://sk.sagepub.com/books/global-modernities. 35  Rodrigue, Comtois, and Slack, The Geography of Transport Systems; John D. Kasarda, “Aerotropolis: Airport-Driven Urban Development,” Urban Land 59, no. 9; SUPP /1 (2000).  36  Heinz Heineberg, Stadtgeographie, 3rd edition , vol. 2166, Grundriss Allgemeine Geographie (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006).  37 Benedikt Boucsein, “What Is the Noise Landscape? A Cultural-Historical Perspective,” in The Noise Landscape: A Spatial Exploration of Airports and Cities, ed. Benedikt Boucsein, et al. (Rotterdam: nai010, 2017 ).  38  Will Steffen et al., “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration,” The Anthropocene Review 2 , no. 1 (2015).  39  Robert Freestone, “Planning, Sustainability and Airport-Led Urban ­Development,” International planning studies 14 , no. 2 (2009); H+N+S , DRO Amsterdam, and DHV , “Locatiestudie Schiphol: Een Verkennende Studie Naar De Lange Termijn Opties Van Luchthaven Schiphol.” (1998).  40 Joel Garreau, Edge City. Life on the New Frontier (New York etc.: Doubleday, 1991). Garreau defines “edge cities” as late 20 th-century urban concentrations that have no historical city basis and that feature at least 5 million square feet (465,000 m²) of office space and at least 600,000

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

1  Robert M. Kane, Air Transportation (Kendall / Hunt Pub., 2003).  2  Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Claude Comtois, and Brian Slack, The Geography of Transport Systems, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2009).  3  Ken Button, “The Impacts of Globalisation on International Air Transport Activity. Past Trends and Future Perspectives,” in Global Forum on Transport and Environment in a Globalising World (Guadalajara, Mexico: OECD , 2008).  4 Ibid., p. 8 .  5 Zheng Xingwu and Anne Graham, “Patterns and Drivers of Demand for Air Transport,” in The Routledge Companion to Air Transport Management, ed. Nigel Halpern (London; New York: Routledge, 2018).  6  David Oxley and Chaitan Jain, “Global Air Passenger Markets: Riding out Periods of Turbulence,” in The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015 . Growth through Shocks, ed. World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, 2015).  7  According to World Bank data for 2016 and IATA data for 2017 respectively. Available online: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS .AIR .PSGR and http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/ Pages/2018 -01-31-01.aspx.  8  Richard de Neufville et al., Airport Systems, Second Edition: Planning, Design and Management (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2013). 9  In most of the world, airlines belonged to states. In the US , airlines were private, but benefited from public subsidies and various forms of protection.  10  For a review of the steps and implications of the liberalization of air transport in Europe, see: Guillaume Burghouwt, Pablo Mendes De Leon, and Jaap De Wit, “EU Air Transport Liberalisation. Process, Impacts and Future Considerations,” ed. International Transport Forum (OECD , 2015).  11 de Neufville et al., Airport Systems, Second Edition.  12 Jean Varlet, “La déréglementation du transport aérien et ses conséquences sur les réseaux et sur les aéroports,” Annales de Géo­graphie 106, no. 593 (1997 ).  13 Guillaume Burghouwt and Menno Huys, “Deregulation and the Consequences for Airport Planning in Europe,” DISP , Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft (Zürich) 154 , no. 3 (2003). 14  Typical examples are the Brussels Zaventem and Zurich airports, which struggled after the bankrupties of Sabena and Swissair respectively. 15 Paul Stephen ­ Dempsey, Andrew R. Goetz, and Joseph S. Szyliowicz, Denver International Airport: Lessons Learned (McGraw-­ Hill, 1997 ).  16 Richard de Neufville, “Management of Multi-Airport Systems: A Development Strategy,” Journal of Air Transport Management 2, no. 2 (1995); de Neufville et al., Airport Systems, Second Edition.  17  de Neufville, “Management of Multi-­Airport Systems: A Development Strategy,” p. 99.  18  “Designing Airport Passenger Buildings for the 21st Century,” Transport Journal, UK Institution of Civil Engineers 111 (1995); de Neufville et al., Airport Systems, Second Edition.  19  Burghouwt and Huys, “Deregulation and the Consequences for Airport Planning in Europe.”  20  Rigas Doganis, The Airport Business (London; New York: Routledge, 1992). In Europe, airports were privatized later than their American counterparts and often with national or local governments as major shareholders. In the USA , as most airports were owned by ­municipalities, the transition was mostly towards pubville et al., Airport lic-private partnerships. de Neuf­ Systems, Second Edition.  21 Anne Graham, “Airport ­ Strategies to Gain Competitive Advantage,” in Airport

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square feet (56,000 m²) of retail space.  41  Mathis Güller available data. 59 Aéroports de Paris, “Registration and Michael Güller, From Airport to Airport City (Barcelo- ­Document and Annual Financial Report” ( ADP , 2015). na: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2003). The main airports studied 60  G. Weisbrod, John S. Reed, and Roanne M. Neuwirth, were Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London Gatwick, Zurich, Bar- “Airport Area Development Model,” PTRC-PUBLICATIONS-­P celona, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Milan Malpensa, Vienna, (1993).  61  Stephen J. Appold and John D. Kasarda, “The and Helsinki.  42  Maurits Schaafsma, Joop Amkreutz, and Airport City Phenomenon: Evidence from Large US AirMathis Güller, Airport and City. Airport Corridors: Drivers ports,” Urban Studies 50, no. 6 (2013).  62  By clustering, of Economic Development (Amsterdam: Schiphol Real Es- businesses are considered to obtain productivity gains tate, 2008).  43  Freestone and Baker, “Spatial Planning thanks to shared resources and availability of suppliers, a Models of Airport-Driven Urban Development.”  44 The larger pool of specialized labor, and a push towards innoauthors suggested a categorization of airport effects into vation. Michael E. Porter, “Location, Competition, and Ecofive types: territorial, aviation, flows, allocation, and urban- nomic Development: Local Clusters in a Global Economy,” ization effects; and hypothesized on the resulting affected Economic Development Quarterly 14 , no. 1 (2000). areas. Christian Salewski, Benedikt Boucsein, and Anna 63 Yossi Sheffi, “Logistics-Intensive Clusters: Global Gasco, “Towards an Effect-Based Model for Airports and ­Competitiveness and Regional Growth,” in Handbook of Cities,” in Airports, Cities and Regions, ed. Sven Conventz ­Global Logistics: Transportation in International Supply and Alain Thierstein, Routledge Advances in Regional Eco- Chains, ed. James H. Bookbinder, International Series in nomics, Science and Policy (London, New York: Routledge, Operations Research & Management Science (New York: 2015).  45 Sieverts, Zwischenstadt. Zwischen Ort und Springer, 2013).  64  John D. Kasarda, “Logistics and the Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Land.  46  “Prelude: Air- Rise of Aerotropolis,” Real Estate Issues 25, no. 4 (2000). port and City: An Ambiguous Relationship,” in Airports in 65  Sheffi, “Logistics-Intensive Clusters.”  66  Green, “AirCities and Regions. Research and Practise, ed. Ute Knip- ports and Economic Development.”  67  These include the penberger and Alex Wall (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific Pub- nature of the economic sub-sectors in question and their lishing, 2010), pp. 9 – 10.  47  Boucsein, “The Noise Land- labor intensiveness, dependence on imports, the propenscape,” p. 278 .  48  Albert Pope, Ladders, Architecture at sity to consume domestic goods, and government taxaRice (Houston, Texas: Rice School of Architecture, 1996). tion. InterVISTAS , “Economic Impact of European Airports. 49 Salewski, Boucsein, and Gasco, “Towards an Effect-­ A Critical Catalyst to Economic Growth,” p. 15.  68 David Based Model for Airports and Cities.”  50  Benedikt Bouc- C. Prosperi, “Airports as Centers of Economic Activity: Emsein, Eirini Kasioumi, and Christian Salewski, “Noise Land- pirical Evidence from Three Us Metropolitan Areas,” in scapes in Europe: A Typological Paradigm,” in The Noise Real Corp 007 (Vienna: Real Corp, 2007 ).  69  See for exLandscape: A Spatial Exploration of Airports and Cities, ample: S. Conventz and A. Thierstein, “The Knowledge ed. Benedikt Boucsein, et al. (Rotterdam: nai010, 2017 ). Economy, Hub Airports and Accessibility. A Location Based The eight studied airports are Amsterdam Schiphol, Paris Perspective” (2011).  70 de Neufville, Airport Systems Orly, Madrid Barajas, Frankfurt, London Heathrow, Zurich, Planning, pp. 150 – 51.  71  Stefan Gössling, Frank Fichert, Paris Charles de Gaulle, and Munich.  51 Allan Richard and Peter Forsyth, “Subsidies in Aviation,” Sustainability Pred, City Systems in Advanced Economies: Past Growth, 9, no. 8 (2017 ).  72  Organisation for Economic Co-operaPresent Processes, and Future Development Options tion and Development (OECD ), “Decoupling the Environ(Wiley, 1977 ), p. 24 .  52  Richard de Neufville, Airport Sys- mental Impacts of Transport from Economic Growth” tems Planning (Palgrave Macmillan UK , 1976).  53  Jan K. (OECD , 2006). Between 1970 and 2003 , air passenger Brueckner, “Airline Traffic and Urban Economic Develop- transport in the EU increased by 1,260 %, compared to ment,” Urban Studies 40, no. 8 (2003).  54 Richard K. 223 % for road transport.  73  IPCC et al., Aviation and the Green, “Airports and Economic Development,” Real Estate Global Atmosphere: A Special Report of the IntergovernEconomics 35, no. 1 (2007 ).  55  ACI Europe, “The Social mental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University and Economic Impact of Airports in Europe.” Specifically, Press, 1999); Vera Paradee, “Up in the Air: How Airplane direct impacts are defined as income related to airport Carbon Pollution Jeopardizes Global Climate Goals,” ed. operation; indirect impacts concern income generated in Tucson AZ Center for Biological Diversity (2015).  74 Euthe chain of suppliers of goods and services; induced im- ropean Environment Agency (EEA ), European Aviation pacts include the spending of incomes by direct and in- Safety Agency (EASA ), and EUROCONTROL , “European direct employees; finally, catalytic impacts refer to em- Aviation Environmental Report 2016” (2016).  75 Freeployment and income generated by the wider role of the stone, “Planning, Sustainability and Airport-Led Urban airport in improving the productivity of businesses and in ­Development.”  76 John Whitelegg and Nick Williams, attracting economic activities.  56  “Creating Employment The Plane Truth: Aviation and the Environment (Ashden and Prosperity in Europe” (Brussels: Airport Council Inter- Trust, 2000).  77  Ed Ayres, “Airports and Cities: Can They national–European Region, 1998).  57 “The Social and Coexist?” World Watch July / August 2001 (2001): p. 24 . Economic Impact of Airports in Europe.”  58 InterVISTAS , 78  This proximity is evidenced in many cases of European “Economic Impact of European Airports. A Critical Catalyst airports, such as Paris-Orly (13 km from the city center), to Economic Growth” (ACI Europe, 2015). The study was Amsterdam Schiphol (9 km), Frankfurt (12 km), Zurich based on employment data provided by 125 airports, rep- (13 km), Hamburg (9 km), or Rome Ciampino (12 km). resenting 71 % of air traffic in Europe. For the remainder 79  Ayres, “Airports and Cities: Can They Coexist?” p. 27. of airports that did not respond to the survey, employ- Recent examples of mega-airports, mostly in Asia, include ment data was inferred through econometric analysis of Seoul’s Incheon Airport and Kuala Lumpur’s International

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2015). Boucsein et al., The Noise Landscape.  95 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ), “Guidance on the Balanced Approach to Aircraft Noise Management. Second Edition” (Montreal: ICAO , 2008), p. I-3 -2.  96 “Directive 2002 / 49 / E C of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 June 2002 Relating to the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise,” ed. European Union (2002).  97  The default time periods are 07:00 to 19:00 for day, 19:00 to 23:00 for evening and 23:00 to 07:00 for night, with associated penalties during the evening (+5 dB) and night (+10 dB).  98  Stewart et al., Why Noise Matters.  99  International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ), “Guidance on the Balanced Approach to Aircraft Noise Management. Second Edition.” 100 Ayres, “Airports and Cities: Can They Coexist?”  101  Cwerner, Kesselring, and Urry, Aeromobilities; Lassen and Galland, “The Dark Side of Aeromobilities.” 102 Salewski, Boucsein, and Gasco, “Towards an Effect-Based Model for Airports and Cities.”  103 Hirsh, Airport Urbanism.  104  See case studies of debates on aircraft noise, for example: Guil­ laume­Faburel and Lisa Levy, “Science, Expertise and Local Knowledge in Airport Conflicts,” in Aeromobilities (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009); de Jong, “The Airport Assembled. Rethinking Planning and Policy Making of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol by Using the Actor-Network Theory.”  105  Julie Cidell, “The Spatial Distribution of Airport-Related Development: Rethinking Megaproject Economic Impacts” (2004).  106  Stefan Gössling and Paul Peeters, “‘It Does Not Harm the Environment!’ an Analysis of Industry Discourses on Tourism, Air Travel and the Environment,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 15 , no. 4 (2007 ); David Howarth and Steven Griggs, “Metaphor, Catachresis and Equivalence: The Rhetoric of Freedom to Fly in the Struggle over Aviation Policy in the United Kingdom,” Policy and Society 25, no. 2 (2006).  107 Paul ­Upham et al., “Environmental Capacity and Airport Operations: Current Issues and Future Prospects,” Journal of Air Transport Management 9, no. 3 (2003).  108 Steven Griggs and David Howarth, The Politics of Airport Expansion in the United Kingdom: Hegemony, Policy and the Rhetoric of ‘Sustainable Aviation’ (Oxford University Press, 2013).  109  Austrian court ruling W109 2000179 – 1 / 291E, issued February 2, 2017.  110  Stijn Oosterlynck and Erik Swyngedouw, “Noise Reduction: The Postpolitical Quandary of Night Flights at Brussels Airport,” Environment and Planning A 42 (2010).  111  Ibid., p. 1585.  112  See for example: Robert Horonjeff et al., Planning and Design of Airports, vol. 4 (McGraw-Hill New York, 1962); de Neufville, Airport Systems Planning.  113  Jean Labasse, “L’aéroport et la géographie volontaire des villes,” Annales de géographie 81, no. 445 (1972).  114  de Neufville et al., Airport Systems, Second Edition; Graham, Managing Airports 4th Edition.  115  Timothy Donnet and Robyn Keast, “Airport Enclaves. Bridging Boundary Tensions between Airports and Cities,” in Crossing Boundaries in Public Management and Policy: The International Experience, ed. Janine ­O’Flynn, Deborah Blackman, and John Halligan (London: Routledge, 2013).  116 Lassen and Galland, “The Dark Side of Aeromobilities.”  117  This expression has been first used in H+N+S , DRO Amsterdam, and DHV , ­“Locatiestudie Schiphol: Een Verkennende Studie Naar De Lange T ­ ermijn

CHAPTER 2  Airports and their spatial impacts

Airport, located 60 km and 45 km from the city center and sized at over 50 km2 and 100 km2 respectively.  80 Salewski, Boucsein, and Gasco, “Towards an Effect-Based Model for Airports and Cities.”  81  See for example the analysis of Lassen and Galland on the implications of the construction of two elevated roads to improve access to Mexico City International Airport (MCIA ): Claus Lassen and Daniel Galland, “The Dark Side of Aeromobilities: Unplanned Airport Planning in Mexico City,” International Planning Studies 19, no. 2 (2014).  82  Ayres, “Airports and Cities: Can They Coexist?”  83 Whitelegg and Williams, The Plane Truth.  84  See for example: Wolfram Schlenker and W. Reed Walker, “Airports, Air Pollution, and Contemporaneous Health,” The Review of Economic Studies 83, no. 2 (2016); K. N. Yu et al., “Identifying the Impact of Large Urban Airports on Local Air Quality by Nonparametric Regression,” Atmospheric Environment 38 , no. 27 (2004). 85  For a comprehensive review on the issues associated with noise, see: John Stewart et al., Why Noise Matters: A Worldwide Perspective on the Problems, Policies and Solutions, 1st edition ed. (Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2011).  86  European Environment Agency, “Noise in Europe 2014” (Luxembourg: European Environment Agency, 2014). The Lden indicator assesses the average level of noise annoyance over a 24 -hour period (day-evening-night level). The (A) indicates the use of A-weighting to account for different frequencies. As it is the most common weighting method for environmental noise, it is often left out in specifications.  87  Benedikt Boucsein et al., The Noise Landscape: A Spatial Exploration of Airports and Cities (Rotterdam: nai010, 2017 ).  88  European Environment Agency, “Noise in Europe 2014 .”  89  See for example: W. Babisch and I. Van Kamp, “Exposure-Response Relationship of the Association between Aircraft Noise and the Risk of Hypertension,” Noise Health 11, no. 44 (2009); Sabine A. Janssen et al., “The Effect of the Number of Aircraft Noise Events on Sleep Quality,” Applied Acoustics 84 (2014).  90  See for example: C. Clark et al., “Exposure-Effect Relations between Aircraft and Road Traffic Noise Exposure at School and Reading Comprehension: The Ranch Project,” American Journal of Epidemiology 163, no. 1 (2006); S. Hygge, G. W. Evans, and M. Bullinger, “A Prospective Study of Some Effects of Aircraft Noise on Cognitive Performance in Schoolchildren,” Psychological Science 13 , no. 5 (2002).  91 European Environment Agency, “Noise in Europe 2014 ,” p. 9.  92  See for example: Jon P. Nelson, “Airport Noise, Location Rent, and the Market for Residential Amenities,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 6, no. 4 (1979); Daniel P. McMillen, “Airport Expansions and Property Values: The Case of Chicago O’Hare Airport,” Journal of Urban Economics 55, no. 3 (2004).  93  Guillaume Faburel and Isabelle Maleyre, “Le bruit des avions comme facteur de dépréciations immobilières, de polarisation sociale et d’inégalités environnementales. Le cas d’Orly,” Développement durable et territoires. Économie, géographie, ­politique, droit, sociologie, no. Dossier 9 (2007 ). 94 Altogether 1.2 million people live in the high annoyance zones (Lden 55 dB) of just the top three of Europe’s busiest airports: London Heathrow (704 ,300), Paris Charles de Gaulle (265,200), and Frankfurt (207,300) (data from

63

Opties Van Luchthaven Schiphol.”  118  Van Wijk, “Airports as Cityports in the City-Region: Spatial-Economic and Institutional Positions and Institutional Learning in Randstad-Schiphol (AMS ), Frankfurt Rhein-Main (FRA ), Tokyo Haneda (HND ) and Narita (NRT ).”  119 Freestone and Baker, “Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Development.”  120  In the 1950 s and 1960 s, many international airports included retail and leisure zones in airport terminals. These were loosely linked to the airport’s functionality, and rather constituted supplements to the popular attraction of the novel experience of flying. 121  Bernard Dézert, “De la ZALA à l’aéroville: une nouvelle révolution technologique,” in Les aérovilles: nouveau concept d’intercommunication et de localisation d’entreprises, ed. CREPIF (CREPIF , 1989).  122  In French, the term ZALA has been used, standing for Zones d’Activités Liées à un Aéroport. Marie-Madeleine Damien, Dictionnaire du transport et de la logistique – 3 ème Édition (Dunod, 2010).  123  Dézert, “De la ZALA à l’aéroville: une nouvelle révolution technologique.” 124 H. McKinley ­Conway, The Airport City: Development Concepts for the 21st Century, rev. ed. (Atlanta: Conway, 2000 (1980)). 125  Schaafsma, Amkreutz, and Güller, Airport and City. Airport Corridors: Drivers of Economic Development. 126  John D. Kasarda and Dennis A. Rondinelli, “Innovative Infrastructure for Agile Manufacturers,” MIT Sloan Management Review Winter 1998 (1998); John D. Kasarda, “The Fifth Wave: The Air Cargo-Industrial Complex,” Portfolio: A Quarterly Review of Trade and Transportation 4 , no. 1 (1991).  127  “Aerotropolis”; Greg Lindsay and John D. Kasarda, Aerotropolis. The Way We’ll Live Next (London: Allen Lane, 2011).  128  Seen respectively in: Schaafsma, Amkreutz, and Güller, Airport and City. Airport Corridors: Drivers of Economic Development; Hubstart Paris, “Sustainable Airport Areas International Seminar Report,” in Sustainable Airport Areas International Seminar  –  2nd edition (2012); Johanna Schlaack, “Defining the Airea: Evaluating Urban Output and Forms of Interaction between Airport and Region,” in Airports in Cities and Re-

64

gions. Research and Practise, ed. Ute Knippenberger and Alex Wall (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific Publishing, 2010). 129  Freestone and Baker, “Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Development”; Knippenberger and Wall, Airports in Cities and Regions. Research and Practise.  130 Lindsay and Kasarda, Aerotropolis. The Way We’ll Live Next.  131  See also: Eirini Kasioumi, “Emerging Planning Approaches in Airport Areas: The Case of Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG ),” Regional Studies, Regional Science 2, no. 1 (2015).  132  Examples include the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport City, Singapore Changi’s airport city development, “Sky city” in Hong Kong, Munich’s airport center, “Roissypole” in Paris CDG and “Cœur d’Orly” in Paris Orly (airport site developments); “Dubai World Center” in Dubai Airport, “Aviapolis” in Helsinki-Vantaa, Incheon near Seoul International Airport, and Las Colinas near Dallas / Fort Worth Airport (airport area projects). 133  Michael B. Charles et al., “Airport Futures: Towards a Critique of the Aerotropolis Model,” Futures 39, no. 9 (2007 ); Freestone, “Planning, Sustainability and Airport-­ Led Urban Development.” 134 Freestone and Baker, “Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Development.”  135  Freestone, “Planning, Sustainability and Airport-Led Urban Development,” p. 168 .  136  Prosperi, “Airports as Centers of Economic Activity: Empirical Evidence from Three Us Metropolitan Areas.”  137  Julie L. Cidell and John S. Adams, “The Groundside Effects of Air Transportation,” ed. Center for Transportation Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2001).  138  Cidell, “The Spatial Distribution of Airport-Related Development.”  139 Pim Warffemius, Toon van der Hoorn, and Henk Klaassen, “The Importance of Agglomeration Effects for Distribution Centres around Amsterdam Airport Schiphol,” Journal of Airport Management 4, no. 3 (2010).  140  Wiedemann, “The Role of Infrastructure for Economic Development in an Airport Metropolis Region.” 141 Freestone, “Planning, Sustainability and Airport-Led Urban Development,” p. 167. 142  Freestone and Baker, “Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Development.”

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris Institutional and planning change in France The Paris metropolis: a portrait Threads in planning discourse and action

Institutional and planning change in France This section aims to orient the unfamiliar reader with regard to the main features and evolutions of the French planning context. I start with a brief note on terms and the use of “planning” in French, acknowledging from the outset that my attempt to render notions, methods, and connotations is inevitably imperfect. I then provide an overview of the main planning evolutions in France between the 1960s and the 2010s, considering the specificities of the administrative culture and institutional structures and relating them to the broader evolutions described in Chapter 1. The French planning context In a general way, the concepts, techniques and practices associated with urban space can be said to correspond in French to urbanisme, rendered in English as town p ­ lanning or urban planning.1 Urbanisme may include strategic planning, land-use planning, and aspects of planning concerning implementation or urban development (urbanisme opérationnel).2 Development may also be rendered by développement, which then rather refers to the process of urbanization. A prevalent component of urbanisme is aménagement, which is most closely related to the notion of physical planning. But aménagement also has other meanings, clarified by its suffix: aménagement urbain concerns the urban scale, whereas aménagement du territoire, translated as regional planning, regional development or spatial development, concerns the organization of the territory at the regional or even national scale, and strongly connotes centralized planning action.3 Because of its association with spatial organization, aménagement du territoire is occasionally translated as spatial planning in the literature. The counterpart of aménagement when it comes to the process of setting objectives, coordinating ­actions and allocating things in a determined space (as opposed to planning’s operational side) is planification, the lexical equivalent of planning. Spatial planning then, as is used in the last two decades in the European context to denote the broadened practice of planning as spatial visioning and policy-making, is usually rendered as planification spatiale. Yet the French term can also mean, in a narrower sense, the public action of ­setting objectives for the localization of activities in space. With regard to the French planning system, the first thing to note concerns the strong culture of unitary government, due to its long-term constitution of nation-state.4 This culture owes much to its Napoleonic heritage, as do the national legal and administrative structures. Military expansion under Napoleon ensured the wider application of the French legal code and the expansion of a system where local governmental tiers, albeit historically sovereign, were centrally controlled. The corresponding legal “style” is typified by strong reliance on the codification of abstract principles and comprehensive systems of rules.5 In this vein, urban and land use planning are governed by the Code d’Urbanisme, created in 1954 and regularly updated. In the 1960s, a comprehensive planning system was established (Loi d’orientation foncière or LOF of 1967) and a series of plans, documents and tools were introduced. At the regional scale, the schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme was meant to provide strategic and over­arching orientations for the long-term use of land. Locally, development should conform to detailed land-use plans, called POS (Plans d’Occupation du Sol); while zones 68

of urban development operations by the public hand were defined as Zones d’Aménagement Concerté (ZAC ). This general hierarchy of plans still exists today, but with certain modifications. The 2000 SRU Law (Loi relative à la Solidarité et au Renouvellement ­Urbains) renewed several provisions, replacing the POS with the PLU (Plan Local d’Urbanisme) and the schéma directeur with the SCoT (Schéma de Cohérence territoriale), and ­introducing social and environmental requirements to plan-making. The legal adjustments of the planning system have been accompanied by evolutions in public administration. The strong unitary, highly centralized and interventionist state inherited from the Napoleonic tradition has meant that many i­ nstitutional changes have been upsetting and difficult to implement, in particular concerning the devolution of powers from central government to local and regional governments.6 Planning has been the subject of a long transition between the proactive policies of the post-war period and the decentralization process initiated in the early 1980s, and the rescaling processes of the 21st century. Yet it should be noted that the French context has not seen the radical restructuring experienced in countries like Britain, and urban planning has remained essentially a public-sector activity, with the central state holding an important role. In terms of the direction of broader spatial planning policies, until the early 1990s France was considered emblematic of the “regional economic planning approach,” as defined by the EU Compendium of spatial planning systems. This focuses on the pursuit of broad social and economic objectives, especially in relation to disparities at the level of the national territory.7 More recently though, it has moved towards a more hybrid system, incorporating elements of the “comprehensive integrated approach” which places emphasis on collaboration and spatial coordination among institutional levels, while featuring a clear hierarchy of plans and responsibilities.8 In an effort to consolidate this direction and modernize the administrative and planning system, the French central state (hereafter also referred to as simply “the State”) has initiated several large reforms over the last twenty-five years. Yet the process has not been linear and the system has yet to find an equilibrium. Delamarre et al. speak of a “permanence” of the approach to spatial planning over time, aside from the evolution of practices.9

deep imprint. Throughout this period, spatial and urban planning were core public sector activities. Centrally led spatial planning was captured by the term aménagement du territoire, defined as the search – in the geographic context of France – of a better distribution of people in accordance with natural resources and economic activity.10 The call for territorial equality contained in the definition concerned what was seen as an unhealthy dominance of Paris in terms of economic and political power, that the State sought to “correct” by pursuing measures of economic decentralization.11 Central planning was responsible for implementing these and other development goals. National priorities, catering to the rational distribution of populations and resources, were drawn up and then passed down from central to local ministerial offices.12 With regard to local plan-making and development control, the State was dominant through

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

The “golden era” of planning In France, the sustained period of economic, demographic, and urban growth that followed World War II , often referred to as “Trente Glorieuses” (“Thirty Glorious [years]”), was characterized by optimism and a technocratic view of progress that also left a

69

its control of statutory planning, land-use management, and large urban projects. In each département,13 a local ministry office headed by a government-appointed préfet (prefect) was responsible for the production of POS and the authorization of building permits. The central state controlled the allocation of funds and the localization of ­infrastructural and urban development. This period of earnest organization and modernization of the territory, with proactive14 state policies encompassing all scales from the organization of space at the national level to neighborhood development, has been dubbed the “golden era” (“âge d’or”) of spatial planning.15 In particular, the presidency of General Charles de Gaulle between 1959 and 1969 was formative, as it was marked by the assertive presence of the State and the prolific production of plans. The creation, in 1963, of a Delegation for Spatial Planning and Regional Action, the DATAR (Délégation à l’Aménagement du Terri­ toire et à l’Action Régionale), ensured that a powerful agency would design, motivate, and execute spatial planning policy on behalf of the State. Its activity was framed at the level of the regions (régions), a new territorial subdivision introduced by law the following year. Concerning urban planning, the 1967 LOF Law, with its armature of statutory documents, established a comprehensive and enduring basis for practice. Thus, the “golden era” had an important legacy. The initial momentum of the powerful state machinery shaped the national territory for the decades to come. From the point of view of spatial transformation, the operations carried out or planned in this ­period were extensive and left a great imprint: mass housing projects, new districts, new towns, airports, highways, railways … From an ideological standpoint, the “golden era” cemented the notion that planning corresponds to a political vision carried out by a central authority with high-level oversight and technical expertise. Spatial structures were the result of a strong governmental will, often with little or no consideration of the opinion of the local actors.16 In the following decades, although the proactive character of planning action was eroded, the responsibility of setting spatial development priorities remained centralized.17 Another legacy feature of this period concerns the imprint on spatial production of two “traditions” of state intervention. One was the urban planning tradition, having its historical basis in physical design and represented by the architects and planners serving in state and local planning offices. The other was the technical tradition, represented by senior civil servants from technical Grands Corps de l’État. Engineers of the prestigious Ponts et Chaussées in the central administration were responsible for big public works such as transport infrastructures.18 In the 1960s, state engineers became more involved in urban and regional planning, enabled by the consolidation of state administrations and the formative character of large-scale projects such as road and rail infrastructure for urban development.19 The spatial production of the ­“golden era” was the result of the structuring of the territory through such infrastructures, engineers working in relative harmony with planners under a strong unitary state and in a frame of rationality and comprehensiveness.20 Decisions concerning metropolitan space were the object of economic reasoning and rational assessment of costs and benefits. The era’s positivism, optimism about continuing growth, ambitions of widespread modernization, and international outlook were reflected in the oversizing of many projects, such as the new towns and indeed the Charles de Gaulle airport (Fig. 3.1). 70

Yet the state-led rational planning model of spatial production came under criticism in France as in the rest of Europe. There was rising discontent about the urban environments produced through top-down planning, along with the realization that the time of sustained and self-evident demographic and economic growth was coming to an end, not least as state coffers were drying out. The change of government in 1974, with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing succeeding Georges Pompidou, signified a turning point in French politics towards a greater focus on the environment and civic rights. The new president questioned the excessive greenfield development, gigantism and auto-­dependence of many big projects in the Paris region and elsewhere, and defended a more decentralized planning action.21 These positions were reflected in the disavowal of some of the policies zealously pursued in the previous years, particularly public housing schemes. Administratively, the first step towards a greater distribution of decision-making was made in 1972, when the régions, until then functioning as mere territorial subdivisions of central action, were endowed with their own councils, and ­given responsibilities in economic and social development, transport infrastructure, and collective amenities. The Paris region was initially exempted from the reform, but its status was aligned with that of the other French regions in 1976, when it was renamed Région Ile-de-France. These reforms had limited influence on planning action, but were indicative of the relaxation of state dominance. This relaxation was also reflected in the State’s withdrawal from the ambitious plans of the previous decades. Not only did it become politically undesirable to impose overarching development rationales on entire spatial sectors, but also, confident rationality-fueled planning d ­ iscourses were replaced by a realization of the limits of technical estimations and the need to incorporate a broader range of concerns.

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

Fig. 3.1  Visualization of “Paris in 20 years” in the magazine Paris Match in 1967, illustrating the ambition of the projects of the “golden era.”

71

Planning in the context of late 20 th century restructuring The institutional change that most fundamentally affected spatial and urban planning in France was the administrative decentralization of the 1980s. Shortly after the ­election of François Mitterand as President, the reform was set in motion. The 1982 – 1983 decentralization laws (known as Lois Defferre) 22 entailed a large restructuring of ­power, epitomized by two major innovations: the transformation of regions into a tier of elected government, and the wide-ranging distribution of the responsibilities of State-­appointed Prefects among local governments (communities, departments, regions). Especially the communities (communes) were given unprecedented freedom with regard to planning powers and finances. They could now manage their r­ esources more autonomously, and acquired control of the POS and the granting of building permits. The immediate post-decentralization landscape fostered ambiguities and disparities. In regions with a big city in particular, regional policy was skewed, and party rivalries among politicians in different government levels were unavoidable. The institution of “Contrats de Plan Etat-Region” (CPER ) – agreements between the State, the regions, and other public actors determining regional investment – gave room for lobbying and political intervention. In terms of local planning, big urban municipalities were able to enjoy their newfound powers, but most communities were too small to possess either the geographical scope or the resources to take on planning tasks, and delegated state offices continued to offer planning services.23 Also, although the competencies to each government tier were theoretically distinct – urbanism and housing to the municipalities, social affairs to departments, skills to the regions –, in practice responsibilities often overlapped. That said, the decentralization process of the 1980s changed planning profoundly, among others because state-led nationwide standardized approaches became unworkable and were gradually replaced by locally produced, flexibly interpreted frameworks. However, the “side-effect” of the empowerment of local and regional authorities was a so-called “urbanisme clandestin” (clandestine urban planning): community mayors engaging in negotiations about urban development and other projects “behind closed doors,” often using their powers to sidestep planning controls or make ad hoc revisions of local POS .24 Further, local politicians became compelled to show dynamism through strong operations, introducing the urban project as a primary form of spatial production.25 Local development fervor was in line with a wider pro-development attitude becoming common in municipal councils after the mid-1980s. This was encouraged by the new-found powers of communities, and compelled by the reduced financial support granted by the central state. The communal territory thus became an arena for attracting investment, particularly businesses contributing ­taxes.26 Inescapably, the dispersion and variability of initiatives was reflected in the produced space, which appeared increasingly fragmented. This coincided with a peri-­ urbanization movement, due to both the falling attractiveness of cities and especially their inner peripheries and suburbs (banlieue), and the rising incomes giving young middle-class families the possibility of pursuing their “suburban dream.” This movement created not only a new need for planning and coordination, but also changed the ­socioeconomic character of peri-urban communities, affecting their political – and by extension their planning – priorities.27 72

In his analysis of urban space management by the public hand between 1981 and 1993, Alain Motte indicates how in this period, shifts in the perception and practice of spatial management were also instigated by a series of urban socioeconomic phenomena: limited urban growth, suburbanization, the decrease of housing production, and the growth of unemployment.28 At the European level, the preparation for the Single Market had further consequences. Territorial competition intensified, leading to the aggravation of inequalities and social problems. The onset of globalization and new economic impetuses called into question the notion of a comprehensively and evenly developed territory.29 Public action became more concerned with the local level, the

the end of the 1980s, the administration was in search of ways to reconcile these conceptions and clarify the roles of public actors in planning activity. The State attempted a renewal by emphasizing strategic approaches within coherent spatial projects through the regional plans. Yet according to Motte, this renewal had only limited success, as the contradiction between the strategic and the spatial was not sufficiently ­explicated.30 In 1993, a national debate was launched in an attempt to actualize spatial planning. The debate culminated in a legal reform: the 1995 LOADT Law, amended and extended by a follow-up law in 1999, the LOADDT.31 These laws reflected a shift in the direction of planning that echoed the European-wide embracement of strategic spatial planning as well as the concern for territorial competitiveness.32 The inclusion of “développement” (development) and “développement durable” (sustainable development) in their respective titles responded to the demands of territories that “wanted more than just to be planned” and to the rise of sustainability as overarching impetus of public policy.33 Besides, the LOADT/LOADDT laws were an expression of a wider quest, in the 1990s, to reorganize planning action in a multi-level context. The laws established an army of sectorial and strategic documents (schémas, DTA ) designated to set long-term objectives for French regions. Yet the mismatch of the strategic and the spatial has remained, since as Geppert notes, “these documents have little spatial dimension.”34 In parallel, more participatory and collaborative processes were introduced,35 and there was an effort to include a broader range of topics and areas of strategic focus to planning through a renewal of traditional notions and a remodeling of statutory tools. The schéma directeur in particular was criticized for being over-prescriptive, too rigid in its elaboration process, and too static in its content, failing to bridge land-use regulation and development strategies. The reform initiated with the 2000 SRU Law (completed with further laws in 2003 and 2010) attempted to respond to these concerns. It substituted the POS with the PLU and the schéma directeur with the SCoT, a planning document elaborated by a group of municipalities in voluntary cooperation at the sub-regional level.36 The SCoT was intended both as an overarching plan, ­legally binding for the local PLUs, and as an instrument of horizontal coordination of public policies, its strategic dimension reflected in flexible prescriptions and a focus on development strategies.37 Finally, there was a trend towards incorporating features of “soft” spatial planning (see Chapter 1). For instance, the LOADT / L OADDT laws i­ntroduced

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

“social” became a top political priority, and local economic development was seen as the main response to unemployment and shifts in global economy. These are all components of an institutional remodeling, that, as Motte points out, indicated a strategic conception of the city that stood in contrast with the previous spatial approach. By

73

new planning entities, the pays – geographically and economically coherent spaces that may create common spatial visions; and new planning instruments, the territoires de projet – spaces defined by the agreement of territorial actors on a certain project (spatial, economic, social, or infrastructural). These new entries were c­ haracteristic “soft spaces” outside statutory planning action, allowing for more informal, open and collaborative strategy-making. They were part of the broader restructuring of the relations among public entities, also expressed in the prevalence of contractual relationships (characterized as a “contractualization” of public action) and the dissemination of new guiding doctrines. Planning in France in the 21st century Since the dawn of the millennium, spatial and urban planning in France has been on a course of stabilization after the evolutions of the 1980s and 1990s. The spatial challenges that French metropolitan areas, Paris in particular, face in the 21st century have required a continuous adjustment of responses. Urban sprawl has posed pressing ­environmental questions and created new distributions of settlements and activities no longer corresponding to traditional perimeters of planning action; socio-spatial fragmentation has become more apparent, with growing disparities between rich and poor. For policymakers, tackling these disparities must be counterbalanced with the pressing mandate of urban competitiveness. Administrative adjustments since the late 1990s have mostly clarified and enriched the responsibilities of local governments, and promoted a rescaling of public action from the communities to meso-government levels. An ongoing process is the re­inforcement of the competences of voluntary groupings of local entities that enable communities to cope jointly with their increased responsibilities. In particular, the 1999 reform (Loi Chevènement) strengthened joint inter-municipal authorities (EPCI , Etablissements publics de coopération intercommunale), among others by giving them more means to raise taxes jointly.38 Decentralization was consolidated and constitutionalized through additional reforms in 2003, 2004, and 2010; its latest act, the 2015 Loi NOTRe, further strengthened the EPCI s and reinstituted some planning powers to the regions. The purpose of these ongoing processes has been to better focus public action at the appropriate territorial scales, yet the proclaimed unambiguity has not been ­f ully achieved. For one, the voluntary groupings of municipalities have not always been spatially appropriate, for example, in only partially covering continuously urbanized spaces. The reasons are often political: party affiliation of mayors, unwillingness to join forces with ideologically divergent communities, and the general tendency to form socially, economically, ideologically or fiscally homogeneous groupings.39 The double office-holding of local representatives and related lobbying activity further politicizes territorial governance.40 It is no surprise that the boundaries of urban plans may consequently fail to match spatial reality. This has been the case especially with the SC oTs , which by definition are developed by voluntary groupings. “Soft” spaces of planning action have sometimes corresponded to urban geography better than statutory plans, but the charters, plans and visions developed in them rarely venture into domains of statutory planning such as land use, rather focusing on issues like territorial marketing. The legislators had hoped that a coherent system would gradually emerge, with 74

soft spaces serving as incubators for spatial visions that would then translate to “harder” institutional settings; but this has not really happened.41 Hence, the French planning system of the 2010s still contained an abundance of rules, institutions, planning bodies, and arenas of debating and decision-making, with discrepancies between theory, legal norms, and practices.42 Collaborative approaches are difficult to assess, due to the complexity of the normative framework and the political nature of public-sector activity. Elected politicians are often directly involved in spatial plan-making, and national party rivalries may define strategic agendas. Collaborative planning processes constitute a consensus-fostering but also a legitimizing mechanism; thus, it remains questionable whether they facilitate implementation or only on-paper agreement. It is also important to note though that, while French planning has become more eclectic, it has essentially remained a public sector activity. Decentralization has generated adjustments within the machinery of government, rather than challenging the boundaries of public and private sectors in significant ways. French territorial administration today is often illustrated as a “millefeuille administratif” consisting of multiple layers of government. The role of citizen associations, NGO s and non-institutional

planning for projects) rather than an ostensibly enterprise dampening urbanisme de normes (regulatory planning).”45 Reforms like the SRU in 2000 and the Grenelle laws in 2009/2010 introduced a shift from regulatory land-use planning to approaches that mobilize actors around projects that tackle housing, transport, land use and economic activity in an interlinked way.46 It is also no coincidence that State-Region contracts (CPER ) were replaced in 2006 by “project contracts” framed in accordance with the objectives set by the European Councils for the knowledge-based economy and sustainable development. In this process of overcoming strict regulatory control and promoting strategic project-based planning, there are still ambiguities. The meaning of the “project” can be taken to mean either projet de territoire, strategic territorial agendas that should,

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

actors has been traditionally weak, but public involvement in planning processes has increased in recent years: in addition to the standard public inquiry procedures preceding the adoption of major plans of investment programs (enquête publique), consultation arenas have been instituted at various territorial scales. At the same time, the State has maintained a strong presence in planning matters through several channels: by allocating powers to the prefects, by setting various technical norms, by controlling powerful public operators in transport and energy, and by establishing planning and development agencies. In general, though, rather than being implicated in direct spatial management, the State has increasingly positioned itself as a “critical friend” of territories.43 The arena in which this “friendship” has proved most crucial in the 21st century is the quest for territorial competitiveness. The French redistributive planning m ­ odel seems decisively abandoned, the focus hereafter being in the endogenous development capacities of territories, with the State “accompanying” them in the quest to highlight local assets.44 The re-alignment of planning priorities towards competitiveness has materialized at the local level through the prioritization of economic development projects, and at the metropolitan level through strategies to boost attractiveness against other European cities. Under the influence of Europe-wide neo-liberalization, planning in the 21st century is “expected to act as a positive urbanisme de projet (a

75

i­­deally, become reflected in regulatory plans like the PLU ; or projet urbain, major development operations that replace incremental city-making and in so doing redefine urban ­development agendas. In either case, the project is posited to act like a catalyst in a societal process of mobilization and coordination.47 Indeed, under the impetus of strategic projects, in recent years French cities have seen the formation of novel alliances among spatial actors. Whether the outcomes live up to their programmatic promises and whether the coherence of urban space can be ensured by project-by-project approaches remain to be seen.

The Paris metropolis: a portrait When referring to Paris, the narrowest of interpretations would lead to think about the city of Paris proper: the cité intra-muros, political and cultural center. Covering an area of 105 km 2 and hosting a population of approximately 2.2 million inhabitants, the city of Paris is yet only the central part of an agglomeration sprawling across hundreds of square kilometers. The Région Ile-de-France encompasses this agglomeration and much of its hinterland, and denotes the territory referred to as the Paris region. Ile-de-France has an area of 12’011 km 2 and is home to 12.07 million inhabitants (2015), representing almost one fifth of the total population of France, and 6.05 million workers (2012), r­ epresenting one fourth of the country’s employed workforce (Table 3.1). The Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, as well as Orly and Le Bourget, are located within its limits (Fig. 3.2).

AREA (km2)  % Paris

105

Petite Couronne

657

JOBS (mi) 48

POPULATION (mi) 1975

1990

2004

2015

2015 ( %) 2012

2012 ( %)

0.9

2.31

2.15

2.16

2.22

18 .4

1.88

31.0 36.7

1962

5 .5

3.98

3.98

4 .24

4 .55

37.7

2.22

Grande Couronne 11,249

93.6

3.59

4 .51

4 .95

5.31

43.9

1.95

32.2

Ile-de-France

100

8.40

9.87

10.64

11.35

12.07

100

6.05

100

12,011

Unité urbaine

2,845

23.7

7.38

8.55

9.32

10.25

Aire urbaine

17,175

143

 –

9.09

10.29

11.96

France

643,801

46.20

52.60

59.00

62.25

(2006) (2006)

10.66

88.3

12.53

103.8

65.57

26.319

Table 3.1  Evolution of population and workforce in the Paris region (source: INSEE )

The elusive metropolitan administration The Ile-de-France Region did not exist as an administrative division until the 1960s. The département de la Seine was the closest administrative equivalent to the urbanized territory, but with little decision-making authority. In 1934, with the elaboration of the Plan Prost, a larger area was defined as the “Paris Region,” but it never became an official institutional or planning perimeter. It was after World War II , when growth took off again and the powerful post-war state machinery catered to the rational distribution of activities in space and the development of infrastructure, that a t­ erritorial entity for the region was established. The District of the Paris Region (District de la 76

Fig. 3.2  The Ile-de-France Region, department and community limits, and commercial airports.

stitute the petite couronne, or first ring, whereas the outer four, namely Seine-et-Marne, Essonne, Yvelines, and Val-d’Oise, constitute the much larger and more sparsely populated grande couronne, or second ring.49 There are 1,281 communes in Ile-de-France, most of which are very small, with populations varying from a few hundred inhabitants to the 2.2 million of Paris. Successive growth waves have made for an almost continuously urbanized area that covers the entire petite couronne and a large part of the grande couronne. The French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE ) uses the concept of unité urbaine or agglomération urbaine de Paris (Paris urban unit or agglomeration) to describe the extent of this area, which covers less than

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

­Région Parisienne), corresponding to today’s Ile-de-France, was created by General de Gaulle in 1961. At the time, it encompassed the départements of Seine, Seine-et-Oise, and Seine-et-Marne. Administrative reform in 1964 (effective in 1968) reorganized the departments, replacing Seine and Seine-et-Oise with seven new ones: Seine-et-Oise was divided into Val-d’Oise, Yvelines, and Essonne; Seine was roughly split between Seine-Saint-Denis, Hauts-de-Seine, and Val-de-Marne; and the city of Paris became a department in itself (Fig. 3.3). In 1976, the region took its current name, after the historic province of Ile-de-France. With the decentralization reform of 1982 it became a level of elected government, like all regions in France. The structure established in 1968 has remained in place until today. Surrounding Paris, the departments of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne con-

77

Fig. 3.3  Administrative divisions of the Paris region before and after 1968 .

one fourth of the region’s territory but contains almost 90 % of its population; as well as that of the aire urbaine de Paris (Paris urban or metropolitan area) to designate the broader influence area of Paris that goes beyond Ile-de-France (Table 3.1). In general, the administrative structures of the Paris region have lagged behind in capturing its spatial reality. The lack of a metropolitan-level entity that would encompass the Greater Paris (Grand Paris) agglomeration has been a long-standing matter of debate. Many observers have criticized the lack of governance at the metropolitan scale as creating a gap in strategic planning and a handicap in relation to other large cities in Europe and elsewhere.50 The Ile-de-France Region (hereafter also referred to as simply “the Region”) has been considered inappropriate to take up this role, as its territory includes rural parts with very different characteristics and needs than their urban counterparts. Besides, the Region is a relatively weak government level, with limited authority in planning, infrastructure and economic development. The creation of an appropriate institution has nevertheless been consistently hampered by political disagreements and the anticipated complexities of implementation. It is only very recently, with the reform enacted by the laws MAPTAM (2014) and NOTRe (2015), that this stalemate has been addressed. The two legislations established the Métropole du Grand Paris (MGP, Greater Paris Metropolis) as an overarching inter-municipal cooperative entity with vast responsibilities in urban planning, housing, and environmental policy. The MGP came into being in January 2016 and became fully effective in 2017. It includes all the communities of the petite couronne and seven communities of the grande couronne – a total of 131 communities (Fig. 3.4).51 78

Fig. 3.4  Limits of the Métropole du Grand Paris, unité urbaine, and aire urbaine of Paris.

munes, and the State and its appointed authorities, other important administrations in the history of Paris and CDG are the national rail company SNCF, the regional transport authority R ATP, and the departmental Chambers of Commerce. A multipolar capital region The institutional predicaments of Paris are an important topic in French political life, and for good reason. Paris is not only the French capital, hosting key administrative and political functions, but also one of the world’s top ten “global cities,” with an important role in the global economy. Ile-de-France has a gross domestic product (GDP)

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

The establishment of the MGP has however hardly satisfied the demand for reform. In addition to its extent not coming close to covering the geographically and functionally coherent area of the Parisian agglomeration, there are concerns that the MGP merely adds another layer of complexity in an already loaded institutional landscape – a complexity considered, among others, potentially harmful to the attractiveness of the region.52 These deficiencies have led the recently elected (2017) president Emmanuel Macron to proclaim a reorganization of the governance of Greater Paris, with potential components being the abolition of the departments or even that of the MGP. Whereas the formation of the MGP falls outside the timeframe of this study, its mention illustrates that the Paris region, Paris metropolis, or Greater Paris are elusive concepts whose territorial and institutional counterparts have received various interpretations. In the continuation of this book, Ile-de-France will be treated as ­spatially synonymous with the Paris region. Next to the Region, the departments, the com-

79

of 681 billion euros (2016), which represents around 30 % of the national GDP and 5 % of that of the entire European Union. Within France, it is by far the most important city-region, outstripping all second contenders in terms of size, population, general employment and high-end jobs, company headquarters, social and cultural dynamism, and political leadership.53 However, this dynamic image is not representative of the region’s entire territory. The city of Paris, whose surface is barely 1 % of Ile-de-France, hosts 18.4 % of the total population and 31 % of total jobs. Paris and the petite couronne together host slightly more than half of the regional population (56.1 %), but two thirds of the total jobs (67.7 %) (Table 3.1). Within the agglomeration, there are important disparities mainly between the western part, where the wealthiest population and most high-added-value activities are located, and the northeastern and southeastern parts, which feature lower than average incomes and fewer work opportunities. For instance, more than 50 % of the jobs in Paris and the neighboring department of Hautsde-Seine are so-called “metropolitan” jobs – intellectual services, research and design, ­business-to-business commerce, management, culture and recreation – against 38 % in Ile-de-France overall, and 21 % in other French regions (2007) – with the trend of the last thirty years being towards greater specialization. Also, employment is polarized in a relatively small number of places (39 communities contain half of the regional employment), which in turn leads to a high volume of daily commuting.54 This geography reflects longstanding patterns of spatial organization and socioeconomic distribution, further shaped by the urban development trends of more recent decades. In the early 20th century, the settlement in city outskirts of new industrial sectors had triggered an influx of working population, prompting the first suburbanization wave.55 The beginnings of socio-spatial segregation can be traced back in the 1920s and 30s, when industries and workers’ housing were concentrated in certain inner belt suburbs, whereas other areas were “sanitized,” in particular along the axis connecting the palace of Versailles to the administrative center of Paris. After World War II , suburban growth took off. The proactive policies of the 1960s channeled this growth, defining the shape of the metropolitan periphery with the development of the regional public transport network (RER ), the construction of public housing quarters (grands ensembles), the consolidation of the suburban centers of the petite couronne, and the construction of public facilities like educational institutions and hospitals. In the 1970s, the development of the five new towns (villes nouvelles) of Cergy-Pontoise, Évry, Marne-la-Vallée, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, and Melun-Sénart boosted population growth in the grande couronne. In parallel, the development of La Défense, an 860-hectare zone conceived as a prolongation of Paris’s administrative and business quarters, established the city’s immediate western vicinity in the Seine valley as the main recipient of the growing service economy. In parallel, market forces from the late 1970s onward led to the localization of lower-value companies and commercial facilities in areas with lower land prices and a higher availability of space than central Paris. This produced a domination of the metropolitan fringe by vast enclave-like activity zones. The attractiveness of the suburbs for low- and middle-income single-family housing (pavillonnaire) contributed to further sprawl. The sustained suburbanization process was reflected in the decrease of the population of Paris and the petite couronne in the period between 1975 and 1990. However, this trend was partially reversed in the following two decades, which saw half of the 80

Fig. 3.5 Annual evolution of the population of Ile-de-France by community in the periods 1975 – 1990 and 1990 – 2009.

region’s net population growth occur within 20 km of Notre Dame (Fig. 3.5).56 Sadly, the relative “reconquer” of the city has been accompanied by growing socioeconomic segregation among the region’s geographic constituents. During the 1990s, Paris increasingly mirrored what Donzelot has described as the “three-gear city” (“ville à trois vitesses”), a model of city development characterized by a three-fold shift: the gentrification of the historic city-center, the middle-class (re)location to cheaper, but safe and well-preserved suburban areas, and the disqualification and marginalization of ­social housing estates.57 These trends have continued in the 21 st century, with ­especially higher income groups being spatially polarized, although in recent years there are some indications that segregation has been alleviated.58 New patterns of socio-spatial distribution have also appeared, as family structures become more complex, house-

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

Fig. 3.6  Typologies of the communities of Ile-de-France based on the characteristics of the housing stock and Rent hierarchy in 2011 (100 = lowest rent).

81

holds smaller, and the share of better-off citizens bigger. At the same time, incoming residents are no longer rural migrants, but immigrants from increasingly diverse countries who often settle in the poorest territories. Gentrification of certain areas and isolation of others are reflected in the housing market and residential typologies of Ile-deFrance and in the disparities among rent values (Fig. 3.6). Besides, it should be noted that after the massive urban growth period of the 1950s and 1960s, during which regional population grew by over 100,000 per year, growth has stabilized at an annual rate of 50,000 to 60,000 new inhabitants over the last forty years. The share of the population of Ile-de-France in the national total has remained roughly stable (18.2 % in 1962, 18.4 % in 2015). The region has nevertheless suffered from a chronic difficulty in matching its regular population growth with an adequate l­evel of housing production. The housing shortage has thwarted residential mobility and increased housing costs, forcing those with modest incomes to settle in less attractive residential areas or in remote parts of the agglomeration.59 Along with the lagging modernization of the public transport system, housing shortage and social marginalization have been among the most important issues affecting Ile-de-France.60

Threads in planning discourse and action In this section, I introduce certain “threads” characterizing the longue durée of the planning and development of Paris; crucial in understanding the ways that broader transformations have played out in the city’s specific context. Out of a long list of potential topics, I analyze the facets most relevant to appreciate evolving planning rationales, concerning metropolitan space in general and the CDG airport in particular, as will become obvious later. The threads are presented in three notes: the first concerns the ambivalent consideration of the Paris region in national planning priorities; the second, the dominance of the central state in its planning and development; and the third, the socioeconomic and political imbalance among the constituents of the region’s geographical space. At the end of this analysis, Fig. 3.7 combines these threads with the broader evolutions in terms of planning discussed in the previous paragraphs and outlines the most important administrative and legislative reforms. Paris, the (un)disputed metropolis In 1947, as France was embarking on the “golden era” of spatial planning, public opinion was shaken by a small book entitled Paris et le désert français (Paris and the French Desert). In the book, Jean-François Gravier, an economist working in the Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism, contended that French territory was unequally developed, with Paris chronically concentrating population, housing, jobs, services, education opportunities, infrastructures, higher living standards, and fiscal resources. Accordingly, he argued that the State should correct this disequilibrium by restraining the development of the “Parisian monster” and actively pursuing that of the national territory.61 This representation of Paris and the respective call for action were in many ways justified. Having been the French capital since the Middle Ages, Paris has historically consolidated national wealth and power. For centuries, it was the base of royal power and the place where the latter most obviously manifested its presence. Besides, 82

the fact that the constitution of nation-state in France occurred before the industrial revolution and the urban boom of the 19th century meant that it was the established capital that chiefly accumulated the fruits of this double revolution.62 Gravier’s decentralist thesis had strong and long-lasting repercussions throughout the government machinery. The “decentralist” agenda was present in the national fiveyear plans of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s, and in some ways it p ­ ersisted until the onset of the 21st century.63 In the first post-war decades, the focus on correcting territorial disparities was at its strongest.64 Development in the “province” was promoted, whereas in Paris spatial planning policies were “Malthusian”: they c­ onsisted in decongesting the city towards the suburbs, stabilizing population growth in the agglomeration, and promoting its deindustrialization.65 However, the central government’s stance was ambiguous: while pursuing the equilibration of the national territory, it also undertook a number of development projects in Paris. The regional plans developed in the first two post-war decades, in particular the Plan d’aménagement et d’organisation général de la région parisienne (PADOG ) of 1960, reflected this ambiguity,

oritized the development of particular places, so the value of Ile-de-France as a competitive asset in the emerging European inter-regional competition became obvious.68 Still, the established paradigm remained hard to shake and politically sensitive to disown. In 1993 – 1994 for example, in the national debate on spatial planning, the political agreement reached was on controlling the development of Ile-de-France.69 The regional plan of 1994, the SDRIF (Schéma Directeur de la Région d’Ile-de-France), nominally reflected this agreement by displaying restraint in the population and employment targets and land development. But also, the plan emphasized competitiveness, designated strategic territories and supported various development projects in the region.70 In parallel, large investment projects were planned, such as motorways, high-speed rail (TGV ) stations, sports stadia, and extensions at the Paris CDG airport (as discussed

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

featuring a contradiction between realistic demographic projections and recognition of the need to manage factual growth, and Malthusian land management.66 Additionally, the exhibited decentralist ethos concealed a concurrent unwillingness to either challenge the status quo of Parisian supremacy in several domains (such as governmental services, culture, or service economy), or discontinue using the capital’s image to enhance national prestige. With the creation of the District de la Région Parisienne in 1961, a rupture in the decentralist logic became clear.67 Instead of restraining the region’s development at all costs, the goal became to organize its functions as national capital and coordinate its development together with that of the other cities of the Parisian Basin. The Schéma ­Directeur d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région de Paris (SDAURP ) of 1965 contained a newfound determination to channel Paris’s factual urban growth through spatial planning. The extensive public transport network, housing quarters, new towns, as well as the development of the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, are only the most known of the projects carried out by public hand in the Paris region between the early 1960s and late 1970s, contributing to its radiance. At the same time, “Paris and the French desert” remained an important paradigm in public policy and spatial planning decisions, expressed in the work of DATAR . Only in the 1990s was this paradigm obviously challenged, when the discussion started shifting towards global cities and regional competitiveness. As spatial planning pri-

83

in Chapter 7). The double-sided attitude towards Paris of the 1990s was only a more obvious expression, in the emerging context of metropolitan competitiveness, of an otherwise long-lasting struggle between two desires: that of enhancing the capital’s international prestige, and that of tempering its antagonism with the provinces and balancing out its development.71 By the beginning of the 21st century, a consensus regarding the importance of the planning and development of the Paris region can nevertheless be said to have prevailed. The new dogma is that, rather than being punished, Paris should be prioritized.72 Accordingly, the directing of funds and the designation of several “clusters of competitiveness” in Ile-de-France73 were aimed at making the region more forward-­ looking and attractive for business. The new consensus has been driven by the need to reinforce the capital’s attractiveness, but also by the growing recognition of its aggravating social and environmental problems. Indeed, the recurrent neglect of Paris in spatial planning and urban policy has exacerbated issues like the housing shortage, the inadequacy of the public transport system, and the socioeconomic deprivation of certain areas.74 The launching of the Grand Paris debate in 2007 brought Paris to the forefront of public debate, mobilizing public action to address questions of both liv­ ability and competitiveness. The discussion of territorial selectivity versus equilibrium shifted from a Paris-versus-province debate to one about how development should be channeled within the region. Paris, the state bastion If the previous discussion showed the predicaments of planning Paris in a territorial context, it also began to reveal another of its traits: the domination of the central state in visions and plans about its urban development. Historically, the State has always treated Paris differently from other cities: the capital should represent its power, but it should also be controlled, as it was home to revolutions and riots.75 This long-term political stance has marked the institutional and spatial identity of the metropolis. It explains why the State has avoided establishing an authority at the metropolitan scale, rather seeking to exercise control over the capital’s development through its own institutions, as extensively analyzed by the geographer Philippe Subra.76 The economic importance of the city of Paris, home to the main French industrial groups, banks, and media, has been too high a stake to be either entirely trusted to the city government or shared with the representatives of the suburbs. Further, Paris has always been the symbolic locus of national political party rivalry; therefore, it has been of interest to the central government to ensure a favorable political representation. Illustratively, Subra refers to the right-dominated Gaullist period (1959 – 1969), during which the central government’s actions aimed to prevent the rise of a substantial Parisian counter-power that could have developed if Paris had been allowed to coalesce with the left-leaning suburbs of the petite couronne. At a time where many big provincial French cities acquired metropolitan-scale inter-municipal authorities, in Paris the ­District de la Région Parisienne was created instead. Placed under the direction of Paul Delouvrier, who reported directly to the Prime Minister, the District granted the State full control of regional urban development. Other institutions established at the time defined the contours of central state planning action, including the Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne (IAURP), put at the disposal of the District 84

to support plan-making activity, and the Agence Foncière et Technique de la Région Parisienne (AFTRP), dealing with land acquisition and development on behalf of the State. Besides, for most of the important decisions and projects of that period – new towns, urban development, public transport, and not least airport development – little consideration was given to the opinion of the region’s local governments (see discussion in Chapter 4). Unconditional State control over planning started waning at the end of the 1970s, and was largely dismantled by the decentralization reforms of the 1980s. However, the Paris region continued to receive special treatment and be subject to exceptions. Whereas the other French regions acquired the authority to produce strategic regional plans (schémas), in Ile-de-France this power remained at the hands of central government, which also maintained control of the public transport system. Of course, tensions were inevitable with local governments, which wanted to assert their newfound legitimacy. They could be seen, for instance, with the 1994 SDRIF, which was adopted

Fig. 3.7  Evolving planning paradigms, threads in planning discourse and action in Paris, and major legislative ­reforms between 1960 – 2015.

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

by the State despite the opposition of most local governments.77 Progressively though, State control did loosen. Local authorities acquired control of the towns and La Défense, and the Region obtained responsibility for the schéma directeur and majority control of the Transport Syndicate, the STIF (Syndicat des Transports Ile-de-France). The State seemed to be abandoning its firm grip on the planning of the capital region.78

85

In the last decade and a half, however, the Paris region has experienced what many observers have perceived as a “return of the State” in planning matters, seen as part of a broader “statist” shift in public discourse, especially under the Nicolas Sarkozy Presidency (2007 – 2012).79 In the planning of the Paris region, four actions after 2005 testified to the “return of the State,” according to Kantor et al.: first, the creation of Projects of National Interest (OIN , Opérations d’Interêt National) that gave priority to projects in specific parts of the regional territory; second, the implication of the State in the ­development of the SDRIF and related conflict with the Ile-de-France Region; third, the support given to the extension of La Défense; and fourth, the launching of the Grand Paris debate and its results.80 The latter was both an institutional and an urban-spatial project. Shortly after his election, Sarkozy put forward the question of lacking metropolitan governance as an impediment to the quest towards regional cohesion and regional growth. His initiative was welcomed by those believing that this long-neglected question should be tackled through strong State leadership, while criticized by others who saw it as an attack on decentralization.81 In parallel, the State promoted a spatial vision of the Paris region through launching a debate on Grand Paris. After many permutations, the governmental vision was encapsulated in an ambitious transport project, the Grand Paris Express Metro: an automated subway network connecting major hubs around central Paris while boosting development of the areas around its stops. The project’s sheer ambition, and its promotion through a related law (Loi Grand Paris, 2010) and a State-controlled pubic company (Société du Grand Paris) implied a desire for strong centrally led action in the manner of the 1960s. In fact, Sarkozy openly expressed his admiration for Paul Delouvrier’s spatial development operations. More than a decade after these initiatives, the “return of the State” has been tempered by more moderate discourses, negotiations, and a desire for consensus among governmental actors. Besides, the foundation of the Métropole de Grand Paris (MGP) has provided a response to the long-standing call for a metropolitan-wide institution, even though it is too early to affirm its success or effectiveness. Overall, the transition from the all-powerful State of the “golden era” to a multipolar, multi-actor system has not been reversed by the recent “return of the State.” That said, the central government remains involved in spatial planning through various channels; for example, by establishing dedicated planning and development agencies for specific areas (EPA , Établissements Public d’Aménagement), by reserving the power to ratify the SDRIF, and through the public land development agency AFTRP (recently renamed Grand Paris Aménagement). Apart from the fact that the long history of state command over the destiny of Paris is a hard-to-shake paradigm, there are also voices which claim that the implication of the central state in its planning is rendered necessary by the gravity of challenges facing the capital region. From this viewpoint, challenges regarding spatial coherence, competitiveness, sustainability, and urban quality highlight the need for strong leadership and ambitious spatial vision.82 In any case, the co-existence of a strong state and decentralized administrations has inevitably caused discordances in planning priorities – at times an almost schizophrenic situation, with the State setting visions for urban development, and local governments implementing their own plans. This context has undeniably affected planning rationales concerning the Paris CDG airport region. Besides, the airport’s nationally important function has put it among the spatial objects that the State wants to control directly; while at the same time, its 86

embedment in an increasingly multi-actor territorial context has been at the root of recurrent conflicts and impasses (see discussions in Chapters 6 and 8). The city, the suburbs, and the politics A third theme that provides valuable context to the planning history of the Paris region is the politicization of spatial action with reference to the dynamic relations among the region’s geographic constituents. There exists a long-standing connection between the socioeconomic characteristics of these constituents and their political leadership, which in turn affects the direction of spatial action. The symbolic role of the capital in politics, and the fact that local elected officials frequently also represent their political party in the national parliament further mean that planning action in Paris is often influenced by party rivalries.83

the 1960s, destined for uses mostly unworthy of planners’ attention: besides some manicured forests and holiday homes for the wealthy Parisian bourgeoisie, they m ­ ostly hosted working-class housing, industries, and miscellaneous space-intensive or polluting functions. Their urban development was determined by general rules about density and land cover, with no overall plan.84 Even after the proactive policies of regional urban development in the 1960s and 1970s, the divide between Paris and most suburbs in terms of political, financial and fiscal power, but also land values and social mix, remained considerable. This divide obtained an acute and tangible manifestation with the construction, in 1973, of the Boulevard Periphérique, the eight-lane ring road encircling the city of Paris and carrying a significant part of the agglomeration’s internal traffic. The Péripherique has consolidated the binary opposition between Paris intra-­muros and the banlieue in the mental map of the region’s inhabitants.85 For many communities of the banlieue, Paris has long been experienced as an imperialist power, unsympathetic to the problems of the suburbs and their inhabitants.86 This territorial antagonism not only concerns the city-suburb divide, but also reflects patterns of segregation related to the socio-spatial trajectories of metropolitan space discussed earlier. The confrontation between the “urban” and the “rural” part of the region, for instance, is long-standing and associated with mostly progressive leadership for the former and conservative leadership for the latter.87 Regarding the first-ring urban communities, many belong to what emerged in the 1920s as the “ceinture rouge” (“red belt”): a belt of working class suburbs north and east of Paris, where the communist party prevailed.88 Their mayors traditionally pursued more extensive social programs and exercised stricter land management than their regional counterparts. At various instances, these communities have been a powerful opposition to right-wing dominated politics.89 Conversely, the departments of Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines to the west emerged as strongholds of the bourgeoisie and conservative politics. The location of La Défense in Hauts-de-Seine, on the historic “royal axis,” sealed the upscale transformation of the area. In the context of urban restructuring of the late 20th century, deindustrialization and globalization forces have further increased disparities among parts of the metropolis, thereby also their policy priorities.

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

The political dominance of the city of Paris and its divide with the rest of the region must be considered first. Besides traditionally concentrating the most important national and regional functions, Paris boasts a tradition of large-scale urban plans and ambitious architectural projects. At the antipode, the city’s suburbs were, until at least

87

­ ecentralization forcing local governments to develop their own policies to adWith d dress economic development, urbanism and affordable housing, differences among ­ ealthier and poorer areas were highlighted and political opposition occurred along w new lines, making it difficult to agree on large-scale policies.90 As a result, development plans for certain areas have often acquired a distinctly political “flavor.” Land use planning remains contentious, especially concerning the urbanization of agricultural territories or the implementation of infrastructures.91 Although related conflicts do not necessarily follow party lines and may instead concern the expression of different local interests, they become more politicized when spatial transformation has the potential to substantially change the character and/or the revenues of the respective territory. Kantor et al. further refer to how political affiliations and rivalries have hindered the production of adequate policy responses to issues that concern the Paris region as a whole, such as quality of life, housing, transport, the environment, and its ­global standing – especially given the weak role of the Regional Council (CRIF ) in providing territorial leadership. They explain how, since the late 1990s in particular, discord has revolved around the deeply political antinomy “between those seeking to put economic competitiveness first on the political agenda and those who think social and territorial inequalities should be the priority of any development policy.” 92 Not surprisingly, coalitions have developed in accordance with political affiliations.93 Therefore, long-standing socioeconomic spatial disparities have fundamentally shaped the political expression of the territories in Ile-de-France, and the ways that these are implicated in planning discussions and the formulation of spatial policies.

88

­ enotes large-scale public works that may include collecd tive amenities (such as sports and cultural facilities) as well as transport and other infrastructures.  20 Nicolas Neiertz, La coordination des transports en France: de 1918 à nos jours (Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique, 2014).  21 Interviewed during the first year of his term, Giscard advocated for greater self-reflection and public dialogue, declaring that “[f]or French cities to become human again, elected officials and citizens must take charge of urban planning.” Original: “Pour que les villes françaises redeviennent humaines, il faut que les élus et les citadins prennent en charge l’urbanisme.” Robert Franc, “Giscard: ‘Changeons la ville’,” Le Point, 07.04 .1975 .  22  Loi n° 82 – 213 du 2 mars 1982 relative aux droits et libertés des communes, des départements et des régions; Loi n° 83 – 8 du 7 janvier 1983 relative à la répartition de compétences entre les communes, les départements, les régions et l’Etat. 23 Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe. 24  Vincent Renard, “Le sol et la ville,” Le Débat, no. 80 (1994).  25 Dominique Lorrain, “La production urbaine après la décentralisation,” Techniques, Territoires et sociétés 26 (1994).  26  There are four main local taxes in France: a tax on built land, a tax on undeveloped land, a domestic property tax, and a local business tax – called taxe professionelle until 2010 and since then replaced by the CET (contribution économique territoriale). The latter is usually the most important financially.  27  Olivier Borraz, “Xv. Les territoires oubliés de la décentralisation,” Annuaire des Collectivités Locales 24, no. 1 (2004).  28 Alain Motte, Schéma directeur et projet d’agglomération, l’expérimentation de nouvelles politiques urbaines spatialisées, 1981 – 1993 (Éditions Juris service, 1995).  29 Delamarre, Lacour, and Thoin, 50 ans d’aménagement du territoire.  30 Motte, Schéma directeur et projet d’agglomération, l’expérimentation de nouvelles politiques urbaines spatialisées, 1981 – 1993.  31  Loi d’Orientation pour l’Aménagement et le Développement du Territoire, also known as Loi Pasqua, and Loi d’Orientation pour l’Aménagement et le Développement Durable du Territoire, also known as or Loi Voynet, respectively.  32 Anna Geppert, “France, Drifting Away from the ‘Regional Economic’ Approach,” in Spatial Planning Systems and Practices in Europe: A Comparative Perspective on Continuity and Changes, ed. Mario Reimer, Panagiotes Getimes, and Hans Heinrich Blotevogel (New York, NY : Routledge, 2014).  33  Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe, p. 172.  34  Geppert, “France, Drifting Away from the ‘Regional Economic’ Approach,” p. 112.  35 The Loi no 95 101 du 2 février 1995 relative au renforcement de la protection de l’environnement, also known as Loi Barnier, introduced public hearings prior to major spatial development projects. The Loi n° 2002-276 du 27 février 2002 relative à la démocratie de proximité, also known as Loi Vaillant, multiplied the possibilities for consulation also at the local scale.  36  The Paris region, Ile-de-France, constitutes an exception, as it retained a legally binding schéma directeur at the regional scale.  37 Alain Motte, La notion de planification stratégique spatialisée en Europe (Paris-La Défense: PUCA , 2006).  38  Cooperative structures existed before, mostly in the form of Intercommunal

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

1  The frequently used English “urbanism” is a neologism derived from the French term, used in different semantic ways depending on the source.  2  Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe.  3  European Commission, “The EU Compendium of Spatial Planning Systems and Policies.”  4  Salet, Thornley, and Kreukels, “Institutional and Spatial Coordination in European Metropolitan Regions.” 5 Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe. 6  Salet, Thornley, and Kreukels, “Institutional and Spatial Coordination in European Metropolitan Regions.”  7 European Commission, “The EU Compendium of Spatial Planning Systems and Policies.”  8  Joaquín Farinós Dasí, “Governance of Territorial and Urban Policies. Final Report” (ESPON project 2.3.2, 2007 ).  9  Ariette Delamarre, Claude Lacour, and Muriel Thoin, 50 ans d’aménagement du territoire, ed. Commissariat général à l’égalité des territoires (CGET ) (La Documentation française, 2015).  10 Christel Alvergne, Pierre Musso, and DIACT , eds., Les grands textes de l’aménagement du territoire et de la décentralisation (Paris: La Documentation française, 2008), 131. The French tradition of aménagement du territoire is the main reference for the “regional economic planning approach” as defined by the EU Compendium of spatial planning systems. The term was coined in 1950 by Eugène Claudius-­ Petit, then Minister of Reconstruction and Urbanism. 11  Not to be confused with institutional or administrative decentralization, economic decentralization refers to the policy aimed at reducing the relative weight of major economic clusters and promoting the development of peripheral clusters in national territorial development.  12 Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe.  13 The départements (departments) are a French administrative subdivision and local government level. They were created in 1790 by the post-French revolution National Assembly, which also created the communes (communities) that were the successors of medieval parishes. The departments and communities are governed by councils elected every six years.  14  The word “proactive” is an approximate rendering of the French volontariste, used to describe policy-making triggered by a strong will to act and the corresponding authority to implement.  15 Delamarre, Lacour, and Thoin, 50 ans d’aménagement du territoire. 16  Paul Kantor et al., Struggling Giants: City-Region Governance in London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo (Minnea­ polis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).  17 Pierre ­Merlin, L’aménagement du territoire en France (La Documentation française, 2007 ).  18  The École des Ponts et Chaussées historically trained engineers to serve in the high ranks of public administration by becoming part of the much-respected Corps of Engineers of Bridges and Roads (Corps des ingénieurs des ponts et chaussées, and since 2009 Corps des ponts, des eaux et de forêts), one of the oldest professional corps in France. 19 JeanClaude Thoenig, L’ère des technocrates: le cas des Ponts et Chaussées (L’Harmattan, 1987 ). In 1966 the Ministries of Construction (Ministère de Construction) and Public Works (Ministère des Trauvaux Publics) were merged to create the Ministry of Amenities and Infrastructures (Ministère de l’Équipement). Let me note here that the duo “amenities and infrastructures” is used a ­ pproximately to convey the French term “équipement(s),” which

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Syndicates or Federations (Syndicats Intercommunaux). EPCI with integrated taxation possibilities were first created in 1992, but the 1999 law clarified their mandatory and optional competences. It defined three types of fiscally autonomous inter-municipal authorities: the communautés de communes (CC ) for sparsely populated rural areas; the communautés d’agglomération (CA ), with a minimum population of 50,000 inhabitants; and the communautés urbaines (CU ), with a minimum population of 500,000. Other types of inter-municipal groupings include the syndicats intercommunaux, the syndicats mixtes, the pôles métropolitains, etc.  39  Philippe Estèbe, “Le terrritoire est-il un bon instrument de la redistribution? Le cas de la réforme de l’intercommunalité en France,” Lien social et Politiques, no. 52 (2004).  40  In France, politicians typically hold more than one office. Many deputies in the national assembly (including ministries) are also local mayors, or presidents of departmental or regional councils (with two maximum such roles as per 1985). This situation provides room for exercising political leverage. 41 Geppert, “France, Drifting Away from the ‘Regional Economic’ Approach.”  42  Nicolas Douay, “La planification urbaine française: théories, normes juridiques et défis pour la pratique,” L’Information géographique 77, no. 3 (2013).  43 Geppert, “France, Drifting Away from the ­‘Regional Economic’ Approach.”  44  Bas Waterhout, Frank Othengrafen, and Olivier Sykes, “Neo-Liberalization  Processes and Spatial Planning in France, Germany, and the Netherlands: An Exploration,” Planning Practice & Research 28 , no.  1 (2013).  45  Ibid., p. 153.  46 Delamarre, Lacour, and Thoin, 50 ans d’aménagement du territoire; Merlin, L’aménagement du territoire en France; JeanPierre Palisse, “Mettre la planification au service du projet,” in Urbanismes de projet, ed. IAU -IdF, Les Cahiers de l’IAU Idf (Paris: 2012). The laws Grenelle I (2009) and Grenelle II (2010) took several measures concerning the transition towards a trajectory of “green growth” in six domains: construction and urban planning, transport, energy, biodiversity, public health, and governance. In terms of urban planning, it added several “greening” provisions to planning documents. 47 Douay, “La planification urbaine française.”  48  Jobs refer to the active labor force (emplois actifs) and exclude unemployed persons. The numbers given here include both paid and unpaid jobs (emplois salaries et non-salariés).  49  Each department is represented by a two-digit number as follows: Paris 75, Hauts-de-Seine 92, Seine-Saint-Denis 93, Val-de-Marne 94 , Seine-et-Marne 77, Essonne 91, Yvelines 78 , Val-d’Oise 95.  50  See for example: Philippe Subra, Le Grand Paris. 25 questions décisives (Paris: A. Colin, 2009).  51  In the MGP , existing EPCIs have been transformed into twelve EPTs (Établissements Publics Territoriaux), inter-communal authorities partly subordinate to the MGP that correspond to geographic sectors with a minimum of 300,000 inhabitants each.  52  The heads of the departments and the region have been less than positive about the new entity that impinges upon their responsibilities and sidesteps their elected representatives. The negativism is all the more fueled by the fact that the legal and budgetary regime of the MGP remains unsettled. The most critical voices have described the MGP as an “indigestible dish

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of political and administrative noodles” that lacks real power while nullifying other powers. Hervé Liffran, “Le grand foutoir du Grand Paris,” Le Canard enchaîné, 28 .06.2017; Mathias Thépot, “Grand Paris: le mille-feuille administratif fait toujours débat,” La Tribune, 14 .10.2016. 53  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  54  IAU -IdF, ed. Atlas des Franciliens (Paris: IAU Ile de France, 2013).  55 Claude Cottour, “Une brève histoire de l’aménagement de Paris et sa région” (D.R.I.E.A. , 2008).  56  IAU -IdF, Atlas des Franciliens.  57  Jacques Donzelot, “La ville à trois vitesses: relégation, périurbanisation, gentrification,” Esprit 2004 . 58  Simon Jézéquel, “La ségrégation socio-spatiale en Ilede-France: mesures et enjeux,” Compas études No 18 (2016).  59  IAU -IdF, Atlas des Franciliens.  60 Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  61  Jean-François Gravier and Raoul Dautry, Paris et le désert français: décentralisation, équipement, population (Le Portulan, 1947 ).  62 Indeed, France has historically functioned as a “macrocephalic” system, rather than like a network of complementary cities, as is the case of Germany, Italy, or Switzerland. Philippe Subra, Le Grand Paris: Géopolitique d’une ville mondiale (Paris: A. Colin, 2012).  63  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  64  This focus was transcribed in a series of measures, including mechanisms of public investment in the “province,” transfers of public organizations and educational institutions, incentives for firms to settle outside the Paris region, infrastructural development, and the policy of “metropolises of equilibrium,” eight metropolitan areas designated in 1964 as priority growth areas intended to “relieve” the Paris region (Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing, Nancy-Metz, Lyon-Saint-Etienne-Grenoble, Aix-Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes-Saint-Nazaire, and Strasbourg).  65 The results of this political attitude were nonetheless mixed. For instance, whereas regional metropolises like Lyon, Lille, or Strasbourg indeed gained in importance and experienced urban and economic growth, so did Paris. This growth can certainly be attributed to the inescapable magnetism of the capital, whose established economy, amenities and prestige continued to attract businesses and population.  66  Vincent Fouchier, “L’amé­ nagement de la région Ile-de-France,” in Dossier Villes Nouvelles Françaises 2001 – 2005 (Centre de Ressources Documentaires Aménagement Logement Nature (CRDANL ), 1999).  67 Subra, Le Grand Paris. 25 questions décisives.  68 Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  69 Not least partly because the dissipation of some of the Paris-province rivalry was expected to score political points. Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe. 70  Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “Ile de France. Schéma Directeur 2015,” ed. Direction Régionale de l’Equipement (1994).  71  Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe.  72  Christian Lefèvre, “Le système de gouvernance de l’Ile de France, entre globalisation et décentralisation,” Pouvoirs Locaux: les cahiers de la décentralisation / Institut de la décentralisation, no. 81 (2009).  73 The “pôles de compétitivité” are well-defined territorial clusters where private firms, research institutions, and educational establishments receive financial ­incentives to develop synergies and work in cooperation around a shared theme. There are 71 such clusters in France, 11 of which are located in Ile-de-France.  74 Kan-

questions décisives. For almost 25 years (1977 – 2001), political representation in the city of Paris was in the hands of the conservative party, implying a permanent political alienation with many communities of the petite couronne that had socialist or communist mayors. For important decisions, the governments of these communities preferred to distance themselves from Paris and coalesce instead with politically more sympathetic government levels, be it the departments or the region.  87  Romain Pasquier, Le pouvoir régional. Mobilisations, décentralisation et gouvernance en France (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po (P.F.N.S.P. ), 2012).  88  Some of the most long-standing communities of the ceinture rouge are Saint-Denis, ­Aubervillers, Tremblay-en-France and Montreuil in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis; Villejuif and Ville­ neuve-le-Roi in Val-de-Marne.  89  In the heyday of the post-war period, the “threat” that these communities posed to central government action is reflected in the delimitation of new territorial entities during the administrative reform of 1964 / 1968. The official argument in support of the reform was the creation of smaller entities that would bring government closer to citizens; but the government also aimed at concentrating the majority communist communities in two of the new departments, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne, essentially “sacrificing” these departments to ensure that the other ones would never have a left-wing majority. Subra and N ­ ewman, “Governing Paris – Planning and Political Conflict in Ile-deFrance.”  90  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  91  See for example: Ségolène Darly, “Faire coexister ville et agriculture au sein des terrritoires périurbains: antagonismes localisés et dynamiques régionales de la conflictualité. Analyse du cas de l’Ile de France” (Thesis, Paris, EHESS , 2009).  92  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants, p. 180.  93 For instance, in 2008 the departments of Hauts-de-Seine and Yvelines, who had already distanced themselves from the rest of Ile-de-France by setting up their own land corporations and other authorities, sided with the UMP -led central government in rejecting the regional plan ( SDRIF ) submitted by the region, on the grounds that it did not place enough emphasis on economic development and competitiveness.

CHAPTER 3  Planning in Paris

tor et al., Struggling Giants.  75  Philippe Subra and Peter Newman, “Governing Paris – Planning and Political Conflict in Ile-de-France,” European Planning Studies 16, no.  4 (2008).  76 See from this author: Philippe Subra, ­“L’Ile-de-France,” in Nouvelle géopolitique des régions françaises, ed. Béatrice Giblin (Paris: Fayard, 2005); Subra and Newman, “Governing Paris – Planning and Political Conflict in Ile-de-France.”; Subra, Le Grand Paris: Géopolitique d’une ville mondiale.  77  Subra and Newman, “Governing Paris – Planning and Political Conflict in Ile-deFrance.”  78  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  79  See for example: Lefèvre, “Le système de gouvernance de l’Ile de France, entre globalisation et décentralisation.”; Kantor et al., Struggling Giants; Subra, Le Grand Paris: Géopolitique d’une ville mondiale; Jonah Levy, “The Return of the State? French Economic Policy under Nicolas Sarkozy” (Rochester, NY : Social Science Research Network, 2011). 80  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  81 Subra, Le Grand Paris. 25 questions décisives; Xavier Desjardins, “La bataille du Grand Paris,” L’Information géographique 74 , no. 4 (2010).  82  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  83 For most of France’s modern history, politics have been dominated by two major parties, the conservative or right party and the socialist party. The former has changed names over time, as UNR (1958 – 1967 ), UDR (1968 – 1976), RPR (1976 – 2002), UMP after its merging with the center-right UDF (2002 – 2015), and Les Républicains (2015 –). The socialist party, named CFIO until 1969, has kept the name PS (Parti Socialiste) ever since. Additionally, the communist party, the PCF , has had a lastingly important role in French politics, sometimes in coalition with other parties of the left. Other variations of political parties have appeared over time, but the main components have been more or less stable, up until the considerable changes in the political landscape occurring after 2010.  84 Cottour, “Une brève histoire de l’aménagement de Paris et sa région.”  85  During the Grand Paris consultation, the British architect Richard Rogers eloquently expressed this schism by declaring: “I don’t know any big city in which the heart is detached from its members to that extent.” Quoted in Michel Bleier et al., “Gouverner la métropole du Grand Paris,” in Systèmes Métropolitains (Atelier International du Grand Paris, 2013).  86 Subra, Le Grand Paris. 25

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CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974) Aviation and technocracy in the post-war period Establishing the necessity of a new airport Planning the deployment of Paris-Nord and the 1965 SDAURP First ramifications of projected externalities The airport as economic structuring facility Channeling development: the working group Paris-Nord Development versus planning The autonomous airport site

 T

he Paris-Nord airport – as Paris Charles de Gaulle was first called – comes to life at the height of the “golden era” of planning; a time marked by economic growth, centralized planning, technocracy, the prolific production of large-scale plans, and the widespread belief in continued technological and societal advancement. The airport is first proposed in the late 1950s as the solution to the problem of lacking capacity in the face of growing air traffic. Its construction in the northeastern periphery of Paris is ­decided in 1964, and the airport opens its gates ten years later. This chapter examines this early history, or rather prehistory of the Paris CDG region. Between the conception of the airport against the backdrop of strong central support for the development of aviation and its inauguration in a climate of emerging uncertainty, the previously inconspicuous area of Plaine de France becomes the field of major planning acts. The ambition to develop the aviation infrastructure of the capital gives rise to a powerful actor in spatial planning, the airport authority Aéroport de Paris (ADP). The role of CDG as a national asset whose operation needs to be safeguarded endows it with an

autonomous spatial logic analogous to its technical autonomy. And while the role of the projected airport as an economic structuring facility is recognized, the expected impacts of its operation on its surroundings are belatedly or insufficiently considered, leaving the field open to different interpretations and allowing ad hoc development concepts to emerge.

Aviation and technocracy in the post-war ­period Although the official decision to build Paris Charles de Gaulle was taken in 1964, the beginnings of its history must already be sought in the events and political resolutions of the period following the end of World War II . The aftermath of the war found France engaged in a far-reaching national reconstruction effort with a focus on heavy industry and infrastructure. In a backdrop of growing transatlantic cooperation, air transport emerged as a compelling new area for economic development. The expansion of civil aviation promised to modernize the French economy, while defending its interests in the international market. Hence, the connection of the French capital with the world via air was deemed a matter of national prestige; the idea of drawing on the global reputation and geographic position of Paris to establish a large base for transatlantic traffic soon took off in government circles.1 How this base would materialize was initially far from obvious. Before the war, the few civilians that had the luxury to travel by air had reached Paris mainly through “Le Bourget,” located around 11 kilometers north of the city amidst its sprawling suburbs.2 Yet Le Bourget was not only severely damaged by bombing, but more importantly had limited expansion possibilities. The solution was found some 13 kilometers south of Paris: there was “Orly-Villeneuve,” a rather rudimentary airfield used for military exercises and pilot lessons. The state authorities considered that the site’s relatively ample size, along with the presence of terrestrial infrastructure made it appropriate to host the new national airport.3 Orly-Villeneuve was to be thoroughly transformed to serve as “Paris Orly.” In a horizon of twenty years, it should have been able to host 94

most of the 6 million air passengers projected by the engineers of 1946 (a number actually reached in 1965). Its development was a grand undertaking, as aviation techniques were still in their infancy, and environmental conditions like predominant winds were decisive. Facilities of unprecedented extent were implemented: terminal spaces, hangars, runways, access ways, radars, control tower, etc. By the mid-1950s, the new Paris Orly airport

enlarging one of the existing runways and making space for two additional ones.4 Along with first-class tarmac infrastructure, the expansion endowed Orly with the South Terminal (Aérogare Sud), which became a famed cultural and touristic landmark, symbolizing Fig. 4.1  The Orly airport in 1956. post-war recovery, modernity, and cultural and economic progress (Fig. 4.2).5 The rapid and extensive development of Orly over the 1950s manifested the presence of a new, powerful player in the institutional landscape of the Paris region: Aéroport de Paris, ADP for short. Created in 1945 as a public establishment under the auspices of the Ministère des Travaux Publics et des Transports (Ministry of Public Works and Transports), followed shortly after by the establishment of the Secrétariat général de l’aviation civile et commercialle (SGACC , after 1976 DGAC), ADP was endowed with the crème de la crème of civil servants and some well-oiled executive machinery.6 Over the next two decades, it was granted ever greater autonomy as well as privileged ties to the central administration and the national carrier Air France. Its empowered position was closely linked to the prioritization of civil aviation in the governmental agenda and the related objectives of ensuring the international competitiveness of the French aerospace industry, centralizing the French airport system, and creating a large airport in the Paris region.7 This agenda set the basis for the continuing prominence of airport infrastructure in the state planning of the following decades – eventually leading to the decision to build Paris CDG . The institutional arrangements of this period likewise had a profound, if less conspicuous, legacy. According to Charlotte Halpern, three facets in particular were critical for airport-related developments up to at least the 1990s.8 The first concerns the positioning of Fig. 4 .2  Perspective of the Orly South Terminal from the highway RN 7.

civil aviation and its infrastructure as eminently technical fields, sheltering them from

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

had three functioning runways and a provisional ­terminal (Fig. 4.1). A major expansion between 1957 and 1961 doubled the airfield size,

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Fig. 4 .3  The extension of Orly as depicted in the promotional film “Aéroport de Paris 1958 .”

the vagaries of politics. The prioritization of the technical-rational dimension of air transport strengthened its sectorial boundaries, all while legitimizing political c­ hoices about airport infrastructure apparently made outside this sectorial framework. Second, due to its specific and novel nature, aviation infrastructure was entrusted in the hands of a techno-administrative elite that enjoyed great autonomy and influence. Consisting mostly of senior civil servants trained as engineers, this elite staffed ADP along with other arms of the state machinery (see also Chapter 3). Its great influence on the state decision-making system “fed on social, cultural, statutory, [and] economic mechanisms, on closure, elitism, professional legitimacy, and the rhetoric of public service and the general interest.”9 Thanks to this influence, technocrats were able to consolidate expertise and information and intervene early on in decision-making processes. Finally, the third legacy concerned the connection of air transport-related public action to the overarching and quasi-universally embraced goals of the general (public) interest and technological innovation. Reference to these goals provided political and technical legitimacy respectively to the strategies of air transport actors – ADP, Air France and central administration. Thanks to their common interest in the centralization and development of French air transport, and to the sharing of technical and informational resources, the nexus of these actors could steer planning towards their respective strategies in the name of the above goals. The legitimacy of their actions remained implicit even when the public interest and technological innovation were no longer widely agreed upon values, and even when conflicts inside the nexus appeared. The structures instituted in the 1950s thus cemented the technocratic character and decision-making autonomy of ADP, and established airport planning and development as a distinct domain of public action. But the prioritization of the technical-­ rational dimension of air transport also had another effect: it signified the intellectual detachment of airport planning from urban planning, having its corollary in a territorial detachment. While the increasing size, technical specifications and disturbing impacts of operating airfields did point to the necessity of physically separating them from the urban fabric, this detachment was broader, since the spatial deployment of airports was seen as distinct from the planning of metropolitan space. While urban planners acknowledged airports as key national infrastructures, spatial choices about them were discussed within the bounds of the Ministry of Public Works and Transports, the supervising authority for ADP, rather than the Ministry of Construction and Urbanism responsible for spatial planning. Planners from both groups ascribed an important role to the form of the airport buildings and its reception by the public; for instance, the monumental view of Orly’s South Terminal from the highway and its 96

­architectural innovation testified to enduring and widespread views of the airport as a national “storefront” and symbol of modernity.10 But these features concerned the airport’s own materiality much more than its relation with the city, and thus strengthened its exceptional character. Representations of Orly at that time were mostly devoid of urban context: the airport was routinely drawn without or with barely noticeable surroundings; texts contained little reference to how its services complemented or competed with those of the city. The promulgation to the public of the 1957 – 1961 extension focused on technical achievements, practical benefits, and further development perspectives (Fig. 4.3). Little to nothing was said about Orly’s impacts on the urban structure – save for its contribution to economic development, in line with the overarching role of aviation for the general interest.11 At the same time though, the national stake of safeguarding airport operation and expansion implied the necessity of a pragmatic and strategic perspective with regard to metropolitan land reserves. In and around airports, enough space had to be reserved

Fig. 4 .4  Excerpt of the PADOG general map showing the envisaged urban center of Le Bourget (asterisk) and the study zone for the Paris-Nord airport.

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

to secure safe aircraft movements, allow space for expansion, and also avoid affecting the surroundings with pollution and noise. The potential conflict of the continuing development of Orly and Le Bourget with urbanized space started being discussed in the late 1950s, as evidenced in the writings of Pierre D. Cot, general director of ADP between 1955 and 1967.12 Land management in relation to airports was thus one of the few topics that brought to the same table urban planners and airport planners – especially when aviation needs and metropolitan development needs overlapped in space. This last point is illustrated in the events surrounding the elaboration of the 1960 regional plan (PADOG ). The PADOG , as well as its 1956 predecessor (PARP), recognized

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the importance of aviation and the need to secure the aerial connectivity of the capital by developing Orly. Taking into account that these plans were elaborated in a spirit of limiting the growth of Paris,13 this indicated how equally strong the desire was to enhance its national-level infrastructure. At the same time, in the context of the limited agglomeration perimeter defended in the PADOG , airports occupied valuable urban space. Hence, in 1958, the urban planners of the Ministry of Construction declared their desire for Le Bourget to close, so as to allow for the development, in its place, of a new urban center that would structure the northern periphery of Paris.14 The project became a matter of fierce negotiation with ADP, who was about to start building in Le Bourget a new runway to respond to the traffic needs that Orly alone was not (yet) able to cover. The urban planners’ proposal to transfer Le Bourget further away from Paris was emphatically rejected by the airport authority, who wanted to maintain proximity to the Paris decision-making center.15 Eventually, ADP agreed to study the closure of Le Bourget, as long as surface for a future airport location was reserved inside the ­Paris region. This compromise resulted in the PADOG featuring a “reserve” of 3,500 hectares in the northeastern part of the region, referred to as a “study zone for the North airport” (zone d’étude de l’aérodrome Nord) (Fig. 4.4). As it turned out, ADP had little intention of closing Le Bourget. Shortly after publication of the PADOG , the District of the Paris Region was created, and its new planning team sided with the airport authority. In 1963, the planners declared that, with urbanizable terrains now sought after outside the agglomeration perimeter, the closure of Le Bourget – though still desirable – did not constitute anymore the “necessary germ for the organized development of the northern sector of Paris”;16 and could therefore be pushed further into the future. ADP ’s continuing investments in Le Bourget, along with the subsequent selection of other areas for urbanization by the District’s planners, eventually rendered the plan obsolete. Le Bourget never closed, although it stopped operating as an international airport in 1977. But regardless of whether the plan to use its land for urban development was realistic or timely, this episode demonstrates the capacity of aviation and technocracy representatives to influence spatial development decisions for the Paris region. This capacity reached its peak during the 1960s. In parallel, by the beginning of the decade, the growing demand for air travel allowed ADP to frame the development of a new airport as necessary in itself and thus not contingent upon the replacement of Le Bourget. So, the reserve included in the PADOG became the foundation of the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.

Establishing the necessity of a new airport Prompted by the steady increase in air traffic, ADP had already engaged the first explorative studies about a possible third airport in the Paris region in 1957. By the early 1960s, the distant prospect had become a real possibility. In addition to the desire to use the land occupied by Le Bourget for urban development, as discussed above, two further issues suggested the necessity of a new Parisian airport. The first was the capacity limits of the operating airports. Between 1952 and 1960, air passenger traffic doubled from 1.8 to 3.6 million passengers, corresponding to an increase of 9 % per year on average. By 1964, it would reach 5.8 million, featuring up to 13 % annual growth.17 In 98

Fig. 4 .5  Left: Ground plan of Orly in 1963 with projected extension in blue. Right: Ground plan of Le Bourget in 1963.

of passengers reached by 1972, namely 15 million, would correspond to the maximum capacity threshold of Orly and Le Bourget combined, even with all conceivable extensions implemented (Fig. 4.5).18 The second issue was the possible entry into service of supersonic aircraft.19 At the time, it was thought that the demands of these airplanes in terms of runway infra­ structure were superior to conventional ones. Also, supersonic aircraft produced much more noise during their approach paths, on-ground circulation, and “sonic boom” when crossing the sound barrier.20 With the first complaints about aircraft noise starting to arise from residents of communities near Orly, ADP planners became mindful of the need to minimize noise exposure around airfields: ideally, runways should be preceded by adequately long non-inhabited approach zones. But such conditions could not be found in either Orly or Le Bourget, both surrounded by residential areas. The expropriation of sufficient terrains around any of them was likewise financially out of question.21 The engineers of ADP were thus increasingly convinced that the insufficiency and inappropriateness of the two functioning Paris airports in the medium- to longterm made the development of a new airport imperative. For this prospective airport, optimal expansion conditions needed to be secured. The site had to be far enough from urbanized areas to incur minimum annoyance, and large enough to possess room for development; but it should also be close enough to Paris to avoid inflating the cost of access infrastructure or discouraging travelers from using it.22 Only one site, namely the reserve included in the PADOG , fulfilled all the necessary criteria. It was located in the plateau of Vieille France, more commonly called Plaine de France, northeast of Paris.23 Plaine de France was predominantly ­agricultural and sparsely urbanized. Defined by the rivers of Seine, Marne, and Oise, it had been for centuries the “breadbasket” of Paris, and was still largely comprised of rural ­settlements. Some peri-urbanization tendencies had appeared around rail stations prewar, and were somewhat intensified during the 1950s and early 1960s.24 But these built-up a ­ reas were considered far enough from the site of the new airport to remain ­unaffected in

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

1962, the ADP engineers calculated that if this growth rate was sustained, the number

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Fig. 4 .6  Map showing the projected perimeter of Paris CDG and surrounding villages.

terms of noise. Only a handful of villages were expected to be seriously affected. Besides, the area’s thinly inhabited character made it possible to appropriate only agricultural land, without the need to dislocate any populations. Another major asset was the site’s good road access through the Autoroute du Nord (national highway A1), at that time in construction. The highway could be planned with a trench at the level of the airport to allow the future runway to cross over; a link to the rail network could also be envisaged.25 Armed with these arguments and extensive data compiled by its engineers, economists, and statisticians, ADP had no difficulty presenting and imposing its vision for a new airport of gigantic size upon the state: 3,100 hectares, or two-and-a-half times that of Orly.26 According to the plans, the airfield would be located about 25 km from central Paris and its terrain would be shared among the three newly established départements and their respective communes: Roissy-en-France and Epiais-lès-Louvres in Val-d’Oise; Mauregard, Le Mesnil-Amelot, and Mitry-Mory in Seine-et-Marne; and Goussainville and Tremblay-lès-Gonesse (after 1988 Tremblay-en-France) in SeineSaint-Denis (Fig. 4.6).27 In June 1964, the construction of the Aéroport Paris-Nord was ­officially ­decided by joint ministerial decree, and confirmed in October of the same year.

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Planning the deployment of Paris-Nord and the 1965 SDAURP The resolution about the development of the new Paris-Nord airport coincided with the elaboration of the Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région de Paris (SDAURP), published in early 1965. The District of the Paris Region, which had sidelined existing planning authorities since its inception in 1961, conceived the SDAURP as the

three pillars: the creation of new urban centers, the channeling of urbanization along “preferential axes,” and the spatial unity of the whole.29 The plan’s most famous and innovative project was the new towns (villes nouvelles). Envisaged at the limits of the Paris region, these new totally planned conurbations, eight in total, would each accommodate between 300,000 and 1 million residents. Moreover, local centers were to be established in the petite couronne to “restructure” the suburbs; and the business district La Défense was to be developed directly west of Paris in the Seine valley. The preferential axes, encapsulating these new centers, followed the Parisian Basin’s valleys and plateaus: a double main axis along the two sides of the Seine river on its downstream course to the west; and its extensions, along the Marne to the east and along the Seine to the southeast. Finally, the unity of the whole would be ensured by extensive new transport infrastructure: several highways radiating outwards from Paris, three concentric ring roads, as well as two new RER lines crossing the region north-south.30 The projected Paris-Nord airport appeared to fit neatly with both the growth forecasts and the comprehensive spatial development project of the SDAURP. The plan’s authors professed that “the expansion of the [economic] relations between Paris and foreign capitals … leads to envisage the opening of a new airport in about a decade, in the same way that it has encouraged the development of the trans-European rail network and the creation of a system of international highways.”31 The role of Paris-Nord as catalytic infrastructure for the economic positioning of France was affirmed. At the same time, its localization in the sparsely urbanized Plaine de France allowed the authors of the SDAURP to distance themselves from the spatial planning choices of their predecessors: The experience of the past and of a non-mindful urban development shows that constraints were not always absolutely respected: thus, housing complexes were constructed in the noise zones of the airport of Orly, or in the place of necessary green areas. … For these mistakes not to be repeated, it is useful to mark the directions banned [from development], and it is suitable to be stricter than before in respecting these bans. Among those … in the north-east, the future North airport will comprise, based on the information currently available, a noise zone that will stretch on 25 kilometers from east to west, approximately from Juilly to Ecouen.32

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

showpiece of a new spatial development policy that broke with previous Malthusian approaches (see Chapter 3). For Paul Delouvrier and his team, the growth dynamic of the capital meant that the mere transfer of density from the center to the suburbs was insufficient: Paris had to break out of its limits.28 Projecting a regional population of 14 million for 2000 (11.6 million by 1985), the SDAURP prescribed a set of strategies based on

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Fig. 4 .7  Schematic planning principles of the SDAURP for the development of the Paris region, and projected noise impact of Orly and CDG airports.

Indeed, the projected “noise zone” of the new airport, determined through the early measurement and modeling tools available at the time, was included in most maps of the SDAURP (Fig. 4.7). Whereas Orly’s operation was already disruptive for its urbanized surroundings,33 for Paris-Nord the contours indicated that barely any built-up ­areas would be affected: the villages around the future airport were too small to even be depicted and inhabited zones to its south and west appeared beyond its impact. Equally importantly, and conveniently for the plan’s overall concept, the prospect of the new airport could be considered as a barrier to urbanization. The SDAURP thus proclaimed Paris-Nord as the logical limit of the preferential axis that extended northwest to the projected new towns of Beauchamp and Pontoise-Cergy: Hence is confirmed on the ground one of the major choices of the planning action, which consists in limiting the extension of the Parisian agglomeration towards the north by maintaining the Plaine de France as agricultural zone. … An additional consequence of these constraints is the limitation of the development of the suburbs close to the airport, in the areas of Aulnay, Sevran, and Villepinte.34 While disembarrassing the new airport of urbanization, the SDAURP recommended that it be efficiently linked by land with the major urban centers of the region, in concert with its role as nationally important infrastructure. The establishment of good land connections to the Parisian airports was not a new theme: already before the 102

war, access to airfields by large thoroughfares was associated with national security on the one hand, and their prestigious and symbolic role on the other hand. Orly was developed concurrently with the RN 7, and its popularity very much benefited from its easy access by car. For Paris-Nord, ground connections were part of the comprehensive r­ egional transport planning agenda. In addition to the A1 highway that would link the airport, Paris and the northern French regions, the SDAURP projected a north-south RER line with stops at Paris-Nord, Orly, and the main stations in between (Fig. 4.8). Moreover, following the SDAURP an additional project incarnating efficient and fast access to the airports was promoted, the aérotrain. Conceived by the visionary engineer Jean Bertin, the aérotrain was a pioneering turbo hover-train that was projected to put France at the forefront of innovation. Starting in 1969, ADP and the central administration promoted the idea to use the aérotrain to materialize a direct link between Orly and CDG . The train was to follow a 56-kilometer route at the east of the agglomeration, with a potential stop at the new town of Marne-la-Vallée, linking the two airports in less than half an hour.

Fig. 4 .8  Diagram of the three RER (Réseau Express Régional) train lines suggested by the SDAURP : ­east-west (in red), 1st north-south (in light blue), 2nd north-south (in dark blue).

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

The provisions of the SDAURP and the aérotrain project were indicative of a ­period in which the goals of airport and city planning authorities seemed to largely coincide, in

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a climate for public action instilled by technocracy, rationality and comprehensiveness. In the SDAURP, airports and urbanization were not

incompatible, as implied in the PADOG ; rather, their relation ought to be deliberate and premeditated. This approach was supported by the intellectual production of the time in the nascent field of airport planning. This is well illustrated in a booklet written a few years after the SDAURP by ADP ’s Director of General Studies and Planning Jacques Block (Fig. 4.9). The booklet, entitled “Airports and the Environment,” meticulously listed the factors, internal and external, to consider in airport planning and operation.35 If capacity was the central issue, its maximization lay not only in the airport’s design but also in its environment: reservation of necessary surfaces, securing of air space, provision of terrestrial access, proximity to urban centers. Block also commented extensively on optimal airport localization and land access. Fig. 4 .9  Cover of the book Les aéroports et l’environneHe stressed that those who recommended lo- ment. cating major airports too far away from urban zones had not fully understood “[t]he difference between an airfield and an airport. If it was just about hosting aircraft, they would be right. But … it is about transporting passengers and goods the most comfortably, rapidly, and economically possible.”36 Block’s writings echoed the prevailing discussion of the time on airports and their spatial anchoring, revolving around assessments of costs and benefits (see Chapter 2).37 In his booklet, CDG emerged as an ideally planned airport, simultaneously addressing two concerns. On the one hand, airport and urbanization should be spatially disassociated: the experience of Orly had exposed the problems associated with an airport located too close to the agglomeration, and it was imperative not to repeat this mistake in the planning of Paris-Nord. On the other hand, an airport ought to be as well connected and as close as possible to the urban centers providing its clientele, so as to remain attractive and minimize the costs of ground access. By optimizing aviation infrastructure in space, both airport and city would benefit from each other.

First ramifications of projected externalities The fact that the planning of the new Paris-Nord airport was aimed not only at optimizing expansion prospects, but also at averting future reactions to the externalities of airport operation spoke to the recognition of aircraft noise as a constraint in longterm airport growth. For the engineers of the 1960s, this consideration was not linked to a political necessity, as would become the case later, but to the technical interest of maximizing the advantages of a facility and minimizing its drawbacks.38 Nonetheless, 104

carpet was projected to be, according to the airport layout plan that called for a total of five runways: the main two doublets of two, oriented east-west as per the dominant wind directions, complemented by one north-south cross-runway intended for lightweight aircraft sensitive to strong winds.42 But the ADP -controlled noise protection zone was not enough. Building restrictions would have to be instituted for a much larger noise-affected area to prevent residential uses from settling near the airport. The definition of levels of noise exposure thus arose from the need to possess an information basis in order to develop noise management strategies. The noise exposure metric adopted was the Psophic Index, or IP (indice psophique). It was based on aircraft noise levels calculated in Perceived Noise decibels,43 then combined with the number of aircraft movements over 24 hours.44 Projecting these noise levels in space based on expected flight trajectories produced equal-loudness contours (courbes isophoniques). In 1967, ADP publicized the first delimitation of expected noise exposure zones for the new airport. The three equal-loudness contours that defined the zones corresponded to values IP 96, 89, and 84, denoting decreasing levels of annoyance (high, important, secondary) and codified as A, B, and C respectively (Fig. 4.10).45 The terrain covered was approximately 200 km 2, or about seven times the size of the airfield. In parallel, the authority started promoting the airport among the local population. The initial target audience were inhabitants of directly affected villages such as Roissy-en-France, several of whom raised voices against Paris-Nord as soon as construction works began.46 The disruption of the Arcadian calmness of their community appeared to them as a forerunner of worrisome changes and nuisance still to come. ADP launched a communication campaign, including the installation of information booths and the organization of presentations (Fig. 4.11).47 All the Fig. 4 .10  Excerpt from a 1970 map showing the noise impact zones A, B, and C for Paris CDG .

same, the authority remained secretive about the specifics of the new airport project.48 In the campaign, it was the narrative of progress

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

the issue was prone to becoming political. In mid-1965, it already appeared to acquire important dimensions in Orly, with residents of communities near the airport becoming vocal in the media against aircraft noise and pressing charges against airlines.39 A big demonstration in 1966 compelled authorities to take their concerns seriously. In 1968, ADP and the airlines were forced to accept a curfew on night flights, dealing a blow to the profitability of Orly’s operation. For the new airport, the handling of projected externalities reflected the autonomy of ADP within the increasingly fragmented central apparatus of the French state. Once the localization of Paris-Nord had been ratified, the airport authority was given carte blanche to proceed. The first step consisted in acquiring the land required for the ­3,100-ha platform: between 1966 and 1969, 6,000 parcels owned by 510 parties were expropriated.40 In addition, ADP sought to create a noise protection zone by systematically acquiring buildings and land around the airport, forming a buffer zone of around 7,500 ha.41 This zone stretched west- and eastwards of the platform, where the noise

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that was projected against nuisance: changes in the character of the villages, disruption and noise were a small price to pay in relation to economic growth, technological progress and the national interest. The narrative was convincing, but also divisive to local residents, seen in their comments in footage shot by ADP in 1966 – 1967: “It is good for the country, even though there will be noise,” “it will help local commerce,” “they want to pour concrete on beetroot fields,” “it will change everything for us, but we cannot stop progress.”49 When it came to the definition of noise-affected zones, ADP representatives tended to frame airport-related externalities from a technocratic angle. As Block characteristically wrote: “Of all the constraints that weigh on the airport site, [noise] … mobilizes strong emotions and is most likely to escape rational and objective analysis, and … be used for demagogic purposes by pressure groups. [Therefore] it is absolutely essential that the problem of noise be perfectly demystified and explained.”50 This “demystification” consisted in presenting noise measuring and modeling as the basis for appropriate measures; a process where affected residents were, however, a mere audience. This marked the beginning of the “technical legitimization” of noise that would be critiqued in more recent years.51 Indeed, ensuring a favorable public opinion for the CDG airport rested on a double rationalization of expected nuisance: as the inevitable cost of a beneficial infrastructure – narrative of progress and general interest – and as a technical problem that could be managed by experts – narrative of technical objectiveness. All the same, the effectiveness of noise exposure zones for the management of building development outside ADP -owned land depended on their incorporation into spatial planning processes. While the SDAURP had included projections for these zones in its maps, it took much longer for those to be specified and legally instituted. The first contours suggested by ADP were adopted by the Ministry of Transports in 1970, and considered in the elaboration of urban development directions for the northern sector of the Paris region, as will be discussed next. But the state machinery was less efficient in establishing the legal framework for urban planning. This caused an extended period of uncertainty and unregulated urbanization. To the irritation of a population already divided between those for and against the airport – in particular in the department of Val-d’Oise that was expected to incur most nuisance – was added the frustration of a lack of transparency and clarity of information. In fact, u ­ ntil 1972 the departmental state planning services (Directions Départe-

Fig. 4 .11  ADP official and air hostess inform local children about the situation of the communities neighboring Orly, in an information booth installed in Roissy-en-France in summer 1966.

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mentales) allowed buildable land to be bought and sold around the upcoming airport, only to then retract several building permits.52 The three zones A, B, and C became spatially effective in 1972 / 1973, when the departmental services of the Ministry of Housing and Infrastructures were asked by ministerial memorandum (circulaire) not to authorize any housing inside the zones,

followed by the enactment of ­building limitations.53 In zones A and B, no housing construction was to be undertaken; and in zone C only single-family homes were permitted, and some multi-family houses under specific conditions. After the enactment of restrictions, several collective housing schemes inside the projected noise-affected zones were suspended or canceled, mostly in Val-d’Oise but also in Seine-et-Marne.54 Yet for some places it was already too late: in communities west of the airport like Gonesse, Sarcelles, and Villiers-le-Bel, large housing developments had already taken place, creating a population de facto expected to incur nuisance.55 Other local representatives deplored the “freezing” of urbanization in their communities on the basis of a state-imposed memorandum.56 This was made worse by the fact that localities had hardly been given a say in the definition of noise-related restrictions, in addition to not having had direct experience of the problem, as the airport was not yet in operation. Thus, almost ten years after the decision to develop Paris-Nord / C DG and on the eve of its opening, the management of projected externalities was not only belatedly, but also far from optimally, resolved. The coordinated planning of airport and regional space appeared to have been short-lived, and the objective assessment of benefits and externalities was proving elusive.

Next to the land-use-based approach that dictated the ex-urban deployment of aviation infrastructure to prevent its negative interaction with urbanized areas, there was another approach to the positioning of the new airport in metropolitan space that acquired momentum starting in the mid-1960s. This one had its basis in economic and transport geography, and saw major airports as nodes that, thanks to the exchanges that they facilitated, had transformative effects on the economy of their regions and localities. This role was an evolution from their function as fields for taking off and landing. The shift in perception was seen in the use of terms: starting in the mid-1960s, several policy documents, including the SDAURP of 1965, preferred the word aéroport (airport) instead of aérodrome (airfield) when referring to the airports of the capital and especially Paris-Nord.57 The “port” component highlighted their role as nodes of transport communication and activity concentration that ought to be planned in concert with the places they served. A key implication was that airports were increasingly regarded as “structuring facilities” (“équipements structurants”): “[complexes] whose location is likely to organize the growth or renovation of the cities in terms of [both] quality and volume.”58 The growth boost likely to be given by a major airport stemmed from its economic a ­ ctivity, materializing in the metropolitan-wide flows of transported passengers and goods, visitors, and people employed in its related services. Already in the SDAURP, the conception of the future Charles de Gaulle airport testified to its new perception as amenity contributing to the development of the metropolis. Specifically, the SDAURP anticipated that at least 30,000 people would be employed at the new airport in sectors related to air traffic – more if other facilities, such as exhibition spaces or congress centers, were combined with the airport function, as the Orly experience had shown was possible.59 Further, the plan foresaw the settlement of businesses in the airport vicinity:

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

The airport as economic structuring facility

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[The] airport, because of the passenger and freight traffic that it implies, is also an attraction hub for various secondary and tertiary activities, that will be likewise attracted to this area by the proximity to the North Highway: the regional plan envisages the localization of these activities in the sectors of Bourget and BlancMesnil.60 To that end, the SDAURP designated a large linear economic zone between Paris and the airport, to the east of the A1 Highway (Fig. 4.12). The zone, comprising more than 500 hectares, would constitute a continuation of the industrial facilities in the first belt of suburbs to the north and north-east of Paris in the area of Saint-Denis. Its first part of approximately 100 hectares had been present in the PADOG of 1960. Now, its extension in the direction of the new airport anticipated the latter’s economic structuring role. Besides, similar large zones were already being implemented in proximity of the Orly airport. The decision to relocate the central market of Paris from Les Halles to the area of Rungis just north of Orly had propelled building activity.61 Industries and ­logistics-related uses were being developed, such as the goods distribution center SOGARIS (Société de la gare routière de Rungis) and the business park SILIC Orly-Rungis.

The SDAURP recognized this dynamic, proclaiming the Orly-Rungis complex as the

Fig. 4 .12  Excerpt of the SDAURP general map for the area of the projected Paris-Nord airport.

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economic center of the southern part of the region, and reserving further space for tertiary activities along the highways RN 7 and RN 186.62 The idea of locating large-scale economic activities in the proximity of major airports thus appears established by 1965. However, it should not be assumed that the airport’s role in the attraction of such activities was clear in the planning thought of the time. Largely, the economic zones in the vicinity of Orly and Paris-Nord / C DG were decided in the interest of channeling development to the periphery of the Paris region. With the expected noise impact of airport operation suggesting that industries and

only much later recognized. Its initial disregard can be explained by the strong belief of that time in the rationality of planning and in its ability to maintain overall control of spatial development, backed by a powerful state machinery. After the SDAURP, the economic zone along the North Highway indeed saw a substantial amount of development. It began with Garonor (Gare routière nord), a distribution center analogous to Sogaris, intended to streamline the goods supply of Paris by providing shipping companies with transit and storage facilities accompanied by stock and distribution management services.63 Garonor started operating in 1968. The next piece of land in the direction of the airport, measuring approximately 160 ha and named “Paris Nord I,” was prepared by the state land development agency AFTRP to hand over to the car manufacturer Citroën, that wanted to leave its aging facilities inside the city of Paris but keep a production center within the region. In parallel, AFTRP was taking action to implement, in a 250-ha tract between the Citroën factory and the airport, the zone “Paris Nord II ” that was more explicitly intended for companies valuing immediate airport proximity.64 The development of these zones soon became the means to achieve a goal of planning that had occupied little space in the SDAURP but was increasingly relevant to regional and departmental authorities: to counteract the lack of economic opportunity in the suburbs of the northwestern, northern and eastern sector of the agglomeration. These areas registered a permanent deficit in the jobs-to-population-ratio in relation to the rest of the region.65 Especially in the south and west of Plaine the France, communities grew in terms of population, but lacked public services and employment opportunities. Featuring mostly a working-class population, they were away from established centers or the new towns. Besides, the plan to transform Le Bourget into a new urban centrality was indefinitely postponed. With the newly publicized noise zones revealing a vast space where the development of housing and services was inappropriate, large-scale economic activity zones were seen as a means to create jobs and improve the economic position of Plaine de France.66 Under this pressure, the revision of the SDAURP in 1969 encapsulated the shifting spatial development trend: in addition to

the 1965 plan’s concentrated program along the A1 highway, additional activity zones were designated to the south and west of the airport (Fig. 4.13).

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

logistics were more suitable land uses than housing, the grouping of economic and transport infrastructures in space made rational sense. The association of airport operation with specific, air transport-dependent economic activities only came as an additional and rather speculative reflection, in line nonetheless with the techno-optimism surrounding the planning of the new airport. The underlying contradiction between the promotion of Paris-Nord as an economic center with a large activity zone and the principle of using it as a “limit to urbanization,” also advanced in the SDAURP, was

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Fig. 4 .13  Excerpt of the 1969 revised SDAURP general map for the area of Paris-Nord.

In supporting economic development, many planning actors picked up the theme of airport-related attractiveness for businesses – also under the influence of ideas becoming popular across the Atlantic at the time, such as that of “airport-linked activity zones,” rendered in French as ZALA (see Chapter 2). The state planning services for the Paris region (IAURP, SRE ) and the departments of Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-d’Oise argued that the environs of CDG could be attractive for companies valuing proximity to flows of people and goods. A report published by IAURP in early 1969 mentioned: “There is a recent trend to create industrial zones near airports. The Paris-Nord airport will not escape this movement.” But it also cautioned that “it is still difficult to predict what the nature and importance of the activities induced by the presence of the Paris-­ Nord airport will be.”67 In truth, no reliable account of interdependences ­between airport operation and secondary or tertiary activities existed yet; but airport-related ­attractiveness became an appealing argument in support of economic opportunity in the northern Paris region. In a parallel move, the airport authority also started promoting the expansion of economic activities in the new airport – for its own reasons. ADP had already successfully experimented with non-aviation related services in Orly: The South Terminal featured, in addition to the famous observation terraces, a commercial center, two cinemas, hotels, restaurants, various shops, and extensive parking facilities. During the first part of the 1960s, these services had made Orly a spontaneous regional center and a popular leisure and shopping destination for tourists as well as suburbanites; had helped popularize the idea of commercial flying; and crucially, had constituted a sizable source of income for ADP.68 Additional revenue sources were most welcome at the new airport, too: as ADP had received little financial support from the State for the 110

realization of Paris-Nord, by 1970 its finances were in dire straits. Yet the Orly ­model was no longer applicable as such: the South Terminal’s commercial attractions had proven to be distractions for the passenger and impediments to the fluidity of operations.69 Therefore, in Paris-Nord, rather than incorporating leisure and shopping activities in the terminal, ADP envisaged placing them on the airport’s “central zone” (Unité Centrale). These would include hotels, entertainment facilities, shops, sport fields, and popular attractions boosting the image of the airport such as audiovisual spectacles, shows, and fountain games. At the same time, the idea that the airport could attract activities and services not directly related to aviation but drawn by economic synergy started taking hold. As exposed in a 1970 report by ADP engineer Pierre Emé, economic activities ­potentially drawn to the new airport were of two types.70 The first were specialized secondary sector businesses interested in time gains in the transshipment of goods, such as those involved in redistribution, assembly of high-value goods, packaging, and testing. Through not associated with airport operation per se, these activities had an obvious interest in a location near the aerial transport node. The second type of activities was less obviously related to air transport. It involved businesses from the tertiary sector posited to be attracted to the central zone because of its urban attractiveness in addition to air connectivity. The argumentation went as follows:

These reflections testify to a new notion regarding the airport. In expectation of the opening of Paris-Nord, the airport’s infrastructural role, function as transport node and urbanistic allure are envisioned to come together, making emerge an economic center of regional importance. Yet it also becomes obvious that airport and planning actors develop different interpretations about the structuring role of the airport, with their interests suggesting the type, localization, and purpose of the envisioned economic activities.

Channeling development: the working group Paris-Nord Once the expansion of the economic and land development program in and around the projected airport started being promoted, several challenges appeared. One of the main issues was the need to formulate a housing policy for the jobs related to ­Paris-Nord and the economic activity zones. According to studies of ADP, the airport

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[T]he amenities of the Unité Centrale, associated to services proper to the airport, to its prestigious nature, and to services made possible by the airport such as the RER , high-quality telephone network or computer service, are likely to confer to this zone an attractiveness similar to that of a real business center like La Défense or Cergy-Pontoise; this may be of interest to companies with little or no connection to air transport in the first place, then [to companies] completely independent [of it], other than using air transport extensively for their employees’ travels or receiving many visitors traveling by plane.71

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alone was expected to be the workplace for 16,000 – 20,000 people just in the first couple of years of its opening (in ADP, the airlines, and the various service providers).72 The activity zones south of the airport were estimated to host another 27,000 – 33,000 jobs by the late 1970s.73 This new working population could not be absorbed by the existing residential offer, necessitating the development of new housing within reasonable commuting distance. In 1968 – 1969, the urban planning services responsible for the Paris region started examining possibilities for the localization of housing, aiming to avoid a “spontaneous” settlement that would destroy the agricultural character of Plaine de France and increase populations subjected to aircraft noise. The matter was approached by deducing measurable criteria from the constraints of noise (excluding areas in impact zones) and commuting time (prioritizing areas within 35 minutes of driving time); and by taking into account the availability of sites and existing housing projects.74 This examination revealed the following problem: most communities that planning authorities wanted to prioritize in urban development, a.k.a. those along the east-west urbanization axis of the SDAURP and most in need of employment – Montmorency valley and Marne valley – were badly connected with the airport in terms of traffic infrastructure, and thus within longer commuting time. The challenge was significant. In fact, it likely required revisiting not just the planned road and rail network, but the entire spatial concept for the northern sector of the Paris region, affected by the implementation of the airport. An important attempt to tackle the challenge was initiated by the government of Chaban-Delmas under the new presidency of Georges Pompidou. In October 1969, the government requested the formation of a working group, the Groupe de travail Paris-­ Nord, with representatives of central planning services, ADP, state planning services for the Paris and Picardie regions, and the departments Val-d’Oise, Seine-et-Marne and Seine-Saint-Denis (from the Paris region), Oise and Aisne (from Picardie).75 The group’s mission was to study planning options for the northern Paris Basin, considered as the area of influence of the anticipated airport. It was to assemble existing studies and plans, evaluate them, work out potential scenarios, and provide spatial planning orientations and suggestions for how they could be translated into action. Specifically, the group was to: [c]onsider the technical, economic and financial implications of different possible policies, paying particular attention to the problems of transport, the search for the most favorable areas for urban development of various types, the protection of quality sites, especially forests; and this, in the perspective of a decentralization of the Paris Region as extensive as possible.76 Besides asking to group to examine issues previously not considered at the scale of the airport’s area of influence, the government’s mandate was an explicit reassertion of the policy of economic decentralization that had been sidestepped by the ­Delouvrier team. During the deliberations of the working group, the involved actors expressed different positions depending on how they stood in relation to this policy.77 From the viewpoint of the representatives of the DATAR and the central government, it was imperative to broaden the consideration of the airport’s economic impact beyond its immediate environs, so as to promote urban and economic development outside the Paris 112

region. In this, they met the support of the delegates of Picardie and the département of Oise, who promoted the development of the town of Compiègne and its connection with the airport by rail.78 Conversely, the representatives of Val-d’Oise and Seine-etMarne drew attention to existing projects and the strong demand for commercial and housing development in their territories. The planners of SRE and IAURP also supported channeling development within the Paris region, while also pleading against the dispersal of employment and residences outside the urbanization axes along the valleys (Seine, Marne, Oise, Montmorency). A further perspective was promoted by ADP, who argued for the development of its “airport business center” on the Unité Centrale, as discussed earlier. Eventually, the working group’s report, submitted to the government in April 1970, revisited the planning and development logic for the Paris-Nord airport region by largely embracing the governmental perspective of economic decentralization.79 The group first determined the airport’s “area of influence” as the sector within one hour of commuting from Roissy (assuming that the planned road system was implemented). This stretched from Paris to Compiègne from south to north, and from Meaux to Cergy-­ Pontoise from east to west (Fig. 4.14). To establish the needs for housing in this area,

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

Fig. 4 .14  The Roissy airport, its noise-affected zones, and its area of influence based on equal-time curves, according to the working group Paris-Nord.

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employment numbers were forecasted based on the prediction of 50 million air passengers and 2 million tons of freight by 1985, when the airport was expected to achieve its full activity. Accordingly, the “basic” hypothesis was of 85,000 directly and indirectly aviation-related jobs at the airport and its immediate surroundings, plus about 30,000 jobs induced by the needs of airport-employed people. It was calculated that these new jobs corresponded to the construction of 65,000 new housing units. Options for an “enlarged” airport-related activity were also considered: assuming the development of a business center at the airport, and / or of activity zones in its proximity. These would trigger additional jobs, requiring additional housing (Table 4.1).80

LOCATION

EXPECTED JOBS ( 1985)

TYPE

EXPECTED NEEDS IN HOUSING UNITS

Basic airport-related activity hypothesis On airport (central zone)

55,000

direct jobs, mostly services to passengers

On airport (industrial zone)

15,000

indirect industrial jobs, in activities requiring direct access to runways

On airport (transiently)

15,000

flight attendants and other airline jobs

In the airport’s area of influence

30,000

induced tertiary jobs for the needs of airport-employed people

TOTAL

115,000

65,000

Enlarged airport-related activity hypothesis (max) As per basic hypothesis

115,000

On airport (central zone)

10,000

tertiary jobs in airport business center

In the airport’s area of influence

30,000

industrial and tertiary jobs in activities not requiring direct access to runways

In the airport’s area of influence

10,000

induced tertiary jobs for the needs of people employed in additional activities

TOTAL

165,000

90,000

Table 4 .1  Hypotheses for jobs and housing units connected to the new airport

These numbers were considerable and implied a large amount of airport-induced urban development not anticipated in existing plans. The working group examined eight scenarios on how to channel it, applying the “basic” and “enlarged” hypotheses to different spatial distributions of economic activities and housing units.81 The advantages and drawbacks of the scenarios were assessed with regard to the efficiency of the resulting urban system, respect for regional plans, and adherence to the economic decentralization policy. This assessment led to questioning the policy of urban development in the immediate environs of Paris-Nord. The report asserted that, from the perspective of businesses, existing evidence showed no significant advantages in locating in close proximity to the airport (within 3 – 5 km).82 Channeling economic a ­ ctivities there would thus only materialize as the result of proactive planning action:

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The airport will present some of the characteristics of an urban center because of the presence of offices, services (insurance, banks, hotels, various rentals…), businesses for the use of passengers and staff, and the numerous opportunities for entertainment and recreation. … The importance of Roissy as a center of activities could be even greater because of its attraction to companies. But as soon as we set aside aviation-related functions, it appears that the additional activities that could be implemented on or near the platform would result much more from an ­urban planning choice than from an economic necessity for businesses. This choice would consist in making Roissy the first, if not the only, tertiary and industrial hub in the north of the Paris region.83 The authors saw no compelling reasons for promoting such an explicit planning choice. The implementation of activity zones around the airport would not only mean bypassing the official policy of locating industrial activities outside the Paris region, but also create its own set of problems, notably in terms of transport access: It would risk over-

Fig. 4 .15  Recommendation for the allocation of housing units for airport-related employment as part of total constructed units.

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

loading the A1 highway, the primary route for air passengers as well as commuters between Paris and the northern French regions. A gridlock in the access infrastruc-

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Fig. 4 .16  Existing, planned, and recommended additional access infrastructure to the Roissy airport.

ture could then compromise the airport’s efficient operation as a nationally important ­infrastructure. The proposed strategy recommended instead the preferential localization of economic activities at a sufficient distance from Roissy, and the distribution of airport-­ related housing mostly in the Marne valley and to the north, avoiding noise-affected areas (Fig. 4.15). Four main orientations were provided. The first was the encouragement of development in the towns of the Oise valley in the Picardie region, such as Compiègne and Creil, contributing to the industrial decentralization of the Paris region. Second, the area north of the airport up to Senlis was to receive only a moderate amount of development, principally housing, so as to ensure the protection of forests and avoid adding commuter loads on the road network. Third, most new airport-­related urbanization was to be channeled into the cities of the Marne valley, with concomitant implementation of transport links with the airport. This orientation secured the sufficient provision of housing and was in concert with existing planning objectives. Finally, it was advised to allow the settlement of activities on the airport and its immediate surroundings very selectively, and to limit job offers at the airport to what was necessary for its functioning. This aimed both at avoiding competition between the airport and the other economic centers promoted by the public hand (La Défense, Marne-laVallée), and at alleviating the load on the road network. In parallel, the d ­ evelopment of 116

several additional highway branches, the expedited implementation of a Paris-Roissy rail link, and its extension to Picardie were advised (Fig. 4.16).84 Overall, the report embraced a protective rationale for the future airport region, prioritizing the unhindered operation of the platform and pushing the development impetus away from it. The justifications for stalling urban development in the immediate airport surroundings were arguably convincing – saturation of traffic infrastructure, destruction of landscape, and, concerning housing, noise exposure; but the governmental support for this strategy had less to do with its rationality and more with the political juncture. Namely, the re-asserted objective of restricting Paris and sharing the benefits of growth with other regions shifted the focus to strategies of spatial distribution and to planning beyond the administrative boundaries of the Paris District.85 That said, the working group Paris-Nord was the first and indeed only official attempt made by the planning authorities of the “golden era” to deliver an overall spatial policy tackling the airport-related dynamic. Their work started making explicit the discordances in the co-existence of a restrictive and a developmental impetus favored in the SDAURP. The recommendations of the report were officially endorsed by the government in May 1970.

Notwithstanding the attempt to guide the development of the future airport region with the working group Paris-Nord, by 1970 the State apparatus was no longer characterized by the vigor seen during the De Gaulle Presidency. The voices in support of the economic decentralization agenda had destabilized the momentum given by the planning leadership of Delouvrier, who was replaced by Maurice Doublet in the direction of the District. There was pressure to rethink the planning of the metropolis as a whole, as problems had started appearing: a disproportionate concentration of tertiary activities in Paris and La Défense, insufficient offers in local commerce and services in many suburbs, and access difficulties between homes and workplaces. The new towns were slow to take off, making it difficult to channel urbanization only along the preferential axes. And diffuse urbanization trends were encouraged by a change of focus from collective housing schemes to the support of single-family housing after 1969, in order to enable the emerging middle class to get on the property ladder.86 The 1969 revision of the SDAURP had already reflected the changing climate, reducing the number of new towns down to five, redrawing the RER lines in a more modest layout, and designating new development zones, as seen earlier. But there was a further problem: the SDAURP was never officially approved, creating a legal gap. Thus, the early 1970s, marked by unsuccessful attempts to start the process for a new regional plan, revealed signs of growing fragmentation in the state planning machinery, making metropolitan space vulnerable to competing interests. This was definitely the case with regard to the Paris-Nord area. The apparent unity in the recommendations of the working group masked underlying disagreements among the involved public actors. The report indicated that “[it] would be desirable to put on the market in the coming years only the minimum of industrial land in the so-called ‘Paris-Nord’ activity zone and not to follow up on the other projects under study.”87 Yet as these lines were written, the implementation of the Citroën factory

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

Development versus planning

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was ongoing, and only months earlier the land of the future Paris Nord II had been declared of public utility. Over the following years, although the general effect of the policies of DATAR could be seen in the development of large surfaces in the new towns and in Picardie,88 smaller activity zones mushroomed around the future airport, often as the result of building permits issued laxly by departmental prefects. The political momentum was thus overpowered in practice by the local pressure to partake in economic development, especially by the job-deprived localities of the northeastern sector of the region. Pressure also came from communities affected by noise-related restrictions, who requested exceptions to the decentralization-related protective regime. In 1971, for example, Mesnil-Amelot and Mauregard in Seine-et-Marne placed a request to minister Albin Chalandon to support the settlement of industries on their territories, as their location in the noise zones prevented other kinds of development. In response, Chalandon recommended to the decentralization committee to allow the installation of light industry in these communities.89 The representatives of the departments with a foot on the sector also promoted development within their administrative limits. Seine-Saint-Denis, dominated by working-class communities and traditionally considered unattractive, counted on the airport and on the “Paris Nord” zone to upgrade its image and to provide employment opportunities for its residents.90 The launch of the Citroën factory and its 16,000 jobs in Aulnay-sous-Bois in 1973, and the inauguration of the 86,000-square-meter-Parinor commercial center in 1974 brought a welcome dynamism.91 Conversely, Val-d’Oise, though surrounded by the three “giants” of Le Défense, Cergy-Pontoise, and CDG airport, had the lowest employment rate in the region (60 %); it was even lower (54 %) in the Montmorency valley of 300,000 residents, projected to grow to 380,000 with the implementation of housing projects. The question of how to benefit from the three major employment hubs was the topic of a series of public meetings in 1973 with representatives of the public development agencies, ADP, local elected officials, and social and economic services.92 In parallel, the project of Paris Nord II , promoted by AFTRP and territorially “shared” between the two departments and four communes (Tremblay-lès-Gonesse and Villepinte in Seine-Saint-Denis, Roissy-en-France and Gonesse in Val-d’Oise), was the topic of intense negotiation with DATAR . Backed by the report of the working group Paris-Nord, the latter opposed the project, (justifiably) arguing that it would compete with similar zones in the new towns of Cergy and the Marne-laVallée. But AFTRP ’s pressure bore fruit, and the ZAC was created in 1971.93 But it was not just Paris Nord II that counteracted the policy of limited development in the new airport environs. A report drafted by an IAURP study group in June 1974, four years after the adoption of the recommendations of the working group, ­a ffirmed that “[w]e can already observe the manifestations of spontaneous tendencies that constitute deviations with respect to the urban planning options adopted in 1970.”94 These tendencies were in reality hardly “spontaneous,” as the various projects were not only compatible with statutory plans, but often directly steered by the public hand. Between 1967 and 1974, no less than 15 economic activity zones within 15 km of the upcoming airport, totaling almost 1,000 hectares, received approval; one fourth of them was delivered by 1974 (Table 4.2).95 None could be characterized as “airport-related,” with the exception of Paris Nord II . By the opening of the CDG airport, the area had thus started acquiring the character of a very loose logistics and warehousing cluster. 118

ZONE

PLAN ­A PPROVED

TYPE

SURFACE (HA)

EXPECTED JOBS

Aulnay-sous-Bois: Les Mardelles

1969

Industry

21

2,000

Blanc-Mesnil: Le Coudray

1967

Mixed

41.5

4 ,100

Blanc-Mesnil: Pont-Yblon

(NIA )

Seine-Saint-Denis

1973

Warehouses

3

ZAC

Paris Nord I – Citroën

1969

Industry

180

Paris Nord

Paris Nord I – Fosse à la Barbière

1971

(NIA )

15

Paris Nord II

1977

(NIA )

400

40,000

TOTAL Seine-Saint-Denis 660.5

Val-d’Oise Domont (Semavo)

1972

Industry

4 .5

Ecouen – Villiers-le-Bel

1972

Warehouses

56

2,800

Fosses – St. Witz

1971

Mixed

33

1,650

Garges-les-Gonesse: Les Doucettes

1971

Mixed

20

1,220

Garges-les-Gonesse: La Muette

1968

Mixed

20

1,200

Gonesse

1971/1973

Mixed

88

5,400

Goussainville

1967

Warehouses

35

1,500

Louvres

1968

Warehouses

20

1,200

Le Thillay

late 1970 s

Mixed

10

700

Marly-la-Ville: Moimont

1971/1973

Warehouses

118

5,900

Sarcelles

1969

(NIA )

68

4 ,760

(NIA )

TOTAL Val-d’Oise 472.5

Mitry-Mory – Compans

1972

Mixed

240

4 ,800

TOTAL Seine-et-Marne 240 TOTAL 1,373

Table 4 .2  Activity zones within 15 km from the CDG airport in the pipeline in June 1974 , by department

The autonomous airport site While the extent and form of development in the future airport region were being ­debated, the construction of Paris-Nord was in full motion, with ADP granted broad freedoms in its design. The autonomy given to the airport authority exacerbated the mismatch between the planning of the airport and that of its surroundings. Paris-­ Nord was an infrastructural “object” detached from its surroundings, with the official narrative focusing on it as an achievement constituting a source of national pride and “demonstrating abroad the value of French technique.”96 Besides, the analyses made by the working group Paris-Nord and the regional planning services betrayed

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

Seine-et-Marne

119

Fig. 4 .17  Construction of Paris CDG in 1972. Left: Highway interchanges at the entrance of the airport. Middle: Bridges above the first runway. Right: Terminal 1 in construction.

am ­ onolithic view of the relation between the airport as producer of impact and its ­environment as recipient. Yet there were few critiques to the planning of the technocratic elite of the late 1960s; among those there were, the words of the visionary architect Ionel Schein stand out: The airport-object provided by the ADP administration must function only as such – and, in this respect, certainly not badly. But this dichotomy between the function and its environment leads to disaster … the Paris-North airport will not just be a perfect airport … [but also] a system for which one must invent and imagine the structures, the container and the content. … Access roads, runways, technical facilities and reception areas are being built … while socio-demographers are still looking for the value of this or that migratory-pendular movement.97 The new airport indeed embodied the positivism of its planners. A variety of studies, projecting passengers, cargo, ground traffic flows, airport-based jobs, parking needs and so on, expressed the positivist spirit and pointed to the ability of the planners to optimize all aspects of airport operation.98 Paris-Nord was expected to initially receive around 8 million passengers; then, it would undergo gradual extensions in order to reach its final form around 1985. The first segment alone, comprising a 3.6-kilometer-long runway, the first terminal building, and various state-of-the art facilities – control tower, access roads, bridges, freight facilities, water management systems, electrical and communication facilities – was massive, its cost rising to 1.63 billion francs (Fig. 4.17).99 Facilities were Fig. 4 .18  Aerial view of Roissy during construction works in 1972.

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distributed in space generously and functions were explicitly separated, leaving room for future expansion and indicating ADP ’s long-

Fig. 4 .19  Today’s view of Terminal 1 from an airplane.

term planning view. In addition to the first terminal (T1), a large zone for handling air cargo, a maintenance area, and part of the aforementioned Unité Centrale were developed (Fig. 4.18). Rather than a monumental approach axis like in Orly, the site was ­irrigated by two access roads emanating from the highway: one for passengers and one for the working population; in turn connected with a local road network. Terminal 1 (T1) was the airport’s most prominent and publicized feature (Fig. 4.19). The brainchild of young architect Paul Andreu – who was influenced by the work of Eero Saarinen, particularly his TWA terminal in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport – it was conceived as a “spatial event” that would immerse the passenger in the anticipated act of flying.100 The terminal featured a central circular building that stacked functions on different levels, including parking at the top, and distributed passenger flows in seven satellite buildings around it (Fig. 4.20). This organization allowed it to fulfill three goals, according to ADP : reduce as much as possible the paths of travelers between their car and the airplane; efficiently plug passengers into their flight; and receive high-capacity aircraft.101 Interestingly, when T1 had first been conceived in 1967, the same design was expected to be repeated in five identical terminals spread around the site (Fig. 4.21). This spoke to the car-dependence of the airport layout, and to

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

Fig. 4 .20  Three-dimensional visualization (left) and plan and section showing the organization of T1 (right).

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Fig. 4 .21  The envisaged layout of Paris CDG airport with six circular buildings (five terminals and one for the administration ­offices).

the lack of anticipation for communication among terminals: the still-experiential nature of flying had not allowed foreseeing the model of the transiting passenger that the dissemination of the hub-and-spoke system twenty years later would bring. But even before T1 had opened, the need to respond more promptly and flexibly to the development of air traffic made ADP revise the concept of circular terminals ­altogether.102 The authority praised itself for reserving enough land surface on CDG so as to be able to adapt its site layout depending on demand.103 When the design of Terminal 2 (T2) started in 1970, the logic of T1 was replaced with that of continuous “modular” terminals, more easily constructed in phases to respond to growing traffic (Fig. 4.22). The logic of the site design testified to a functional approach tuned to the priorities set by ADP ’s engineering experts. There was little commitment to aspects of s­ patial design that did not pertain to site-specific and measurable criteria. When Paul ­A ndreu was asked, 45 years after the conception of T1, about whether the airport’s spatial ­relation to the city constituted an important part of the architectural reflection, he acknowledged: “We were in charge of the landscape. What may surprise you today is that nobody around us really cared. The position of the runways was fixed by technical conditions [related to] flying and noise control. That of the roads was freer.”104 In fact, Andreu had unparalleled autonomy in conceiving T1 as

Fig. 4 .22  Layout of the Paris CDG airport from 1974 . The part ­ lready developed is depicted in orange background, and the a ­future area in light green background (source: Aéroport de Paris 1974 , archives ADP ).

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well as the terminal buildings that followed. It is characteristic that no state representatives inspected the construction site, and no building permits had to be issued.105 Besides, the resources and autonomy granted to the team of rising star Paul ­A ndreu manifested the evolving structure and institutional position of ADP in

the years leading up to the opening of the new airport. Within the operator, different directions were created – engineering, architecture, commercial operations – corresponding to different sectorial competences integrated under a neo-corporatist roof.106 By the early 1970s, the airport authority had broad independence from its administrative supervision. But this also meant that ADP had benefited very little from state

in the next chapter. But the plans of the early 1970s revealed an emerging view of the airport terrain as a container of development furthering the airport operator’s financial interests.

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

subsidies, and was in dire need of meliorating its finances.107 The development of Paris-Nord was therefore a Fig. 4.23  Activity zones planned in the Paris CDG airport in 1974. chance to also lay the foundations for its ­fi nancial autonomy. Thus, despite the recommendation of the working group Paris-Nord to minimize non-operation-related economic activities on site, ADP continued to examine possibilities to attract businesses of high value and prestige, such as “commercial branches, headquarters of multinational companies, study and research centers.”108 It also took an interest in developing a real estate policy with the purpose of augmenting and securing its financial resources.109 At that time, besides its main facilities, ADP envisaged the gradual development of a total of no less than 330 hectares, distributed in different zones (Fig.  4.23). These would include 300,000 m 2 of warehouses, specialized manufacturing and cargo handling facilities, 60,000 m 2 of offices, five hotels and various leisure activities.110 The plan reflected the privileged position of ADP, since “the largest commercial center in the north of the Paris region” was largely in contradiction with official spatial directions.111 In practice, it was difficult for the authority to implement this ambitious program. First, there were risks associated with limitations inherent in the site design. The limited capacity of the road access infrastructure in particular could lead to congestion and thus hinder the airport’s primary function, as had also been pointed out by the working group Paris-Nord. Second, the financial risk was too big for the authority to bear alone. ADP attempted to convince the planning authorities to grant special funding and exclude companies on airport land from the tax applied to businesses settling in the Paris region (as per the economic decentralization laws). Its argument was that the suggested program, concentrated in space and time, would contribute to rationalizing regional urban development, offering a remedy against an otherwise uncontrollable dispersion of economic activities.112 Yet DATAR and the regional administration were adamant about channeling economic development either out of the Paris region or to sectors of the region most in need of it, as discussed earlier. Faced with a lack of financial support, ADP turned to other revenue-producing ventures, as will be seen

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Meanwhile, the opening of the massive airport was hailed as the embodiment of the conquest of land and air by technical innovation, showcasing ADP ’s engineering and architectural proficiency to the general public. The Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, officially named after the great man of French public life who had died three years earlier, was inaugurated with pomp on 8 March 1974. Honored by the presence of key political figures like Prime Minister Pierre Mesmer, and widely celebrated in the press, the inauguration framed the new airport as a symbol of innovation and economic growth. The massive size of the airfield and the futuristic design of Terminal 1 made it a statement of modernization comparable to La Défense, Les Halles and the Boulevard Périphérique, and a tribute to the “golden era” of planning. And yet, it would soon become obvious that the CDG airport was not only one of the last major achievements of this period, but also a less-than-perfect “model airport.”

1  Alain Bozel, “L’aéroport de Paris” (1944).  2  Le Bourget (1957 – 1961) national development plans that both allobecame the city’s official civilian airport in 1919 and host- cated large parts of the national transport infrastructure ed regular flights between Paris and major European cit- budget for the development of the Parisian “airport ies.  3 Neiertz, La coordination des transports en France. base.”  8 Ibid. 9 Original: “se nourrit des mécanismes 4  For the expansion of 1957 – 1961, 700 hectares and 600 sociaux, culturels, statutaires, économiques, de fermehouses were expropriated, and a big part of the south ture, d’élitisme, de légitimité professionnelle, de rhétorihighway, Route Nationale 7 (RN 7 ), was diverted and cov- que du service public et de l’intérêt général.” Thoenig, ered. The RN 7 is still the main access way to Orly, and the L’ère des technocrates, p. 37.  10 Roseau, Aerocity. two runways enlarged at the time are still in use today 11  Relevant insights are provided in a 1958 promotional (02 /20 and 08 /26). From the two additional planned run- film made by ADP , one of the first that the authority proways, only one was eventually constructed in 1966; it still duced regularly from the 1950 s onward. “Aéroport de Parfunctions today as Orly’s main runway (06 / 24).  5 The is 1958 ” (Aéroport de Paris, 1958).  12  Pierre D. Cot, “Les South Terminal became a landmark thanks to its innova- aéroports, leurs rapports avec l’urbanisme” (Aéroport de tive architectural design by Henri Vicariot and its impres- Paris, 1959). “Faut-il faire l’aéroport Paris-Nord?” (Aérosive approach from the highway. The observation t­ erraces port de Paris, 1963).  13  Both the 1956 Plan d’aménageand integrated shops also made it a popular weekend ment de la région parisienne (PARP ) and the 1960 Plan outing site and touristic destination during the 1960 s: d’aménagement et d’organisation général de la région crowds of tourists and Parisians alike would flood the ter- parisienne (PADOG ) embraced the decentralist ethos minal to watch the planes take off and land, as well as to prevalent at the time (see Chapter 3). The PARP preshop or spot celebrities. Orly’s popularity was encapsulat- scribed the transfer of population density from Paris to ed in popular culture in Gilbert Bécaud’s song “Dimanche the suburbs, by demolishing insalubrious urban blocks à Orly.” Nathalie Roseau, Aerocity: Quand l’avion fait la and erecting the first grands ensembles (collective housville (Marseille: Parenthèses; Librairie de l’architecture et ing projects). The PADOG also promoted housing conde la ville, 2012).  6  The mission of ADP was defined as struction in the periphery and maintained an “agglomerthe development of commercial aviation infrastructure in ation perimeter” outside which construction was limited. the capital. The 1945 decision was completed by a decree Comité d’Aménagement de la Région Parisienne, “Plan in 1947 that specified its responsibilities as planning, ex- d’aménagement de la région parisienne (PARP )” (1956); ploiting and developing all commercial air transport facil- “Plan d’aménagement et d’organisation général de la ities within a radius of 50 km around Paris. Décret no 47- ­région parisienne (PADOG )” (1960).  14  The airport’s clo11 du 4 Janvier 1947 portant règlement d’adminstrration sure would create an opportune “void” of 900 hectares – publique pour l’application de l’ordonnance no 45 -2488 600 ha of the airfield itself, plus 300 ha unbuildable due du 24 octobre 1945 relative ä la creation de l’aéroport to its operation – surrounded by “anarchic urbanization.” de Paris.  7  Charlotte Halpern, “Les ressorts politiques de “Plan d’aménagement et d’organisation général de la réla décision publique en matière de planification aéropor- gion parisienne (PADOG ).”  15  Cot, “Faut-il faire l’aéroport tuaire: les mobilisations autour de l’aéroport Paris-Charles Paris-Nord?”  16 Original: “le germe indispensable au de Gaulle,” Notes de recherche 19 (2006). These objec- développement ordonné de la région Nord de Paris” ibid., tives were upheld in the second (1954 – 1957 ) and third p. 5.  17  Direction Générale du District de la Région de

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boisés indispensables … Pour que de telles erreurs ne se reproduisent pas, il est utile de marquer des directions interdites, et il conviendra d’être plus strict que naguère sur le respect de ces interdictions. Parmi ces der­ nières, … au nord-ouest, le futur aéroport Nord compor­ tera, d’après les informations actuellement disponibles, une zone de bruit qui s’étendra sur 25 kilomètres d’est en ouest, approximativement de Juilly à Ecouen.” Ibid., p. 96 .  33 Orly was in a difficult situation by the mid1960 s. To its north, the plateau of Villejuif had urbanized rapidly since the war, mostly with collective housing; to the east and south, it was bordered by low-density pavillonnaire developed since the 1920 s and 1930 s; only the southwest was relatively free of urbanization. The SDAURP ’s prescriptions consisted in respecting the noise zone to its southwest, and “preserving a green penetration passage” where other infrastructures such as high-tension electrical lines were also located. Ibid., p. 113. 34 Original: “Ainsi se trouve confirmée sur le sol une des options majeures du parti d’aménagement, qui est de limiter vers le nord l’extension de l’agglomération pari­ sienne en maintenant en zone agricole la Plaine de France … Ces servitudes ont également pour conséquence la limitation du développement de la banlieue à proximi­ té de l’aérodrome, dans les régions d’Aulnay, Sevran et Villepinte.” Ibid., p. 108 .  35  Jacques Block, Les aéroports et l’environnement (Aéroport de Paris, 1971).  36 Original: “[l]a différence entre un aérodrome et un aéroport. S’il ne s’agissait que d’accueillir des avions, ils auraient raison. Mais … il s’agit de transporter des passagers et des mar­ chan­dises, les plus commodément, le plus r­apidement et le plus économiquement possible.” Ibid., p.  34 .  37 For instance, the related article of Jean Labasse, “L’aéroport et la géographie volontaire des villes.” 38 See also: Philippe Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport: réalités économiques et manipulation géopolitique,” Hérodote N°114 (2004).  39  “Le procès du bruit: Air France assigne 13 autres compagnies,” France Soir, 04 .06 .1965; “Pas d’avions sur mon village,” Paris Presse, 14 .11.1965 . 40  Aéroport de Paris, “Demain Roissy-en-France” (1972). 41  Halpern, “Les ressorts politiques de la décision publique en matière de planification aéroportuaire: les mobi­ lisations autour de l’aéroport Paris-Charles de Gaulle.” 42 Aéroport de Paris, “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle” (1974).  43  The Perceived Noise Level (PNL ) dB scale was devised in the 1960 s in an attempt to capture the overall maximum “noisiness” of single noise events as perceived by the human ear. It was widely used as the basis for noise exposure metrics like the NNI in the UK and the IP in France, until it was gradually replaced, in European countries, by the Leq and the Lden in the 1990 s / 2000 s. K. Jones and R. Cadoux, “Ercd Report 0904: Metrics for Aircraft Noise” (Environmental Research and Consultancy Department, UK Civil Aviation Authority, 2009).  44 Specifically, the IP was constructed by considering the maximum “noise event” during one minute and the number of events over a reference 24 -hour period, with nighttime movements weighted by a 10 dB factor, and with a trade-off factor of 10. “Environnement et Aéroports. Le plan d’exposition au bruit d’un aérodrome.” (Service Technique des Bases Aériennes, 1998).  45 Block, Les aéroports et

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

Paris, “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région de Paris” (1965).  18  Cot, “Faut-il faire l’aéroport Paris-Nord?”  19  Throughout the 1960 s, supersonic aircraft were thought to be the future. From 1956 an Anglo-French venture worked on the “Concorde,” capable of crossing the Atlantic in half the time than conventional aircraft. Highly prestigious and considered an engineering marvel, the Concorde was eventually put into service in 1976. Yet, its inefficiency in terms of fuel consumption prevented its widespread use, and it was eventually withdrawn in 2003. Military supersonic aircraft though remain widely used.  20  Aéroport de Paris, “Argumentaire Paris-Nord” (1960).  21  Cot estimated that this would cost “three to four times the price of the new airport.” Cot, “Faut-il faire l’aéroport Paris-Nord?” p. 5.  22  At the time it was thought that the prospective passenger could choose to use “the airport closer to their home or office.” Ibid., p. A-7.  23  Other locations considered were deemed either too far, increasing commuting time to Paris and requiring investment in ground transport (Beauvais, Dourdan), or inappropriate for technical reasons (Brétigny). 24  Suburban development had taken place especially in Saint-Denis in direction of Paris and in the Montmorency valley to the west, enabled by the growing road network. It mostly consisted of either large private land subdivisions (lotissements) of low-density and usually low-cost housing (pavillonnaire), or public housing complexes (grands ensembles), such as in Sarcelles, Gonesse, and Garges-lès-Gonesse.  25  Cot, “Faut-il faire l’aéroport Paris-Nord?”  26 Dominique Larroque et al., Paris et ses transports: XIX e-XX e Siècles, deux siècles de décisions pour la ville et sa région (Recherches, 2002).  27  The delineation of the new departments in relation to the airport seems to suggest a desire to distribute the fiscal benefits. However, I have not been able to find concrete evidence that this delineation was purposeful.  28  Cottour, “Une brève histoire de l’aménagement de Paris et sa région.” 29  Direction Générale du District de la Région de Paris, “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région de Paris.”  30  The three ring roads were the Péripherique around Paris, the Rocade de Banlieue in the first-ring suburbs, and the Autoroute Interurbaine de Seine-et-Oise, or A.R.I.S.O. , in the second-ring suburbs. The two north-south RER lines would be linked inside ­Paris to the east-west line introduced in the PADOG that was already in planning.  31 Original: “L’expansion des relations entre Paris et les capitales étrangères … conduit à envisager l’ouverture d’un nouvel aéroport dans une dizaine d’années, de même qu’elle a encouragé le développement du réseau ferroviaire transeuropéen et la création d’un système d’autoroutes internationales.” Direction Générale du District de la Région de Paris, ­ ­“Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la ­Région de Paris,” p. 159. At the time, the share of business trips in total air traffic was estimated at 50 – 70 %, making air transport particularly important for business.  32 Original: “L’expérience du passé et d’un urbanisme non conscient montre que ces contraintes n’ont pas toujours été tenues pour absolues: ainsi des ensembles de logements ont-ils été construits dans les zones de bruit de l’aéroport d’Orly, ou bien à la place d’espaces plantés ou

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­l’environnement.  46  G. Ibergay and D. Renux, Histoire de Roissy-en-France (1979).  47  Jean-Claude Corvisier, Roissy-­ en-France – Tome II (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire: Editions Sutton, 2005).  48 Roseau, Aerocity.  49  Excerpts from resident interviews as expressed in the film “Histoire de la construction de l’aéroport Paris-Nord” (Aéroport de Paris, 1994).  50  Original in Franch: “[D]e toutes les contraintes qui pèsent sur le site aéroportuaire, [le bruit] … mobilise les passions et … risque le plus facilement d’échapper à l’analyse rationnelle et objective, pour être utilisée à des fins démagogiques par des groupes de pression. [Ainsi] il est véritablement indispensable que le problème du bruit soit parfaitement démystifié et expliqué.” Block, Les aéroports et l’environnement, p. 34 .  51  Faburel and Levy, “Science, Expertise and Local Knowledge in Airport Conflicts.”  52 Ibergay and Renux, Histoire de Roissy-enFrance.  53  Circulaire du Ministre d’Équipement et Logement, 22.6 .1972 ; Directive du Ministre d’Équipement et Logement, 22.11.1972 ; Circulaire du Ministre d’Équipement et Logement, 24 .2.1973.  54  The canceled public housing projects, corresponding to some 5 ,000 units, were located mostly in Zone C and some in Zone B. A few projects already underway in Zone C were realized nonetheless. Préfecture Région Parisienne and Préfecture ­Région Picardie, “Rapport sur l’exécution des programmes d’aménagement liés à l’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle” (1973).  55  As an illustration, the population of Gonesse grew from 8 ,517 residents in 1962 to 21,187 in 1968 , corresponding to a + 149 % increase, but only to 21,390 by 1975 (+ 1 %); that of Sarcelles grew from 35,800 residents in 1962 to 51,674 in 1968 (+ 4 4 %), to 55,007 by 1975 (+ 6 %). Data from INSEE .  56  As reported in interviews with local representatives made by Faburel and Barraqué in 2000/2001: Guillaume Faburel and Bernard Barraqué, “Les impacts territoriaux du bruit des avions. Le cas de l’urbanisation à proximité de Roissy CDG . Ne pas évaluer pour pouvoir dire tout, et son contraire” (2002).  57 In the SDAURP , the word aéroport is used about twice as many times as aérodrome, and is always preferred in the references to the new Paris-Nord airport. Also, the fifth national development plan (1966 – 1970), approved in 1964 , only uses the word aérodrome, whereas the sixth (1971 – 1975), approved in 1970, largely replaces it with aéroport.  58 Original: “[complexes] dont la localisation est susceptible d’ordonner, en qualité comme en volume, la croissance ou la rénovation des villes.” Labasse, “L’aéroport et la géographie volontaire des villes,” p. 278 . 59  At the moment of publication of the plan, Orly was still a popular leisure destination, attracting almost as many weekend visitors as passengers. Between 1963 and 1965 Orly Sud even became the most visited “monument” of France, rising before the Eiffel Tower and Chateau de Versailles, with 4 million visitors per year. Frédéric Beniada, Paris-Orly 100 Ans (La Martinière, 2018).  60 Original: “[L’]aéroport, par le trafic de voyageurs et de fret qu’il implique, est un pôle d’attraction pour de multiples activités secondaires et tertiaires qui seront en outre attirées dans cette région par la proximité de l’autoroute du Nord: le schéma directeur prévoit la localisation de ces activités dans le secteur du Bourget et de BlancMesnil.” Direction Générale du District de la Région de

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Paris, “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région de Paris,” p. 108 .  61 In 1961 and 1963, declarations of public utility had been issued for 600 hectares in the communities of Rungis, Orly, and Thiais north of the airport, of which 230 were devoted to the market; the rest was to be occupied by related uses.  62 The RN 186, introduced as Rocade de Banlieue in the SDAURP and today known as A86, would encircle Paris, traversing the southern suburbs at a close distance to the northern border of Orly.  63  Antoine Furio, “Atlas du patrimoine de la Seine-Saint-Denis: Garonor (Aulnay-sous-Bois),” http:// www.atlas-patrimoine93.fr/pg-html/bases_doc/inventaire/ fiche.php?idfic=005inv029.  64  Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, “L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle et son environnement” (1974).  65 For instance, in the sector between the airport and the Montmorency Valley (communities of Gonesse, Sarcelles, Villiers le Bel etc.) this ratio was under 0.50, against 0.95 in Saint-Denis/Aubervillers. “Etude de l’environnement de l’aéroport Paris-Nord. (Recherche de localisations de logements)” (1969).  66  Guillaume Faburel, “Les inégali­ tés environnementales comme inégalités de moyens des habitants et des acteurs territoriaux,” Espace populations sociétés. Space populations societies, no. 2008 / 1 (2008). 67 Original: “Il existe une tendance récente à créer des zones industrielles au voisinage des aéroports. L’aéroport Paris-Nord n’échappera pas à ce mouvement … il est encore difficile de prévoir quelles seront la nature et l’importance des activités induites par la présence de l’aéroport Paris-Nord.” Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, “Etude de l’environnement de l’aéroport Paris-Nord. (Recherche de localisations de logements),” p. 9.  68 Apart from curious tourists and Sunday visitors, much of Orly’s clientele were residents from the southern part of the Paris agglomeration broader region, who found at the airport commercial amenities missing from their communities. Jacques Pernelle, “L’absence de centres urbains peut-elle réduire la promotion de substituts? L’example d’Orly,” Urbanisme 120 – 121 (1971).  69 Roseau, Aerocity.  70  P. Emé, “L’aéroport de Roissy-en-France et son environnement économique” (Aéroport de Paris, 1970).  71 Original: “Les installations de la zone centrale associées aux services proprement dits de l’aéroport, à son caractère prestigieux, et aux services lies a la présence de l’aéroport tels que R.R.R., réseau téléphonique de qualité ou service d’informatique sont susceptibles de conférer à cette zone une attractivi­ té similaire à celle d’un véritable centre d’affaires comme la Défense ou Cergy-Pontoise; celle-ci peut intéresser les sociétés liées peu ou prou au transport aérien en premier lieu, puis tout à fait indépendantes, ensuite si ce n’est qu’elles utilisent beaucoup le transport aérien pour le déplacement de leurs employés ou recevront de nombreux visiteurs voyageant par avion.” Ibid., pp. 9 – 10. 72 Ibid. 73  Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, “Etude de l’environnement de l’aéroport Paris-Nord. (Recherche de localisations de logements).”  74  “Note sur l’etude de la zone d’accompagnement Nord” (1968); “Etude de l’environnement de l’aéroport Paris-Nord. (Recherche de localisations de logements).”  75  Specifically, the request was made by

CHAPTER 4  Aviation infrastructure in the “golden era” (1960 – 1974)

the Minister in charge of territorial planning (Ministre l’aéroport au titre du transport aérien, il apparaît que le Délégué auprès du Premier Ministre chargé du Plan et de surcroît d’activités qui pourrait s’implanter sur son eml’Aménagement du Territoire) André Bettencourt and the prise ou à proximité immédiate résulterait bien davanMinister of Infrastructure and Housing (Ministre de l’Équi- tage d’un choix d’aménagement que d’une nécessité pement de du Logement) Albin Chalandon.­  76  Ori­g­­inal: économique pour les entreprises: ce choix consisterait à “[e]xaminer sous l’aspect technique, économique et fi- vouloir faire de Roissy le premier, sinon l’unique, pôle nancier, les conséquences des différentes politiques pos- tertiaire et industriel du nord de la Région Parisienne.” sibles, en portant une attention particulière aux Groupe de travail Paris-Nord, “Rapport du groupe de traproblèmes des transports, à la recherche des zones les vail ‘Paris-Nord’,” p. 7.  84  Other recommendations conplus favorables à des urbanisations de types divers, à la cerned the provision of economic incentives for ­businesses protection d’un ensemble de sites de qualité, notam- to locate in the Marne valley and Picardie, the organizament forestiers, ceci dans la perspective d’un desserre- tion of leisure activities in the Chantilly-Ermenonville forment de la Région Parisienne le plus large possible.” est north of the airport, the management of water, and “Etude de l’aéroport Paris-Nord et de l’aménagement du the respect of noise restrictions.  85 Even though the Nord du Bassin Parisien” (1969).  77  These positions were SDAURP had advanced a vision for the broader Paris Baidentified by the author in related minutes and reports: sin, Delouvrier’s team had avoided elaborating projects Groupe de travail “Aéroport Paris-Nord et aménagement beyond the limits of the region. The option of developing du nord du Bassin Parisien,” “Compte rendu de la réunion a new town in Compiègne had been briefly explored but du 17 décembre 1969 ” (1969); “Compte rendu de la discarded in order to focus the efforts within the region. réunion du 8 octobre 1969 ” (1969); Institut d’Aménage- Jean-Paul Alduy, “Les villes nouvelles de la région parisiment et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, “Observa- enne. Du projet politique à la réalisation. 1963 – 1977,” Les tions sur le rapport du groupe de travail ‘Paris-Nord’ (Mars Annales de la Recherche Urbaine (1979).  86  The period 1970)” (1970).  78 The Livre Blanc of the South Picardie 1965 to 1975 marked indeed the explosion of suburban region, a pre-schéma directeur elaborated by the Or­ housing, with the support of developers, banks, and polganisation d’études pour l’aménagement des vallées iticians, especially the Minister of Infrastructure and Hous(OREAV ) de l’Oise et de l’Aisne, also stipulated substantial ing Albin Chalandon (1968 – 1972). Cottour, “Une brève hisdevelopment in the area of Compiègne.  79  Groupe de toire de l’aménagement de Paris et sa région.” 87 Original: travail Paris-Nord, “Rapport du groupe de travail ‘Paris-­ “[il] serait souhaitable de ne mettre sur le marché dans Nord’” (1970).  80  Interestingly, none of these projections les prochaines années que le minimum de terrains inincludes jobs at the projected business center of Le Bour- dustriels dans la zone d’activité dite de ‘Paris-Nord’ et get, calculated between 20,000 and 40,000 in other de ne pas donner suite aux autres projets à l’étude.” studies. Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Ré- Groupe de travail Paris-Nord, “Rapport du groupe de tragion Parisienne, “Utilisation des terrains du Bourget” vail ‘Paris-Nord’,” p. 24 .  88  Activity zones were actively (1969).  81  The scenarios were as follows. Scenario 1: New implemented in the sectors favored in the report Parurban centers within the Paris agglomeration; airport is-Nord: by 1974 alone, around 485 ha and 385 ha were ­activity strictly limited to aviation. Scenario 2: Exclusive made available for industrial and tertiary development in priority to the new towns of Cergy-Pontoise and Marne; Cergy-Pontoise and Marne-la-Vallée respectively, and apairport activity strictly limited to aviation. Scenario 3: De- proximately 615 ha were on offer in Picardie. Institut velopment of an additional new town at Survilliers-Dam- d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, martin north of the airport. Scenario 4: Channeling of all “L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle et son environnement.” development to the Marne valley and the town of Meaux. 89  Albin Chalandon, 18 .10.1971. Letter to the Deputy of Scenario 5: Channeling of most development to the Oise Seine-et-Marne Guy Rabourdin.  90  Maurice Cazaux, “La valley and the town of Creil. Scenario 6: Channeling of Seine-Saint-Denis se donne une nouvelle image de most development further north towards the town of marque,” Le Figaro, 06.10.1973.  91  Located between GaCompiègne. Scenario 7: Development of the airport and ronor and Citroën site, Parinor was one of the first projits close surroundings, surrounded by “dormitory-towns.” ects implemented in the area. As one of fifteen peripherScenario 8: “Megalopolis” – channeling of urban develop- al retail centers authorized by the District, it aimed to fill ment along an axis connecting to Belgium; airport activ- the retail “void” of the fast-growing northeastern part of ity strictly limited to aviation.  82  This excluded business- the Region, serving over half a million inhabitants. It had es for which direct access to the runways was beneficial 2 major tenants (Carrefour, Parunis) and 100 small for their core activity; these would anyway prefer to locate ­retailers. “Un nouveau centre commercial: Parinor,” Coté on the airport platform rather than in proximity to it. Desfosses, 02 .12 .1974 .  92 Jean Aubert, “Le Val d’Oise 83  Italics added by author. Original: “L’aéroport présen- écartelé,” La Croix, 25 . 11 . 1973 .  93 Franck Scherrer, tera certaines des caractéristiques d’un centre urbain, en “L’Agence foncière et technique de la région parisienne. raison de la présence de bureaux, de services (assuran­ De la planification à l’urbanisme opérationnel,” Les Ances, banques, hôtels, locations diverses …), de commerces nales de la Recherche Urbaine (1991).  94 Original: “On à l’usage des passagers et du personnel et de nombreu­ peut déjà observer les manifestations de tendances ses possibilités de distractions et de loisirs … L’importance spontanées qui constituent autant d’inflexions par rapde Roissy comme centre d’activités pourrait être encore port aux options d’aménagement qui avaient été replus grande du fait de son attraction sur les entreprises. tenues en 1970.” Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme Mais dès que l’on s’écarte des fonctions exercées par de la Région Parisienne, “L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle et

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son environnement,” p. I.  95  The authorizations given until the first semester of 1974 for the immediate environment of Paris-CDG concerned 234 ,163 m2 of industries, 116,542 m2 of offices, and 320,039 m2 of warehouses. Ibid., p. 22.  96  “Histoire de la Construction de l’aéroport Paris-­ Nord.”  97 Original: “L’objet-aéroport fourni par l’administration de l’aéroport de Paris doit fonctionner en tant que tel seulement – et, à ce titre, certainement pas mal. Mais cette dichotomie entre la fonction et son environnement mène à toutes les catastrophes … l’aéroport Paris-Nord ne sera pas seulement un lieu aéroportuaire parfait … [mais aussi] un système dont il faut inventer et imaginer les structures, le contenant et le contenu … Les routes d’accès, les pistes, les locaux techniques et d’accueil se construisent … tandis que des socio-démo­ graphes recherchent encore la valeur de tel ou tel mouvement migratoire-pendulaire.” Ionel Schein, France en Roissy, Collection Environnement (Paris: Editions Vincent, Fréal et Co., 1970).  98  André Boudreau, “Choix du concept de l’aérogare et études préliminaires,” L’Ingénieur 58 (1972); Aéroport de Paris, “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle.” 99 “Demain Roissy-en-France.”  100 For a detailed account of the Terminal’s conception, public reception, and architectural concepts, see: Paul Andreu and Nathalie ­Roseau, Paris CDG1 (Editions B2, 2014).  101  Aéroport de Paris, “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle.”  102  Additional factors leading to the revision were the complicated baggage handling in the circular building and the fact that Air France wanted a more open terminal that functioned as an advertisement for the national carrier’s identity. “Aéro-

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ports, le style français. Inteview avec Paul Andreu,” Le Monde, 04 .04 .1987.  103 Aéroport de Paris, “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle.”  104 Original: “Nous avions la charge du paysage. Ce qui peut étonner malgré tout aujourd’hui c’est que personne autour de nous ne s’en souciait vraiment. La position des pistes était fixée par des conditions techniques de vol et de contrôle de bruit. Celle des routes était plus libre.” Andreu and Roseau, Paris CDG1, p. 78.  105  “Aéroports, le style français. Inteview avec Paul Andreu.”  106  Halpern, “La décision publique entre intérêt général et intérêts territorialisés.”  107  As the creation of a new international airport exceeded the capacity of ADP , the State had offered a few subsidized loans as well as capital endowments. But these were modest. For instance, in 1973, one of the heaviest years for ADP with its investments (536 million francs) equaling its turnover, the State endowment did not exceed 95 million, or 13.5 % of the capital needs. James Sarazin, “La note salée du confort,” Le Monde, 17.11.1983.  108  Aéroport de Paris, “Présence de firmes multinationales à Roissy? (Confidential Study)” (1972).  109  “La politique d’Aéroport de Paris en matière d’implntation due ses plates-formes d’activités liées au trafic aérien,” ed. Service du Développement Commercial (1974).  110  Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, “L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle et son environnement.”  111  Larroque et al., Paris Et Ses Transports.  112  Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, “L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle et son environnement.”

Fig. 4 .24  The Arcadian atmosphere of the village of Compans, a couple of kilometers southeast of the airport, has remained ­practically unchanged for centuries.

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986) The airport region in the 1976 SDAURIF A green belt in Plaine de France? Regulatory responses to noise impact Organizing ground access to the airport Attempts to enhance accessibility Airport planning in a changing context An (un)planned urbanization and the Paris Nord complex

T

he period that follows the opening of the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport is one of disillusionment for urban and regional planning. With the coffers of both the State and the airport authority empty due to the heavy investments of the “golden era,” few largescale projects are implemented. At the same time, planning authorities are struggling to control ad-hoc urbanization trends around the new airport. The first regulations enacting building restrictions in areas affected by aircraft noise are established, though it soon becomes obvious they can hardly replace the comprehensive spatial strategies of earlier years. The domain where most efforts are channeled into concerns the provision of reliable and efficient rail and road access to CDG . But here too, successive failings re-

veal the wickedness of the airport access problem. By the dawn of the 1980s, adaptation tactics have emerged. Having revised the over-optimistic traffic projections of the early 1970s, the airport authority begins planning more flexibly and invests in the growth of air cargo. In the airport surroundings, large-scale economic activity zones announced in the 1960s come to life, beginning to change the dynamics and character of the region.

The airport region in the 1976 SDAURIF When it opened to the public in early 1974, the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport-megaproject appeared as a perfect product of the technocracy, rationality, and comprehensiveness of the “golden era.” By the end of the decade, however, it would also come to be associated with the erosion of these principles. In the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and amidst the ensuing economic downturn, critiques of the centralized, top-down model of spatial production were growing. Although large parts of the bold state-led development program for Paris had been realized – including over 1.2 million new housing units, 150 new grands ensembles, renewal projects, commercial centers, industrial and tertiary activity zones, large parts of the RER , and of course the Paris Charles des Gaulle airport – the characteristics of urbanization gave cause for concern: rampant suburbanization, a lack of architectural and spatial quality, and growing segregation among different parts of the region.1 Two months after the airport’s inauguration, the national elections brought Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to the presidential office. Among the early actions of the new government was the process of updating the Paris regional plan. The Schéma Directeur d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Region d’Ile-de-France (SDAURIF ) was approved on July 1st 1976, the same day that the administrative reform instituting the Région Ile-de-France (IdF) came into force. While keeping the same basic spatial principles as its 1965 predecessor, the ­S DAURIF enhanced them with a dose of realism and self-reflection. The regional population for the year 2000 was re-evaluated at 12 instead of 14 million inhabitants and there was a re-focusing on the problems of the existing agglomeration rather than on new urbanization.2 The SDAURIF reaffirmed the polycentric organization introduced in the SDAURP  – with the city of Paris, new towns and suburban centers as different types of “hubs” – while also making explicit the goal of alleviating the “unbalanced” development of the region. The lack of economic opportunity in the northern and eastern suburbs had become pressing in the years prior, and among the plan’s stated goals was the reinforcement of inner ring “hubs” as counterweights to the disproportionately developed center of La Défense.3 The SDAURIF also emphasized the need for a 134

“meshed” system of roads and railways, following up on the SDAURP but with the ­f­ocus on reusing and extending existing routes, on promoting suburb-to-suburb connections, and on prioritizing public transport over the private automobile. Moreover, the newfound interest in the protection of rural and natural heritage was echoed in the plan’s most novel orientation, the “green framework” (“trame verte”). This included the preservation and enhancement of urban green areas, forests, heritage sites, and recreation areas, the designation of “rural fronts” (“fronts ruraux”) as limits to the extension of the urban zone, as well as the delineation of five “natural equilibrium zones” (Zones Naturelles d’Equilibre, ZNE ): large rural zones that should act as “buffers” between the urbanization axes (Fig. 5.1). The newly opened Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport occupied less space in the SDAURIF than it had in its predecessor. This is indicative of the waning interest in optimizing the relation of airports with metropolitan space after the mid-1970s – not so much because the directions of spatial development had been well settled, but rather because more pressing issues prevailed. The focus of urban planning was shifting from providing overall rational solutions to undertaking “corrective” action. And one of the main problems to correct in the mid-1970s was the economic imbalance of Ilede-France, with planning action targeting the communities that most suffered the

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

Fig. 5.1  Spatial orientations of the 1976 SDAURIF for the horizon 1985 – 1990.

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Fig. 5.2  Excerpt of the SDAURIF general map for CDG airport area.

consequences of slowing growth. This goal of regional planning provides the context for the treatment of the CDG region in the SDAURIF : among the communities lacking economic development, many were located in the vicinity of the new airport. In the plan, the cluster of Roissy-Le Bourget 4 was included among the “restructuring hubs” of the promoted polycentric development model.5 In projecting Roissy-Le Bourget as primary center of employment and services, the plan affirmed the structuring role of the new airport, extending it to its associated economic zone. This can be read as a statement about the potential of aviation activity to enable economic concentration, an observation supported by the designation of Orly-Rungis as a restructuring hub as well. However, at the time of the SDAURIF, economic activity near Orly was much more advanced than in the CDG region, which had only just started acquiring the characteristics of a cluster.6 And while the Orly-Rungis economic zone constituted a continuation of the industrial activities traditionally bordering the Seine river, the development of activities in the virgin area south of CDG diverted from existing patterns of urbanization. Therefore, the rationale of the SDAURIF for granting an economic role to the Roissy-CDG region was less about rationally channeling urbanization and developing functional symbioses, but rather about the politically driven imperative of regional recalibration and the provision of local jobs. 136

If this rationale appears obvious in retrospect, the 1976 plan provided scarce argumentation for the designation of the CDG area as regional hub, and did not go into specifics about its territorial embedment. This lack of consideration was reflected in the representation of the hub as a node and its depiction as a small square within the activity zone along the A1 highway, with little reference to its spatial features and extent (Fig. 5.2). This representation, though perhaps understandable for the scale and purpose of the plan, promoted an unspecific view of spatial qualities and functional embeddedness. Were it otherwise, the plan would have specified that the airport-­related “hub” largely differed from other “hubs”: rather than a functionally diverse center of reference for surrounding residential areas, it was a largely monofunctional “slab,” whose integration in and relation with its environs merited attention.

With regard to airport-related land use constraints, the SDAURIF was elusive. Aircraft noise was mentioned in passing with regard to its effect in inhibiting urbanization: “To the north, the putting into service of the Charles de Gaulle airport induces a momentum that should be contained to the extent that the nuisance of the airport necessarily limits the possibilities of urbanization.”7 Nonetheless, the SDAURIF showed support for a strategy that promised to help intercept ad hoc urban development and improve spatial quality in the northern part of the Paris region. This was the “green framework,” and in particular the designation of Plaine de France as one of the five natural equilibrium zones (ZNE ) and its recognition as a “particularly sensitive sector” because of the pressure exercised by the presence of the CDG airport.8 In the SDAURIF, a “rural front” was also sketched between the existing agglomeration and CDG , indicating the desirability to limit urbanization to the already planned activity zones. These measures were to be prioritized in the implementation of the plan’s orientations. The idea of drawing a green limit between the agglomeration and the Plaine de France had its basis in a project conceived by the regional planning services (SRE and IAURIF, exIAURP) a couple of years earlier, the so-called “forest belt.”9 The project’s starting point was the observed decline of green spaces in the Paris region, mainly because of the erosion of forests by urbanization. In a spirit of growing environmental awareness and concern for quality of life, Paris planners (re)considered green spaces as both valuable heritage and a service to urbanites. By far the most disadvantaged area in terms of greenery was Plaine de France, constituting a “break” in the loose forFig. 5.3  The “break” of Plaine de France in the forest belt of the Paris agglomeration.

est belt located at around 15 kilometers from the center of the agglomeration (Fig. 5.3). The

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

A green belt in Plaine de France?

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“forest belt” project thus promoted the creation of a continuous network of open public spaces along an arc linking the forest of Bondy with the forest of Montmorency, passing through the Parc de la Courneuve.10 Existing forests and parks would be ­augmented by the acquisition of agricultural land and incentives for “greening,” so as to offer a wide range of facilities for sports, leisure and outdoor activities missing from the urban area and compatible with a wooded environment (Fig. 5.4). Though not explicitly linked to the new airport, this forest belt would improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of the north-east of the region, among others by providing “relief” from the air pollution and nuisance caused by industrial and transport infrastructures, including CDG and its accessways as well as Le Bourget. Moreover, planners saw the project as enhancing the image of the capital for international visitors arriving via CDG or the northern highway. The SDAURIF incorporated the forest belt project in its policy of “green framework,” referring to it as reforestation of the non aedificandi zone between CDG and Le Bourget.11 The “green framework” was aimed at protecting the natural heritage and landscape and promoting quality of life, but also at setting desirable limits to urbanization. The designations of the “rural front” and the ZNE Plaine de France supported this agenda, consistently with the earlier planning goals of limiting the expansion of the Parisian agglomeration to the north and channeling development away from the airport, set by the SDAURP and the working group Paris-Nord. However, these designations

Fig. 5.4  Spaces taken into account for the creation of a “forest belt” in 1975: existing spaces (blue-green), spaces already in planning (green), and spaces to acquire (orange).

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were not explicitly connected to a perimeter for spatial action, thus establishing limited momentum for the connection of the forest belt project with the goal of setting a limit to urbanization. The publication of the SDAURIF was accompanied by the creation of the Regional Green Spaces Agency (Agence Régionale des Espaces Verts, AEV ), tasked with implementing the “green framework.” The agency commissioned a study elaborating upon the forest belt project, renamed as “green crescent” (“croissant vert”).12 Its proposed plan, to be implemented by 1990, concerned a surface of no less than 5,250 hectares be-

AEV promoted the development of the “green crescent” in the following years, with the results seen in the completion of certain large parks: extension of the Parc de la Courneuve, opening of the Parc de la Poudrerie in 1973 and of Parc du Sausset in 1981. But the target of creating a continuous network of green spaces as buffer to the agglomeration proved difficult to implement, for financial but also political and legal reasons, since the new green spaces ought to be transcribed to the local planning documents. Greening interventions, however large-scale, remained piecemeal. With regard to Roissy-CDG , it is doubtful whether the “green crescent” strategy contributed substantially to holding back urbanization. Besides, it should not be expected to, as its purpose was defined as providing proximity to nature and recreation spaces to metropolitan residents, rather than putting limits to urbanization. By the early 1980s, the work of the AEV had shifted from the “green crescent” to a “green belt” strategy concerning the entirety of Ile-de-France, the main goal being to “salvage” valuable green spaces from urban development within a radius of 15 to 30 kilometers around Notre Dame. The agency had a meager budget and depended on the collaboration of local administrations to implement its plans.13 In the CDG airport region, besides the signing of some “rural contracts” after 1981, the lack of financial means and planning powers made the application of large-scale protective policies through greening projects inoperable.

Regulatory responses to noise impact The fact that the “green belt” was not part of airport-related spatial constraints to urbanization was characteristic of the evolution of planning action in the 1970s. ­Namely, planning became less connected with large-scale spatial directions such as the urbanization axes, and more with regulatory measures and local management. Limiting urban development in the CDG region increasingly rested on the institution and enforcement of land use regulatory restrictions, as well as on corrective measures. As seen in the previous chapter, restrictions were introduced through the enactment of three noise impact zones shortly before the opening of the airport, not without reactions. These first regulations prevented new housing from being built too close to the airport, and therefore new people from being exposed to high levels of noise. In the

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

tween the Bondy and Montmorency forests – including woods, parks, gardens, outdoor leisure complexes, sports fields, recreation facilities, paths, as well as protected farmland. Of those, 580 hectares were existing green spaces; the rest was to be acquired and developed by public authorities. Several projects had already been undertaken by the State, the departments and the communities, but the study noted the lack of an overall vision and the fact that realizations were slow due to limited financial means.

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first years of operation of CDG , it appears that the number of noise-affected residents remained in check: in 1976, 17,000 people lived in zones A and B around CDG , compared with 170,000 people in the equivalent zones around Orly.14 But the legal basis of airport-related noise and other constraints was incomplete, leaving the urban development field open to exceptions and aberrations. In an effort to institute a better framework, the State Council (Conseil d’Etat) canceled the ministerial memorandum having enacted the three zones, and introduced an official Plan d’Exposition au Bruit (noise exposure plan, PEB for short) for CDG in 1977. In parallel, national legislation for airport-related building restrictions was passed, and an aviation tax intended to finance building soundproofing and other noise-abating measures was introduced.15 Another memorandum in 1979 specified how commercial airports and their associated facilities, rights of way and constraints should be transcribed into planning documents, namely the regional schémas directeurs and the local plans d’occupation des sols (POS ).16 These processes were new and intricate, and in the case of CDG complicated by the high national, regional and local stakes associated with the airport. The privileged position of ADP, the fact that it was given carte blanche to handle both the elaboration of noise contours and the management of the aviation tax fund, and the lack of real consultation with local representatives, created a climate of distrust.17 Accordingly, the translation of airport-related constraints into land use and planning regulation was fraught with difficulties. These were both regulatory – as the noise contours did not have a legal value inscribable in the Code d’Urbanisme – and political, as the restrictions clashed with the wishes of local planning actors in terms of land development, and were experienced as a top-down imposition. The central state also found it difficult to control land-use infringements and make sure the restrictions were respected. A new era for the management of airport-related environmental impacts dawned after the 1981 national election that brought the socialist party to power after many decades and François Mitterrand to the presidential office. The new government proclaimed its commitment to addressing social and environmental issues and improving living conditions, especially in the metropolitan periphery. Noise, including aircraft noise, was recognized as a problem with significant implications for health, and a “noise task force” (mission bruit) was created.18 It was professed that processes with regard to airport-related noise were opaque and subsidies to noise-affected residents insufficient. By the end of 1983, the government had committed to several measures: revision of the PEBs, after public inquiry, within three years; drafting of a bill to manage urbanization around airports within one year; increase in the subsidies for soundproofing and improvement of the assistance system for residents of the Orly and R ­ oissy regions; and creation of consultative commissions upon request of local authorities in airport areas.19 The preparation of the law on urbanization around airports illustrated the problems with the existing framework, and exposed their exacerbation due to the decentralization laws enacted in the meantime (1982/1983). With decentralization, the communes (communities) acquired control of local land use plans (POS ), thus also becoming ­responsible for transcribing to them noise exposure plans (PEB ). But the instrument of PEB had not been aligned to this new context, creating chaos in the management of land use around airports. Also, many communities feared that a PEB -compatible revision of their POS would severely disrupt their urban development plans.20 A r­ eport 140

published in 1984 in preparation of the new law, studying the areas covered by a PEB around 140 French airfields, found that the communes most affected by noise in the Paris region were at that time the ones lagging most behind in the development of their POS . The reason given was the political difficulty experienced by elected officials in ratifying the constraints imposed by the PEB on land rights.21 Finally, the 1985 “law on urban planning in the vicinity of airports” (Loi relative à l’urbanisme au voisinage des aéroports) gave a legal value to the PEB , and established advisory committees in airport regions.22 It determined that the PEB s would be renewed every fifteen years to account for changes in airport traffic or the use of runways. Also, the acoustic limits of noise exposure zones in the PEB s would be a matter of consultation with the involved communities. Although this constituted a much-anticipated venue for communities to let their voices be heard, it also made noise exposure a matter of negotiation and thus liable to conflict. More crucially, the prescriptions of the law

Organizing ground access to the airport In this period of growing uncertainty, and a planning action that can be described as inconsequential compared to the major operations of the 1960s and early 1970s, the domain with the most developments was that of ground access. It was discussed in Chapter 4 how the efficient linkage of CDG with regional centers was seen as a key part of successful airport planning. But the task was fraught with challenges, some of which had already been outlined in the 1971 booklet “Airports and the Environment.” There, Jacques Block had stressed that the means of transport to the airport should be not just fast, but also frequent and without time-consuming changes between modes (ruptures de charge). Although the private automobile was clearly the most convenient in that sense, it also demanded the development of oversized and saturation-prone “umbilical cords” between airports and urban centers. Rail-based linkages, on the o ­ ther

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

would not be operable until the decrees defining the restrictions associated with the different noise zones were issued. But this took almost three years, creating a lagging uncertainty and a deteriorating atmosphere among planning actors in the CDG region. Local actors were growing intolerant with the chronic management of their territories by state authorities and ADP without their consent. Opposition to aircraft noise was also on the rise. In 1984, a group of residents from communities not in the airport’s immediate environs, but in the Montmorency valley 20 kilometers to its west, created the association ADVOCNAR (Association de Défense du Val-d’Oise Contre les Nuisances Aériennes de Roissy), that pressed for traffic restrictions and the banning of night flights. ADVOCNAR was the largest of its kind to date, and its creation testified to the far-reaching spatial impact of airport operation, with r­ eality escaping from the expert-defined nuisance contours, as most of these communities lay outside the noise curves defined in the PEB in force.23 In parallel, the first lawsuits against airlines by residents of the CDG region went to court. Plaintiffs were granted compensations by invoking the deterioration of their living environment, financial losses due to the depreciation of property values, as well as neuropsychic disorders and illnesses caused by noise.24 Such events indicated that things had changed in the relation of the CDG airport with its environment and the management of its impact.

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hand, were costly, and the possibility of air passengers filling a train line enough to amortize its cost appeared slim; especially high-speed airport links like the aérotrain, however attractive, were very expensive and risky. Block was forced to conclude that airports should be linked to the existing regional public transportation network, and any new rail links should include stops at other centers of activity, since “we do not see why the air passenger should be entitled to the privilege of moving – by land – ­faster than the other citizens in urban zones.”25 In short, there seemed to be no optimal solutions to making airport access fast and comfortable enough for air travelers, viable for other commuters of the metropolitan area, and financially realistic for its implementing authorities. Lamentably, this predicament was confirmed in the following years. To begin with, the aérotrain remained a project on paper: the scheme fell victim to unresolved technical problems and a lack of sufficient financial support, as ADP was indebted by the investments in Roissy and the government prioritized other projects.26 Other plans succumbed to the broader post-1973 disillusionment for grand visions. Many transport proposals of the SDAURP proved financially or technically unworkable, including the RER line linking the two Parisian airports. This was substituted by two separate lines: To the south of the agglomeration, the R ATP -operated ligne de Sceaux was extended to the center of Paris, and renamed RER B upon its arrival at Châtelet-les-Halles and its connection with RER A in 1977.27 This line was projected to reach the Orly airport through an additional branch; pending its realization, access to Orly was provided via a rehabilitated SNCF rail line, dubbed Orly Rail, later integrated into RER C. To the north, the rail link to CDG materialized in the form of a new branch to the SNCF -operated ligne d’Aulnay-sous-Bois, baptized Roissy Rail in analogy to Orly Rail (Fig. 5.5). A declaration of public utility for the Roissy Rail line was issued in July 1973. The ­implementation of the line was enabled by the reconsideration of the automobile-based regional development model; pushed forward by an airport authority anxious to ensure the popularity of the new airport; and accelerated by a regrettable user experience in the airport’s first months of operation. Many people perceived CDG as being “far and hard to reach,” and once they arrived there, they complained about internal navigation.28 Writing in Le Monde in early 1975, Gilbert Dreyfus, general director of ADP between 1971 and 1981, attempted to defend the new airport, complaining that “users demand both the simplification and acceleration of procedures granted in mass transport and the speed of city-airport links, all while adopting the private automobile and seeking an individual treatment that ensures personal comfort: you will agree with us that the compromise is not easy.”29 Eager to improve access to the new airport, ADP and SNCF, co-­fi nancing the project, saw to the completion of Roissy Rail within only 27 months. The line opened to the public on May 30, 1976, with direct trains from the Gare du Nord running every fifteen minFig. 5.5  SNCF line to Roissy, utes and allowing CDG to be reached in twenty minutes. According its stops before the airport and its projected connection to the initial projections, in its first year Roissy Rail was expected with the Ligne de Sceaux ­to handle 3.5 million passengers, of which 1.5 million to or from the and the Orly airport, as airport.30 ­depicted in the press. 142

The SDAURIF, publicized ­shortly afterwards, stressed the importance of good ground accessibility to the Paris airports: Robust transport links between Paris and its international airports by road and rail would contribute to the capital’s ­connectivity, i nternational attractiveness and ­ standing.31 Several of the plan’s trans­ port-related measures were relevant Fig. 5.6  The Terminal 1 and its parking facilities around 1976. for the airports: the connection of Roissy Rail with the RER B line; the latter’s extension to Orly through an antenna

dicated that CDG and its adjacent economic zone should be efficiently connected with the other “restructuring hubs.” As transport and planning authorities looked for ways to implement the loaded transport agenda of the SDAURIF, ridership projections for Roissy Rail proved overoptimistic, especially regarding air passengers. One of the biggest hurdles to the line’s popularity was the localization of the Roissy train station. Planned at the time of automobile dominance and the five identical circular terminal units, and conceived with the airport worker rather than the traveler in mind, the station was in the middle of the Unité Centrale, or rather “in the middle of the fields,” as nothing was realized there at the time.33 Terminal 1 was 1,500 m away, obliging air passengers to take a shuttle bus; not surprisingly, most chose to reach the terminal by car (Fig. 5.6). Terminal 2, planned at about 1,000 m from the station, would predictably also require the use of a shuttle. These localizations reflected ADP ’s internal decision-making process, excluding ­other actors, in this case the public transport authorities SNCF and R ATP. The unavoidable change in transport modes, in combination with the convenient road access via the A1 highway, resulted in Roissy Rail being used less intensively than predicted for reaching the airport.34 Au contraire, suburban commuter traffic exploded at the less frequently served train stops of Servan and Villepinte. This situation pushed SNCF to drop direct trains in the winter of 1977, stretching the journey time between Paris and CDG to almost double.35 As for planned road connections, they, too, were not implemented as envisaged. Though CDG was well reachable through the A1 highway, the latter showed signs of saturation. The ring roads planned in the SDAURP and the SDAURIF  – A86 in the inner ring of suburbs and A87 in the outer periphery – were expected to relieve the radial axes and thus improve airport access, taking up part of the airport-suburb traffic. But their implementation largely fell victim to the lack of financial resources that plagued transportation authorities after the heavy investments in infrastructure of the 1960s

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

stemming from the station of Antony; new tangential rail links between the airports and Marne-la-Vallée; and completion of parts of the A86 and A87 ring roads and their connection with other road segments (A1, B3, F2, G4). In addition, the plan recognized that the flows generated in the airport regions were due not only to passengers and visitors, but also to the transport of workforce and goods around the platforms: “Privileged hubs for the implementation of activities, commercial airports consequently engender a significant (ground) traffic, added to that of air travelers.”32 Hence, it was in-

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Fig. 5.7  Left: Projected road network for the Paris region in the 6 th national development plan (1971 – 1975). Right: Projected network in the 7th plan (1976 – 1980), with most of the roads suggested in the previous plan still not implemented.

and early 1970s. The envisaged “meshed” system of radial and ring highways was only realized in a slow and piecemeal way (Fig. 5.7).36 These evolutions speak to a growing mismatch, already by the late 1970s, between the discourse and the reality of airport access projects. This mismatch had its roots in the changing context for planning, with the draining of public funds and downscaling of state action making it difficult to bring to fruition the ambitious spatial strategies conceived in the 1960s. At the same time, the “half-success” of the Roissy Rail line was indicative of the inherent wickedness of the problem of airport access. This was associated with several conundrums. First, there was the issue of how to achieve speed and comfort, best served by exclusive, non-stop links between airports and other centralities while simultaneously financially and functionally rationalizing regional transport, best achieved by multi-purpose, multi-destination services. The two needs corresponded to two different sets of users: air passengers and metropolitan area residents. A further conundrum arose from the role of the airport and its adjacent ­activity zones as employment basin. This role implied significant local traffic, hardly taken into account in the search for optimal airport access solutions. Besides, local traffic also increased due to suburban development as the result of the liberal planning policies of the early 1970s. As seen earlier, it was the residents and workers of Servan and Villepinte, who, while not planned as the primary beneficiaries of the Roissy Rail line, boosted its utilization. In so doing, they de facto redefined its purpose – from a city-airport link to a regional line serving the territory between the city and the airport – in turn making it less attractive to the airport’s primary clientele. It was not long before these communities objected to the development of large-scale, often airport-­ related transport infrastructure on their territories while their own needs were being ­disregarded. For instance, the mayors and citizens of Aulnay, Sevran, and Villepinte protested against the disruption anticipated by the development of the A87 ring road, denouncing a central planning approach based on following lines on paper.37 144

Planning authorities were unprepared to deal with these conundrums that escaped rational assessment, especially when confronted with the messy realities of implementation. Despite the SDAURIF recognizing that transport serves territories, rather than single nodes, this was a long way from actually planning the CDG airport region in concert with regional transport and its broad range of users. Thus, two important findings of 1970s-planning – about the role of airports in structuring territories and about the role of transport in structuring metropolitan space – did not meaningfully meet when it came to decisions on spatial development. Not tackling these in concert at a time when large-scale planning was still possible would make it more difficult ­later to “correct” the problems of accessibility and connectivity that continued to ­affect the CDG airport region.

As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, renewed efforts to tackle the Gordian knot of airport access were undertaken. Already in 1977, on the occasion of reviewing the multi-year public transport investment program for the Paris region, the Ile-de-France council had asked for additional studies to be carried out regarding services to Orly and Roissy- CDG . A working group with representatives of the Ministry of Transport, ADP, R ATP, and SNCF had been created. But little progress was made. By 1980, the wickedness of the airport ground access problem had become obvious in the reality of daily bottlenecks on the main road axes around CDG , especially the A1 highway, and the fact that only 8 % of air passengers used Roissy Rail to reach the airport.38 The situation was even worse in Orly, with only 4 % of air passengers using RER C/Orly Rail.39 Moreover, there was still no rail connection between the two airports, constituting an inconvenience for the 400,000 passengers in transit and undermining the reputation of Paris as international aviation hub. Given the unpopularity of rail access, Air France had introduced its own buses for air passengers; further buses were operated by R ATP between Paris and the airports (Fig. 5.8). These services were however hardly coordinated with each other. The sparse use of public transport by air passengers prompted the regional prefect Lucien Lanier to take an interest in the issue of airport accessibility. In a note circulated in early 1980, he assessed the effectiveness and cost of different options to improve access to CDG and Orly by public transport. For CDG , the three examined options were the continuation and enhancement of the shuttle bus service between the train station and the terminals, the implementation of an on-site mini-metro system, and the extension of the Roissy Rail line up to T2. It was argued that the third option, albeit the most expensive, was the only one with the potential “to substantially increase the use of trains by air passengers and staff working in the terminal”; and yet the prefect concluded that “it is not necessary to make a definitive choice between the different solutions right now because … it is only around 1989 – 1990 that it will be necessary to connect [Terminal 2] to the railway in a more efficient way.”40 The options to reach the Orly terminals by rail – by extension of the RER C line or the addition of a branch to the RER B line – were also considered too costly to justify their prioritization. As a result, the CDG -to-Orly rail connection was also postponed, with the note suggesting a new bus line would suffice for the time being.

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

Attempts to enhance accessibility

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Fig. 5.8  Access possibilities to the Paris airports in 1980.

On the whole, therefore, the prefect did not call for substantial enhancements to airport accessibility in the short term. Nonetheless, he did ask the regional assemblies of Ile-de-France to request “precautionary measures” from the local authorities; that is, to reserve land for the extension of the railways up to the airport terminals.41 Shortly afterwards, the regional committee CES (Comité Économique et Social d’Ile-de-France) announced its wish to see the extension of the Roissy Rail implemented in a fouryear horizon.42 In parallel, the regional planning service DREIF (Direction Régionale de l’Equipement de l’Ile de France) commissioned a survey of air passengers to evaluate potential short-term measures to increase ridership until larger infrastructural works were carried out. The resulting report made three proposals: a) provide the ­possibility of baggage check-in at the Paris train stations; b) introduce on-demand “collective ­taxis” providing airport transport services from suburban locations; c) improve the information given to air passengers in town and at the airports.43 These developments indicated a mobilization of planning actors to improve transport to the Paris airports, yet moving from intention to realization proved once again difficult. With projects in the Roissy airport slowing down in a difficult economic climate (see also next section), the extension of its rail line was treated as less urgent than other transport projects demanding a piece of the state budget pie.44 The Orly situation was even more challenging, with the involved actors being unable to reach an agreement on which solution to finance.45 That said, the extension of the RER B line to the Gare du Nord station, “meeting” Roissy Rail at the facing platform in 1981, and the merging of the two lines into one, jointly operated by SNCF and R ATP, in 1983, made the CDG train station better accessible from the center of Paris.46 The opening of another RER B station at Saint-Michel a few years later offered the possibility of transferring to RER C / Orly Rail, thus materializing a partial rail link between CDG and Orly, which 146

was however far from optimal, as the trajectory was very long and shuttle buses to the terminals were unavoidable. Apart from these infrastructural projects related to the RER network, which were not specific to the airports, the first part of the 1980s was rather marked by ad hoc and piecemeal improvements to airport accessibility. Among the undertaken actions were the upgrading of information to passengers in both airports, the increase in the frequency of shuttle buses at CDG , the introduction by R ATP of

in the rush hour, four per hour in the off-peak Fig. 5.9  The helicopter service Hélifrance to the Paris period). These improvements seemed to some- airports between 1984 and 1986. what increase public transport ridership by air passengers.47 Between 1984 and 1986, there was even a helicopter service between the two airports and Issy-les-Moulineaux, operated by the private company Hélifrance. ­Offering to reach Orly in 6 minutes, CDG in 14 minutes, and link the two in 22 minutes, the helicopter was initially received enthusiastically, especially by airlines (Fig. 5.9).48 However, the service turned out to be loss-making; and as the need for direct communication between the two airports was anyway reduced thanks to a rationalization of correspondences, neither ADP nor the State saw any reason in further subsidizing it.49 These various projects constituted betterments in the accessibility of the Paris airports, nevertheless they could hardly replace the “hard” interventions involving new infrastructure that would have truly improved airport access. The increases in public transport ridership by air passengers were accordingly mostly marginal. The biggest problem, however, appeared to be coordination: notwithstanding certain consultations initiated by the DREIF,50 the period was characterized by constant vacillations on the cost of projects and a difficulty of collaboration among the related actors, exacerbated by the institutional turbulence following the 1982 decentralization reform. It was not until 1986, when SNCF started planning the high-speed rail (TGV ) network and the imperative of competitiveness rose in the state agenda, that the accessibility of CDG was approached again as a crucial shared stake for public planning action, as will be seen in the following chapter.

Airport planning in a changing context While planners of the late 1970s and early 1980s struggled to (re)position the airports in the metropolitan structure and transport network, the airport authority was facing its own struggles. In its first years of operation of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle, and despite the rational planning and praise received upon its opening, several elements turned out to be a source of confusion. In addition to the suboptimal access described ­earlier, passengers complained about navigation, information, the handling of luggage, or the

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

the Orlybus line in 1983, and the doubling of trains to and from CDG in 1985 (eight trains

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Fig. 5.10  The short-lived rampart walk at CDG 1, which would eventually be occupied by offices.

massive architecture of Terminal 1. In his newspaper piece, Dreyfus attempted to inform the public and defend the authority’s work, admitting that “[i]n the minds of travelers, there remains a confusion about responsibilities … [and] a certain ignorance of the mission of our establishment.”51 At one point, ADP was not even sure if sufficient airlines would move their operations from Orly to justify the investment in the new airport, but this uncertainty was resolved when Air France announced that it would use the new airport as its center of operations.52 The second inner runway was given to operation in 1975, and in 1976 traffic reached the projected 8 million passengers, with 18,000 people employed at CDG at that time.53 But ADP needed to secure a larger range of income sources in order to restore and secure its financial health. As seen in the previous chapter, the development of office and leisure facilities on the Unité Centrale stumbled on internal and external obstacles, and by the mid-1970s the idea of large-scale non-aeronautical urban development onsite was indefinitely postponed. ADP hence sought other opportunities to increase its revenue by utilizing the immense airport site. One modest attempt at integrating commercial facilities in CDG was the initial inclusion of observation terraces in T1, in analogy to Orly’s South Terminal. These took the form of a “rampart walk” on the terminal’s upper level, with shops for visitors projected to be added under the ramp ­level (Fig.  5.10).54 The attempt was however short-lived: Two terrorist attacks at Orly

Fig. 5.11  Left: Hotel Sofitel (today Mercure), built in CG in the late 1970 s. Right: Hotel Arcade (today Ibis), built in 1980.

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in January 1975 forced ADP to close the terraces to the public for s­ ecurity r­easons and abandon similar plans at the new airport.55 Other ways to increase turnover were pursued, including duty-­f ree shopping and parking fees for passengers. ADP also ventured cautiously into real estate with the construction of the hotels “Sofitel” and “Arcade” (Fig. 5.11). Furthermore, start­ing in the late 1970s the airport authority made a profitable business

Fig. 5.12  Map of CDG cargo facilities in 1978 .

also the management, of airports internationally.56 In aviation-related activity, the domain that ultimately proved most promising in a context of uncertainty was air cargo. Since its conception CDG had been expected to take over a large part of Orly’s cargo traffic, and as seen in the previous chapter ADP planned to devote an extensive surface to goods storage and handling facilities. With the expansion of international commerce promising a bright future for this domain, by 1978 CDG was marketed as “the freight-specialized airport that Europe needed.”57 The designated area, in the form of a large U, stretched over 300 hectares in the southwestern part of the platform, featuring a direct connection to the Al highway (Fig. 5.12). In its first development phase by the end of the 1970s, it was equipped with four terminals in direct contact with the cargo aircraft parking aprons: the private terminals of Air France and the American UTA , the “Sogafro” terminal for freight agents, and the “common user” terminal for carriers not needing dedicated facilities – totaling over 90,000 m 2 of office, warehousing and storage space (Fig. 5.13). To these were added a postal depot and customs facilities. Further, 100 hectares within the zone were made available to firms having increased needs in air freight transportation.58 The “bet” that ADP placed on air cargo proved correct. In 1977, CDG handled 288,000 tons of freight, corresponding to 60 % of the total air cargo traffic of the Parisian airports.59 By 1983, it was 500,000 tons, corresponding to 75 % of total Parisian traffic; and ADP had added another freight terminal to the dedicated zone.60 It was not the same with passenger traffic, which turned out to be more volatile than initial predictions would have it. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, Parisian air passenger transport had enjoyed stable annual growth rates of more than 10 %; but after 1973, rates fluctuated between 3 % and 8 %. As an example of the initial lack of expectation of this slowing growth, ADP reports in the period 1970 – 1974 projected close to 70 million passengers for all Paris airports by 1985, of which 50 million at CDG .61 In reFig. 5.13  View of the “common user” freight terminal in 1978 .

ality, the number handled at that date would be around 32 million passengers; less than half at CDG (Fig. 5.14). The initial numbers were in

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by exporting its architecture and engineering expertise in the design, and i­ ncreasingly

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fact substantially revised after 1974. Besides, the disillusionment was not unique to the Paris airports, as the oil crises of 1973 and 1979 and the ­g lobal economic stagnation affected air transport at an international scale. As the 1980s dawned, the deregulation promoted by the US and the UK governments put pressure on France to make its own sector less prone to

Fig. 5.14  Traffic projection for the Paris airports in 1972 and actual traffic growth.

external shocks and to competition. Given these conditions and the frugal state support, ADP withstood the economic crises rather well. With ex-

penditure cutbacks, savings in management and increases in certain fees, it was able to self-finance most of its needs. The growth rates of the Paris airport traffic of the early 1980s, though low, were markedly higher than those of their international counterparts.62 The adaptive tactics of ADP were reflected in the design of the new generation of terminals at CDG . As mentioned in the previous chapter, contrary to T1 that functioned as a closed system, Terminal 2 had a “modular” design, intended to promptly and flexibly accommodate growth waves. Fully developed, it would comprise six slightly curving successive terminal buildings. Terminal 2B, opening in late 1981, and 2A, opening in early 1982, were the first incarnations of this logic (Fig. 5.15). They aspired to make the passenger’s trajectory more linear and more legible in space.63 These terminals were the highlights of a period otherwise characterized by prudency in airport investments. For instance, the openings of the third and fourth part of T2, initially projected for 1985 / 1986, were shifted to after 1988.

Fig. 5.15 Terminals 2 A and 2B shortly after their opening.

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­ aris, As the economy started recovering, ADP, renamed to the plural Aéroports de P consolidated its role, rationalized its different domains of activity,64 and planned a new influx of investments. In 1984, it declared its intention to bring the combined capacity of CDG and Orly to 50 million passengers by 1990.65 In parallel, the idea of commercial building development resurged in a renewed way. As a public establishment, ADP could not directly sell land, but was entirely in charge of site planning, which allowed it to develop surfaces to then lease or rent. Income was raised through fees calculated on the building or the land, or, in the case of hotels, as a percentage of gross revenue.66 The Service Immobilier (Real Estate Service), a small but growing division within ADP, had already ventured into building projects related to the needs of airport clients, especially in the domain of air cargo, for example the storage and office space mentioned earlier, but also associated facilities like restaurants and shops. An even bigger project was the Cité Air France in CDG ’s central zone, a complex that opened in 1984 and hosted the direction of operations and the training center of Air France. As ADP attracted further tenants, including the specialized secondary sector businesses

predicted in Emé’s 1970 report, or businesses involved in the transport of high-­value goods, real estate development grew in importance in its portfolio. By 1986, it was making up 9.5 % of ADP ’s turnover, and Guy Bernfeld, director of ADP real estate sales department, was stating that “Aéroport de Paris has decided to go on the offensive in terms of commercial real estate.”67

In closing the chronicle of this period of disillusionment and adaptation between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, this section focuses on urbanization trends in the ­Paris Charles de Gaulle airport surroundings and on the development of the so-called ­“Paris Nord” zone. It was seen in the previous chapter how “spontaneous” land development tendencies had already been manifested by the airport’s opening; and earlier in this chapter, how the SDAURIF implicitly condoned these tendencies by designating Roissy-­Le Bourget as a regional employment “hub,” in an effort to recalibrate the region in terms of economic opportunity. In subsequent years, urbanization in the CDG region was the mixed result of several trends. On the one hand, the failure to implement the recommendations of the 1970 Paris Nord report became apparent with housing development. As the development of the new towns of Cergy-Pontoise and Marne-la-Vallée and their connection with the airport region lagged behind, the new workforce associated with CDG gravitated to the airport’s rural environs. This tendency was felt mostly to the north, enabled by the easy access from the A1 highway, for example in the area of Saint-Witz / Survilliers; as well as to the west and northwest, in the area of Domont / Ezanville and further into the Oise valley. Housing development in these areas mostly took the form of sprawling subdivisions, sometimes at the expense of forests; with the resulting neighborhoods having little relation to each other, featuring few services and facilities, and being economically attached to Paris.68 Also, the implementation of Roissy Rail had

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

An (un)planned urbanization and the Paris Nord complex

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the unplanned e ­ ffect of fueling development in the rural villages of Seine-et-Marne, ­mostly in the area around Dammartin-en-Goële, thanks to the opening of local bus lines from the airport.69 This new connectivity enabled previous­ ly isolated villages to “open up” and attract a new population working at Roissy and the surrounding zones, in some cases leading to multifold growth of the residential population.70 On the other hand, commercial development continued, mostly along the road axes, albeit at a reduced pace in relation to the earlier speculative years. Interest from tenants chiefly concerned economic zones intended

Fig. 5.16  View of the Circuit Carole looking south during construction works in 1979.

for low-added-value activities like warehouses, usually small-scale and with little relation to aviation, or other space-consuming or noise-generating functions. A good example is the racing track “Circuit Carole,” built in the immediate southern periphery of the airport in 1979, after the government promised the French Motorcyclist Federation FFMC to support the construction of a safe track in the northern part of the region, and the municipality of Tremblay-lès-Gonesse agreed to host the project (Fig. 5.16).71 ­Otherwise, the airport seemed to exert less of an attraction to economic activities than the planners of 1970 had expected.72 The limited number of companies valuing immediate access to the runways, such as those involved in the air cargo business, preferred to settle in the dedicated zone developed by ADP, as seen in the previous section. Consequently, in the “urban” communities of Plaine de France west of the airport, where residential development remained frozen due to noise-related restrictions, the promised economic development seemed to barely materialize. Whereas the localization of the Paris- CDG airport in Plaine de France had conformed to a strong state-led spatial vision, the evolution of the area in the 1970s and 1980s appeared therefore to be largely ad-hoc, following fragments of spatial strategies without the leadership of a robust public hand. For local actors, the combination of development pressure, difficulty in imposing restrictions, and poor implementation of transport links provided little motivation to build strictly according to the urbanization axes. Rather, there was a pragmatic response to housing needs and demand based on available land and road access, sometimes disregarding noise constraints.73 Moreover, while housing and warehouses were being built, transport infrastructure continued to lag behind and residential areas to be neglected, lacking public facilities and quality amenities. However, this period also saw the initiation of two projects of the public hand that would eventually substantially change the character of the area. Their influence started becoming obvious only after 1981: the year that the first of these projects, ­Paris Nord II, opened. As seen in the previous chapter, Paris Nord II had been pursued by ­A FTRP since 1968. Despite the opposition of the DATAR to the development of the zone, AFTRP was able to slowly push the project through. In so doing, it acted much more as

a developer furthering its interests than as an executive branch of the state machinery, signifying a change in its operating logic. The plan of the ZAC Paris Nord II was 152

­ pproved in 1977, and the zone opened on 300 ha in 1981.74 From the beginning, AFTRP a had envisaged an “American-style” business park, with large plots, comfortable parking, attention paid to landscaping, and services to tenants, features that gave it a certain “upscale” image.75 The zone’s first users were the typical manufacturing and distributing companies attracted by the adjacency to the A1 highway; but after 1984, the mix of functions started changing: big retail surfaces like IKEA and Conforama also became part of the zone, and demand arose from high-tech or corporate companies.76 By 1987, 300,000 m 2 of activity surfaces and 60,000 m 2 of retail had been developed on roughly 100 ha, and users included internationally active high-tech firms like Trumpf, Hewlett-Packard, Bull, and Sharp.77 The second project was the Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center (PEX ).78 It was conceived in 1979 by the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Paris, CCIP), a powerful public actor representing the interests of businesses in the Paris region. The first part of Paris Nord Villepinte was inaugurated three years later. Built eastwards in extension of Paris Nord II , on a site of 115 ha, it

Fig. 5.17 Model and visualization of the Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center on the cover of the ­magazine Le Moniteur in 1981.

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

offered 70,000 m 2 of exhibition space and hyper-modern facilities appropriate for big international events (Fig. 5.17).79 CCIP ’s idea proved brilliant: with other exhibition centers of the Paris region nearing saturation, Paris Nord Villepinte was instantly successful. By 1986, a second part of 47,000 m 2 had to be added to respond to an annual traffic of thirty trade shows.80 The two projects, delivered at the instigation of major public actors, started to transform the area’s visibility as well as its connectivity, since numerous local access roads were developed and a new stop was inserted on the RER B line just before

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its airport terminus (station “Parc des Expositions”). In parallel, new patterns started emerging in their surroundings. First, disused manufacturing facilities started being transformed into warehouses, as demand for logistics rose. Second, some of the new economic tenants, in particular companies in Paris Nord II , were international or internationally oriented; for them, the presence of CDG seemed to be an important factor of attraction. Third, certain companies started showing interest in having not just distribution facilities, but also offices near the airport hub.81 This evolution in the types of tenants was reinforced by a concomitant regulatory shift: the relaxation of procedures for the settle­ment of economic activities in Ile-de-France.82 For decades, the need for authorization for commercial projects had been part of the economic decentralization agenda for restraining the Paris region. Its elimination in 1985 triggered a swift awakening of the real estate market for offices and commercial facilities. Speculative projects “en blanc” 83 proliferated. Initially, they were concentrated in Hauts-de-Seine (around La Défense), but construction fever soon touched the Plaine de France area. By 1987, the Paris Nord complex along the A1 highway – including Paris Nord II , PEX , the Citroën factory, and the Parinor commercial center – along with the airport’s freight zone and the other activity zones of the area appeared to form a loose version of the long speculated “ ZALA .”

1  Cottour, “Une brève histoire de l’aménagement de Paris et sa région.”  2  IAU -IdF, “Une histoire de planifications,” http://www.iau-idf.fr/savoir-faire/planification/ile-defrance-2030/une-histoire-de-planifications.html.  3 According to the SDAURIF , the development of La Défense had led to a rampant rise in property values, the substitution of industrial jobs by office jobs, and the replacement of old lower middle-class housing by upper middle-­ class residences. Service Régional de l’Équipement de la Région Parisienne and I.A.U.R.I.F. , “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-deFrance” (1976).  4  By that time, Le Bourget was due for a massive downscaling of activity. In 1975, the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace was added to the spaces used for the international aeronautical exhibition Salon d’Aéronautique et de l’Espace, that had been taking place there every few years since the beginning of the century. The airport was closed to international air traffic in 1977. Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, “Utilisation des terrains du Bourget.”; Pierre Kerlonégan, “Le Bourget, la page est tournée,” Le Figaro, 02. 03. 1977.  5  Other “restructuring hubs” were the cluster of Thiais-Rungis-Orly, the suburban centers of Saint-Denis and Versailles, and the smaller centers of Velizy to the south, and Créteil, Rosny and Bobigny to the east. Service Régional de l’Équipement de la Région Parisienne and I.A.U.R.I.F. , “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-de-France.”  6 With 12 million passengers and close to 20,000 jobs, the Orly airport was

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an important economic hub in 1976. The Rungis market had opened in 1969, and all wholesalers of the Paris region had relocated there by 1973. SOGARIS had opened in 1967, and SILIC Orly-Rungis in 1970. Guy Chemla, “Le Marché d’Intérêt National de Paris-Rungis,” Annales de géographie 89, no. 493 (1980).  7 Original: “Au nord, la mise en service de l’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle induit une poussée qu’il convient de contenir dans la mesure où les nuisances de l’aéroport limitent nécessairement les possibilités d’urbanisation.” Service Régional de l’Équipement de la Région Parisienne and I.A.U.R.I.F. , “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-de-France,” p. 37.  8  Ibid., p. 45.  9 Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne, Les bois de la Plaine de France. Projet de création d’un réseau d’espaces publics boisés entre la Forêt de Montmorency et la Forêt de Bondy, vol. 39, Cahiers de l’Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Parisienne (Paris: IAURP , 1975).  10  The Bondy Forest was located about 10 kilometers south of in direction of the Marne valley; the much bigger Montmorency Forest around 15 kilometers west of CDG , north of the Seine river; and the Courneuve Park (later renamed Georges-Valbon Park), that had opened to the public in 1970, just south of Le Bourget airport.  11  Service Régional de l’Équipement de la Région Parisienne and I.A.U.R.I.F. , “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-deFrance,” p. 113 .  12  Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “Projet du croissant

vous conviendrez avec nous que le compromis n’est pas aisé.” Gilbert Dreyfus, “La réponse de l’aéroport,” Le Monde, 11.03.1975.  30  Of which 600,000 air passengers and 900,000 people employed at the airport. “L’aéroport de Roissy desservi par le train,” Le Figaro, 13 . 05. 1976. 31  Service Régional de l’Équipement de la Région Parisienne and I.A.U.R.I.F. , “Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-de-France,” p. 33 . 32 Original: “Pôles privilégiés de l’implantation d’activités, les aéroports commerciaux engendrent de ce fait un trafic important, qui s’ajoute à celui des voyageurs aériens.” Ibid., p. 91.  33  Maurice Cazaux, “Roissy-Charlesde-Gaulle: desserte renforcée,” L’Aurore, 12.02.1981.  34 A similar problem plagued Orly Rail, as its airport station was located more than one kilometer away from the terminal, and travelers also had to take a shuttle bus. Orly Rail had the additional shortfalls of lacking an anchoring at a major inner Paris junction and requiring a long trajectory in both distance and time. As a result, by the late 1970 s only around 400,000 people used the line yearly, amounting to 3 % of air passengers. Gérondeau, Le saga du RER et le maillon manquant.  35  Bernard Collardey, Les trains de banlieue (Paris: La Vie du Rail & des ­Transports, 1999).  36 “Les autoroutes prévues au VIe Plan,” La Croix, 24 . 04 . 1972. “Autoroutes en baisse,” L’Aurore, 04 . 05 . 1976 .  37 “L’A87 Congédiée,” L’Humanité, 11. 07. 1978 .  38 Against 31 % by private automobile, 32 % by taxi, 20 % with the Air France bus and 2 % by other public transport. This 8 % for Roissy Rail nonetheless corresponded to around 800,000 passengers, a number in line with initial projections, speaking to the indecisiveness about the fundamental purpose of the line. Yves Hervaux, “Le train jusqu’aux pistes d’Orly et de Roissy,” Le Quotidien, 14 . 03. 1980; Maurice Cazaux, “Des liaisons plus rapides en projet avec Orly et Roissy,” Figaro, 04 .04 .1980; Techniville, “La desserte des aéroports parisiens. Étude des mésures immediates pour favoriser l’usage des transports en commun vers les aéroports parisiens” (Direction Régionale de l’Equipement de l’Ile de France, 1981). 39 Against 44 % by private automobile, 38 % by taxi and 11 % with the Air France bus. “La desserte des aéroports parisiens. Étude des mésures immediates pour favoriser l’usage des transports en commun vers les aéroports parisiens.”  40 Original: “d’accroitre d’une façon notable l’utilisation des trains par les passages aériens et par le personnel travaillant dans l’aérogare”; “Il n’est d’ailleurs pas nécessaire de procéder des maintenant à un choix définitif entre les différentes solutions car … ce n’est que vers 1989 – 1990 qu’il sera nécessaire de relier [la deu­ xième aérogare] à la voie ferrée d’une façon plus performante.” Quoted in “L’amélioration de la desserte ferroviaire des aéroports d’Orly et de Roissy,” Le Moniteur, 24 .03.1980.  41  Hervaux, “Le train jusqu’aux pistes d’Orly et de Roissy.”; “L’amélioration de la desserte ferroviaire des aéroports d’Orly et de Roissy.”  42  “Priorité à un liaison ferroviaire pour la desserte de Roissy,” Le Parisien, 28 .05.1980.  43  In the survey, 41 % of air passengers using a private mode of transport proclaimed not taking public transport because of their baggage, and 35 % affirmed that they would do so if an in-town check was available. Techniville, “La desserte des aéroports parisiens.

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

vert entre la Forêt de Bondy et la Forêt de Montmorency. Rapport de synthèse – Propositions pour l’horizon 1990 ” (Agence Régionale des Espaces Verts, 1977 ).  13 Roger Cans, “La politique de l’Agence des espaces verts. Du croissant à la ceinture,” Le Monde, 12.07.1983.  14 Aéroport de Paris and Union de Transports Aériens, L’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle/Roissy-en-France, Dossiers pédago­ giques audiovisuels (1976).  15  Décret du 22 septembre 1977 fixant les règles de construction aux abords des aéroports.  16  Situation des aérodromes civils dans les documents d’urbanisme. Circulaire Nos 79 -71 et 67 AC du 20 juillet 1979.  17  Faburel and Barraqué, “Les impacts territoriaux du bruit des avions. Le cas de l’urbanisation à proximité de Roissy CDG . Ne pas évaluer pour pouvoir dire tout, et son contraire.”  18  In a survey conducted in the environs of CDG , 46 % of respondents declared taking sedatives to endure the effects of aircraft noise. Philippe Dumont, “La chasse aux décibels,” Le Monde, 20. 07. 1983. 19  Roger Cans, “Deux ans de lutte contre le bruit,” ibid., 01. 12 . 1983 .  20 Due to the decentralization laws, only regulations inscribed to the Code d’Urbanisme could be opposable to communities in terms of urban planning.  21  Montmarin et al., “Rapport sur l’application de la Directive d’aménagement nationale relative à la construction dans les zones de bruit dans les aérodromes” (Inspection Générale de l’Aviation Civile & Inspection Générale de l’Equipement et de l’Environnement, 1984). 22  Loi No 85 -696 du 11 juillet 1985 relative à l’urbanisme au voisinage des aérodromes.  23  Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.”  24  Marc Portey, “Le prix du bruit,” Le Monde, 26 . 04 . 1986 .  25 Original: “on ne voit pas pourquoi le passager aérien aurait droit au privilège de se déplacer – à terre – plus vite que les autres citoyens dans les zones urbaines.” Block, Les aéroports et l’environnement, p. 67.  26 The aérotrain was first limited to a connection between La Défense and the new town of Cergy-Pontoise in 1973. Then, with the change of government in 1974 , funds were withdrawn and channeled instead to SNCF ’s project of high-speed rail, the TGV (Train de Grande Vitesse). Although terrains were initially reserved for a potential future implementation of the aérotrain link between CDG and Orly, the project was eventually abandoned altogether in 1977. Vincent Guigueno, “Une région capitale à grande vitesse: Georges Pompidou et l’aérotrain (1965 – 1974),” in Le Grand Dessein Parisien de Georges Pompidou, ed. Mathieu Flonneau, et al. (Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2011).  27  The east-west RER line, renamed as RER A, was put to service in stages between 1969 and 1977. Christian Gérondeau, Le saga du RER et le maillon manquant (Paris: Presses de l’Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 2003).  28 Recognizing that the vast site made communication among its parts difficult, ADP had already undertaken studies for an internal automatic rail transport system, the “Seri Saviem Saunier,” in 1972 .  29 Original: “Notre expérience quotidienne nous amène ainsi à constater que les usagers réclament à la fois la simplification et l’accélération des procédures propres au transport de masse, la rapidité des liaisons ville-aéroport, tout en adoptant un moyen de transport particulier et en recherchant un traitement individuel qui assure à chacun son confort personnel:

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Étude des mésures immediates pour favoriser l’usage des transports en commun vers les aéroports parisiens.” 44  Indicatively, the prices for the airport link projects as proposed in 1983 were: 370 million francs (MF ) for the extension of the train line to T2 in CDG ; 427 MF for the extension of the RER C line to Orly; 876 MF for an additional trunk from the RER B to Orly. DREIF , “Desserte des aéroports d’Orly et de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Projet de dessertes nouvelles” (1983).  45  It should also be noted that a substantial roadblock to the improvement of Orly’s rail access was the reluctance of SNCF to improve conditions for the airline Air Inter, its main competitor in national routes. Gérondeau, Le saga du RER et le maillon manquant.  46 The integration of the two lines was hailed as a considerable achievement, as it required a major expansion and restructuring of the Paris Nord station and a shift in the logic of regional transport network to allow interconnections between the SNCF and RATP lines. “La nouvelle Gare du Nord entre (en partie) en service,” Le Quotidien de Paris, 12 .12 .80. Maurice Cazaux, “Gare Du Nord: Interconnection S.N.C.F.-R.E.R. , Le 1er décembre,” Le Figaro, 07. 09. 1981; M.A.-R. , “Roissy – Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse sans changer de train,” Le Monde, 28 . 05. 1983.  47  For instance, in 1982 Roissy Rail transported 3,700,000 people, of whom about one third were air passengers, corresponding to about 10 % of air traffic. Jean-Marie Tisseuil, “Le point sur la desserte des aéroports” (1985); DREIF , “Desserte des aéroports d’Orly et de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Relevé des décisions de la réunion du 7 novembre 1985” (1985).  48 Jean-Charles Lajouanie, “Paris-Orly en six minutes grâce à l’hélicoptère,” Le Quotidien de Paris, 29. 03. 1984 .  49  The ticket of 250 F for Orly, 350 F for CDG , and 450 F to transfer between the two was tenfold that of a train or bus ticket f (25 F for Orly and 28 F for CDG ). The helicopter service only attracted a luxury clientele of around 10,000 passengers per year, corresponding to an occupancy rate of less than 20 %. Aéroports de Paris Conseil d’Administration, “Liaison Hélicoptère Entre Les Plate-Formes Parisiennes” (1986); Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “La liaison Orly – Roissy par les transports en commun” (1986).  50  See for example: DREIF , “Desserte des aéroports d’Orly et de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Projet de dessertes nouvelles.”; “Desserte des aéroports d’Orly et de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle. Relevé des décisions de la réunion du 7 novembre 1985 .”  51 Dreyfus, “La réponse de l’aéroport.”  52 Andreu and Roseau, Paris CDG1.  53  Aéroport de Paris, “L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle. L’aérogare 1 ” (1976).  54 Corvisier, Roissy-en-France – Tome II .  55  Terrorist attacks targeting airports were a recurring phenomenon of the 1970 s and early 1980 s. Orly was hit again in 1978 , 1981, and 1983.  56  Throughout the 1980 s and 1990 s, ADP ’s technical division, under the architectural supervision of Paul Andreu, developed terminals and facilities at various airports in Asia and Africa, including the Abu Dhabi Airport, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Dar-Es-Salaam, Cairo and Shanghai Pudong Airport. The team’s renown was such that it was also invited to participate in non-airport projects like the Arche de la Défense. In 2000, the high volume of export business led to the creation of a subsidiary dedicated to international

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airport design: Aéroports de Paris Ingénierie (ADPi). “Aéroports, le style français. Inteview avec Paul Andreu.” ADPi website, https://www.adp-i.com, section “Who we are” / “Our story.”  57  Aéroport de Paris, “Aérogares de fret de l’aéroport Charles de Gaulle” (Aéroport de Paris – Département des relations extérieures, 1978), p. 1.  58 The first tenants of this zone were technology firms, as anticipated in Emé’s 1970 report: the French technology provider H. W. Bull and the American computer manufacturer IBM , who had also set office in Orly in earlier years.  59  Aéroport de Paris, “Aérogares de fret de l’aéroport Charles de Gaulle.”  60 “L’envolée du fret aérien,” Valeurs actuelles, 01. 10. 1984 .  61  For example in: Emé, “L’aéroport de Roissy-en-France et son environnement économique.”; Aéroport de Paris, “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle.”  62  For example, in 1983 the traffic of the Paris airports passed the 30 million passenger mark for the first time, corresponding to a 2.3 % traffic growth from 1982, against a − 0.5 % drop in international air traffic. “Les deux aéroports parisiens pourront accueillir 50 millions de passagers,” Le Monde, 09.01.1984 .  63  Intended for medium-haul and long-haul flights respectively, Terminals 2B and 2 A were assigned for exclusive use to the national carriers Air France and Air Inter and partly the Belgian Sabena. Aéroports de Paris, “L’aéroport Charles de Gaulle” (ADP , 1984).  64  Its function was defined anew twofold: technical, consisting in the development of aviation infrastructure and facilitation of airport operation; and economical, consisting in the commercial management of the platforms for profit generation.  65  “Les deux aéroports parisiens pourront accueillir 50 millions de passagers.” 66 “Aéroports de Paris ‘développeur’ immobilier,” Le Monde, 06.06.1990.  67 Original: “Aéroport de Paris a décidé de passer à l’offensive commerciale en matière d’immobilier d’entreprise.” Quoted in Jean-Claude Cavard, “L’aéroport Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle: une ‘nouvelle donne’ pour l’espace régional” (1988).  68 Notwithstanding some tourism activities linked to water and forests. Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “Note sur les tendances prévalant dans le nord de la région parisienne” (undated).  69  Jean Aubert, “La ligne SNCF de Roissy fait ses preuves,” La Croix, 27. 11. 1980.  70  As an illustration, the population of Othis grew from 260 residents in 1968 to 3,343 in 1975 (+ 1,186 %), to 5,099 in 1982 (+ 53 %); that of Saint-Pathus, from 342 residents in 1968 to 1,295 in 1975 (+ 279 %), and to 2,921 in 1982 (+ 126 %). Data from INSEE .  71  Website Circuit Carole, http://www.circuit-carole.com. Section “Histoire du circuit”  72  Cavard, “L’aéroport Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle: une ‘nouvelle donne’ pour l’espace régional.”  73 Faburel and Barraqué, “Les impacts territoriaux du bruit des avions. Le cas de l’urbanisation à proximité de Roissy CDG . Ne pas évaluer pour pouvoir dire tout, et son contraire.” 74 Scherrer, “L’Agence foncière et technique de la région parisienne. De la planification à l’urbanisme opérationnel.”  75 Ibid. 76 Cavard, “L’aéroport Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle: une ‘nouvelle donne’ pour l’espace régional.”  77 Respectively: German manufacturer of machine tools, American software and hardware developer, French computer technology provider, and Japanese manufacturer of electronic products. “Intérêt d’un pôle d’activités à Roissy-Charles-

n° 85 -47 du 14 janvier 1985 modifiant certaines dispositions du Code d’Urbanisme relatives au contrôle de l’installation d’activités en région Ile-de-France.  83 The term “en blanc” (“in white”) refers to construction initiated without sale or rental having been agreed with future occupants. It is generally speedier but also riskier than construction “en gris” (“in grey”), initiated only when the rental or sale of the property-to-be has been finalized.

CHAPTER 5  Disillusionment and adaptation (1974 – 1986)

de-Gaulle” (Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-de-France, 1987 ).  78  Known in French as Parc International des Expositions de Paris-Nord or Parc des Expositions de Villepinte, later PEX , and most recently Viparis.  79  Olivier Schmitt, “Un parc des expositions pour le vingt et unième siècle,” Le Monde, 14 . 12 . 1982 . 80  Henri-Paul Kern, “Taille européenne pour Villepinte,” Le Figaro, 20.10.1986.  81  Dézert, “De la ZALA à l’aéroville: une nouvelle révolution technologique.”  82  Décret

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Fig. 5.18  Overlooking the Francilienne highway in Goussainville, in the direction of the airport.

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994) Emergence of a new competitive context The airport area as development hub Strategic sector, problematic territory? The awakening of ADP The awakening of local actors Airport impacts and a difficult dialogue The airport area enters planning discourses In search of a development strategy (Re)Designing CDG as competitive asset The airport city takes off A new wave of projects and a persistent stalemate Planning the CDG region: the plan of Mission Roissy Airports as centers of European caliber and the 1994 SDRIF

 T

he period 1986 – 1994 constitutes a critical juncture in the development of the CDG airport and its surrounding area. At the beginning of the period, the announced liberalization of the European market strengthens the imperative of competitiveness for both the airport and Paris. In the former, major modernization projects are set in motion, aimed at responding to the context of volatility and competition, strengthening the airport’s hub function, and attracting a bigger and more diverse clientele. In the latter, planners explore new strategic spaces to host the emerging economy. Thanks to its international connectivity, the CDG airport area emerges as such a potential space; this perception encouraged by urban development trends on the ground. With the CDG region designated as “strategic sector” in 1988, local actors mobilize to promote urban and economic development in the surroundings of the airport, while ADP seeks to capitalize on the momentum by pushing its first “airport city” project. This mobilization starts defining the contours of a new development territory. The multitude of projects and urbanization pressure impels in turn the planning action of the State and the Ilede-France Region. In preparation of the new regional plan, priorities and expectations

are juxtaposed, revealing persistent stalemates, even as the first comprehensive urban development project for the airport region is produced. In 1994, the designation of the CDG area as “center of European caliber” in the new regional plan confirms the repositioning of the airport region in perceptions of metropolitan space, while also exposing its fundamental conundrums.

Emergence of a new competitive context The new era for the development of the CDG airport and its region can be said to have started in February 1986. This was when the Single European Act (SEA ) was signed, setting Europe on track for a single market in 1992. The reforms streamlined in the SEA aimed at removing barriers to cross-border trade and investment in the European Community. The free exchange of goods, people, capital and services would provide economic stimulus, and also trigger competition among cities and regions – and not least, airports. This was underlined by the parallel process of liberalization of air transport. Although airlines in Europe were still widely viewed as national prestige symbols and providers of jobs – air protectionism was starting to be relaxed, and pressure from the USA was forcing carriers to adapt their financing structures and development strategies.1 The partial privatization of KLM in 1986 and the sale of British Airways in 1987 were decisive evolutions. The base airports of these two airlines, Amsterdam Schiphol and London Heathrow respectively, were the first to apply a “hub” logic, functioning as intermediate stops for transatlantic passengers heading to non-directly-served destinations in Europe, West Asia or North Africa. Hence, London and Amsterdam, along with Frankfurt, emerged as Paris’s biggest competitors. In the new overarching climate, the goal was no longer simply to respond to an expected traffic growth with necessary infrastructure, but to actually channel growth to the Parisian airports. Under international pressure and the imperative of competition, the already privileged links among national air transport actors – the State, its supervising authorities, Air France and ADP  – were tightened, in order to enable the sector’s transition towards commercialization. Under Prime Minister Jacques Chirac (1986 – 1988), the government 162

set a new development objective for ADP : to move from the status of builder to that of manager. The authority should seek ways to further self-finance and compete internationally and in Europe, by ensuring the attractiveness of the Paris airports on an international scale. In 1987, Bernard Lathière, the new president of ADP (1986 – 1992), was stressing: “We have to do everything we can to stay Europe’s second biggest airport [base] [after London]. If we do not succeed, we will end up watching the planes pass over our heads.”2 His statements were indicative of the prevailing discourse, permeated by the urgency that the Paris airports should consolidate their position in the emerging European competition. Prompted by this imperative, the airport authority would invest heavily in CDG and Orly to expand their capacity and to boost their attractiveness to airlines, passengers, and other investors. In addition to the governmental support, the conjuncture

the various lines, among which the TGV Nord line that would link Paris with northern France, Belgium, and Great Britain. A station of the TGV Nord at the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport emerged as a possible scenario. Consulted in the context of a governmental commission on the route of the TGV Nord headed by the engineer Raoul Rudeau, ADP, as well as the newly formed Ile-de-France Regional Council (CRIF ) and the Val-d’Oise departmental council, weighed heavily in favor of this scenario. Their argument was that this stop would decisively improve the competitive position of CDG , and hence also its economic benefits for its region: “It would be a mistake if the TGV Nord passed ten kilometers from Roissy without stopping there, while it serves in better conditions the airports of Brussels and Amsterdam.”3 The prospective “airrail hub” indeed promised a new synergy between the traditional “rivals” train and airplane. The report of the commission, known as Rapport Rudeau and submitted to the Minister of Transport Jacques Douffiagues in late 1987, upheld the idea of a TGV station at CDG . But it went even further: it forecasted the possibility of developing on the platform 200,000 m 2 of office space until 1995, and up to 1,000,000 m 2 in the long run, to be occupied mostly by international companies.4 This projection revived the idea of a “business center” at the heart of CDG , first fathomed when the airport was still in construction and abandoned by ADP for lack of support, as seen in Chapter 4. Now, market evolutions made the viability of such a venture more plausible. Many French and European firms had an increasingly international activity, which presumably generated more need for direct access to the high-speed global connectivity that a major international airport offered. The Rapport Rudeau thus gave to ADP the foothold to set in motion what it would soon promote as Europe’s first “airport city”: an advanced tertiary center around a multimodal node. For ADP ’s leaders, Bernard Lathière and JeanPierre Beysson (General Director between 1988 and 1993), it was not about exhausting the development margin granted by the government, but about taking advantage of the arrival of the TGV to “play the card of air-rail-road complementarity,” unique in Europe.5 While itself capitalizing on international traffic and multimodality, the business center project was anticipated to feed back into and contribute to the growth of CDG . The decision was soon confirmed: a high-speed rail station would be built on the CDG airport site.6 The station was to be placed between Terminal 2 and the c ­ entral

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

was also favorable on another level: SNCF was preparing to roll out its high-speed rail (TGV ) network, and discussions were ongoing regarding the routes to be followed by

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zone, where the business center would be located, so as to provide equally good access to both (Fig. 6.1). ADP and SNCF would cover its cost in rough-

ly equal parts, with a smaller contribution from the IdF Region. It would

Fig. 6.1  Representation of the idea of an office zone in conjunction with the TGV station.

serve air passengers in origin or destination of major French cities and other European capitals. Though the exact number of air-rail passengers

was difficult to predict, ADP expected the TGV to increase air passenger traffic by at least 10 %, and give CDG a major advantage in relation to its competitors.7 The TGV station constituted the cornerstone of an ambitious development plan for the Paris airports. In 1986, air passenger traffic had reached 33.5 million, of which 14.9 million at CDG . The outlook was optimistic, but there were still major areas for improvement, especially with regard to transit traffic, a weak spot for ADP in relation to its competitors.8 To support the growing traffic and strengthen its position, ADP would invest heavily in expanding the capacity and boosting the attractiveness of its platforms. In this quest, the airport operator was keenly aware of its strengths and weaknesses. As summarized by its commercial director Francis Clinckx in 1988, “the advantage is having an aerial space that is not yet saturated, and available land in Roissy, allowing for [unrestricted] development. The disadvantage is having an establishment consisting of two airports and four terminals.”9 In other words, the CDG airport itself emerged as ADP ’s biggest asset, thanks to its extensive land reserves and distance from urbanized areas. Conversely, the fact that each terminal was far from the others and had its own spatial design logic appeared as a potential problem in the dawning era of “hubs.” Yet confidence was boosted by record growth rates of over 10 % for Parisian air passenger traffic in 1987, 1988 and 1989.10 In this last year, ADP announced an unprecedented investment of 5.5 million francs for the period 1989 – 1993. The lion’s share of this investment would be channeled to CDG ; the TGV station, the extension of T2, the “airport city,” and various facilities and services would transform the airport into a major, attractive, well-functioning European hub, able to receive up to 80 million passengers by 2010.11

The airport area as development hub Not only was the airport going into a new phase of development, but its region was as well. It was seen in the previous chapter how the development of Paris Nord II and the Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center (PEX ) had started changing the previously marginal position of Plaine de France in the economic dynamics of the region. Paris Nord II (2) in particular was becoming more upscale and more international. In 1987, the zone featured 300,000 m 2 of activity surfaces, mostly logistics and manufacturing, and 60,000 m 2 of retail. At that time, AFTRP was already targeting internationally active companies rather than regional industries, effectively attempting to “tertiarize” the business park, while also enhancing its environmental quality, nota164

bly in terms of landscaping. In 1989, it launched 90,000 m 2 of offices in a large plot next to the R ER station, with the goal to eventually bring them to 150,000 m 2 .12 In 1990, a ­Hyatt Regency super-hotel, leisure and business center was launched built in its northern extremity, just next to the airport (Fig. 6.2). Paris Nord Villepinte was also thriving: after the second chunk of exhibition halls was added in 1986, a third part was built, bringing the total surface to 164,000 m 2 .13

Fig. 6.2  Model of the super-hotel, designed by American architect Helmut Jahn (source: Le Quotidien de Paris, 1990).

Fig. 6.3  Extent of urbanization and activity zones already developed to a significant extent in the CDG airport region in 1990.

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

By 1989 – 1990, the airport region featured over 1,000 hectares of business zones developed to a significant extent, including the Paris Nord complex, the airport freight zone, and other industrial (ZI ) or economic activity (ZAE ) zones like Gonesse, ­Goussainville, and Mitry-Mory-Compans (Fig. 6.3). Thanks to the businesses in these zones, as well as the growth of air traffic, employment in the area considerably increased. In 1989, approximately 85,000 jobs were located in the “Roissy hub” area, ­estimated to grow by 2 % per year.14 During the period 1982 – 1990, jobs in the communities of Roissy, Tremblay, and Villepinte alone grew by 71 %, from 30,000 to 51,400, of which 31,000 jobs were in the CDG airport (Fig. 6.4).15 These numbers, along with the ­tendency towards “tertiarization” or otherwise higher-value tenants, provided strong

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Fig. 6.4  Employment growth in the communities south and west of CDG between 1982 and 1990.

signs that the CDG airport was a powerful driver for economic development in a globalizing, exchange-dependent economy. This sentiment was supported by ­comparable “airport-led” urbanization trends near Orly. By 1990, several ZAE north of Orly had developed synergetic relations with the airport, in particular the high-tech companies located in SILIC Orly-Rungis.16 SILIC was also the first zone in proximity to Orly to “tertiarize,” adding 20,000 m 2 of office surface between 1988 and 1991, most of which was for companies counting airport proximity as a key asset of the site.17. The popularity of zones like SILIC was an inspiration to AFTRP and other land developers in the Roissy area, lending further support to the premise of a positive relation between airport operation and high added-value activities.18 The development of economic activities in proximity of and in relation with the ­Paris airports thus started appearing as a new and unique opportunity, intriguing planning and development actors. And while the environs of Orly were almost fully urbanized and the airport itself almost at full capacity, leaving little room for further development, the CDG region offered ample space, air traffic was expected to grow significantly, and the airport’s extensive road access network and upcoming TGV station emerged as noteworthy locational attributes in the larger political-economic context of liberalization. But there was one problem: further development of the CDG region broke with the principle of keeping the Plaine de France relatively clear of urbanization. Among the first planning actors to explicitly spell out the emerging situation was the newly established Ile-de-France Regional Council (CRIF ),19 which tasked the IAURIF (that it oversaw since 1983) with studying the development possibilities of the Roissy area. A report published in early 1987 stated that the airport environs “comprise major business areas that have enabled the development of the sector. … On such a site, 166

with exceptional characteristics in many ways, it is tempting to consider a diversification of activities, both on the platform and on the freight zones southwest of the airport.”20 According to IAURIF, the growing presence of international firms in Paris Nord 2 was proof of the attraction exerted by CDG . This attraction was deemed higher than that of

the communications infrastructure

Fig. 6.5  Possible layout of airport office hub proposed by the IAURIF in 1987.

under development, and the available space on both the airport and its surroundings. If it had produced little development until then, this was mainly because the Regional Prefecture and the Decentralization Committee had skewed demand by exercising pressure in favor of the new towns, Cergy-Pontoise and Marne-la-Vallée. In the new liberalized regulatory context though, the airport area would be able to compete with hubs like La Défense and absorb at least some of the regional demand for office space – so the report went. This analysis initially led the Region to lend its support to ADP ’s announced “airport city” project, which concentrated the advantages of connectivity and was thus ideal to jumpstart the area’s transformation; the IAURIF report even provided suggestions for the project’s urban design and connection with the TGV station (Fig. 6.5). This novel view of CDG was encouraged by trends on the ground, prompting in turn a spreading belief in airport-induced economic benefits. Discourse and reality reinforced each other. Reflections presented in the journal Décideurs d’Ile-de-France and a report by the Fédération d’Ile-de-France des travaux publics for the CCIP in 1988 – 1989 linked developments in the Roissy / Villepinte sector with the role of the airport as driving force, comparable to that once played by seaports, making the sector “the northeast gateway of Paris to Europe.”21 In the discussion about the competitive a ­ dvantages of the Paris region in light of the European integration and global rise of the service economy, this repositioning of the CDG area made for a compelling argument. In parallel, the belief in airport-induced development prompted the rise of the concept of “aéroville,” French rendition of “air city” or “airport city.” Its embrace in public discourse is illustrated in a colloquium organized in early 1989 by CREPIF (Centre de Recherches et d’Etudes sur Paris et l’Ile-de-France) with the CRIF, IAURIF, and ADP. Entitled “Airport cities: new concept of intercommunication and localization of businesses” (“Les aérovilles: nouveau concept d’intercommunication et de localisation d’entreprises”), the colloquium dealt with the emerging type of airport-related development.22 In his opening remarks, Pierre-Charles Krieg, President of the CRIF, proclaimed: Airport cities: this is a new concept that the Regional Council had to study. To understand the novelty [and] to grasp, in the midst of the vagaries of time, what must persist and develop, is it not our task? … Urban planning evolves, and airport cities will be a new stage in our modern conception of dwelling and all that stems from it.23

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

­other international airports in Europe, thanks to the awaited project of TGV,

167

The observation shared among the colloquium’s speakers was that technical progress and predominance of speed made the international airport an “essential multimodal hub” (“plaque tournante essentielle et plurimodale”) and its area a new kind of regional centrality with a strategic role. As formulated by one of its academic speakers: “The airport city becomes … an excellent tactical weapon for the promotion of each country in the EU . It makes the airport an economic development hub of European and ­global stature.”24

Strategic sector, problematic territory? The emerging interest of planning actors in the potential of the CDG region was not unrelated to the changing planning context in Ile-de-France. Since the mid-1980s, the obsolete spatial organization, social problems, and economic stagnation of the capital region had prompted a slew of public discussions and projections about the future of metropolitan urbanism. In the wake of Mitterrand’s re-election in 1988, the revision of the schéma directeur (regional plan) was officially decided. Shortly afterwards, the CRIF presented a reflection paper on the development of Ile-de-France, elaborated by the IAURIF (“Ile-de-France 2000: vers un projet régional”).25 In response, the Regional State Prefecture published its own reflection paper in early 1989, which echoed the interest of the central government in (re)taking charge of spatial planning in Ilede-France. The governmental paper stressed the European role of the capital and the ­necessity of renewal: New elements … have modified the regional context: demographic stagnation accompanied by household transformations, population decrease in the central zone and growth in the outer zone, internationalization of the economy and prospects of 1993 [regarding the European Single Market], realization of TGV [connections] …, explosion since 1985 of office construction especially in the west, urbanization in non-planned areas … These evolutions and the persistence of imbalances justify the development of a new long-term project for the Ile-de-France region.26

Fig. 6.6  Some of the reflection papers produced during the period 1989 – 1992: Réflections sur l’Ile de France (Préfecture de la région d’Ile-de-France, May 1989), Le Livre Blanc de l’Ile-de-France (DREIF , APUR , IAURIF , January 1990), Le Livre Bleu de l’Ile-de-France (Conseil régional d’Ile-de-France, Maire de Paris, Conseils généraux des Hauts-de-Seine, de l’Essonne, Seine-­ et-Marne, Val-d’Oise, Yvelines, February 1990), La charte de l’Ile-de-France (Conseil régional d’Ile-de-France, June 1991).

168

These reflection papers signaled the start of a four-year period marked by the production of plans, charters, and counter-charters by the various territorial actors – the prefecture, the Region, the departments, the city of Paris, DATAR , and others (Fig. 6.6). Besides the shared interest in resolving the key issues of the region, this prolific production indicated the institutional frustration of local administrations, who, according to the powers bestowed on them by the decentralization reform, wanted a greater say in the Paris region’s urban planning and development, that the State had kept the primary responsibility for by maintaining control of the schéma directeur. Upon the announcement of the latter’s revision, the main concern of many localities became how to secure the representation of their own priorities in the new plan. Especially for communities, this often equaled the inclusion of their desired urbanization territories – since in terms of statutory planning, the regional plan set a binding framework for local POS . It is in this context that the Plaine de France emerged as a potential new urbanization territory. This was articulated in the CRIF reflection paper, which conceptualized the CDG area as an economic development hub of metropolitan importance. The paper proposed to structure the spatial development of the Paris region on the basis of five geographically well-defined “strategic sectors,” each offering “an exceptional location value, an existing or potential development dynamism, significant land reserves, … a solidarity basin at the level of employment and housing.” Roissy and its surroundings constituted one of these sectors, defined as the “international gateway of Ile-deFrance.”27 It was presented as an area of 12,000 hectares, stretching south and west of the airport, demarcated so as to include most major infrastructure and economic ­spaces, existing or projected (Fig. 6.7). Twelve communities formed its core.28 According to the paper, the sector already featured 750 hectares of functioning activity zones: 150 ha of distribution and freight zones (airport, Garonor), 500 ha of mixed

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

Fig. 6.7  The Roissy “strategic sector” according to the IAURIF reflection paper from 1988 .

169

zones (warehouses, businesses, offices), and 100 ha occupied by the Citroën factory. The airport platform was obviously its economic “heart,” and the Paris Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center, “world’s leading venue for international trade shows,” had come to enhance its image. Moreover, the paper defined a “northern development axis” that stretched between the new town of Cergy-Pontoise and the airport, structured along the radial highway A15 and the projected Boulevard du Parisis (BIP), a tangential road axis included in the 1976 SDAURIF. Overall, the further development of the “Roissy strategic sector” was deemed “desirable” on two fronts: it would enhance competitiveness by capitalizing on the benefits of international connectivity; and it presented a “great interest in terms of regional balances, because it [would] reduce the large employment deficit that currently marks the northern and eastern quadrants of the outer suburbs.” 29 It was a familiar idea revisited, as the necessity of an east-west “rebalancing” of the region had emerged since the early 1970s (see previous chapters). While advocating for the dynamic of the Roissy sector, regional planners also saw a lot of problems with the prevalent urbanization trends. First, the saturation of the road network was imminent, such that no new development should be envisaged without first implementing additional infrastructure. Second, the projects for ZAE were “disproportionate to the market: more than 1,000 hectares, which represents five years of commercialization in the entire region, twenty-five or thirty years at the current rate of development of the sector.” Besides, the proliferation of commercial zones would lead to monofunctionality over hundreds of hectares. The paper regretted the lack of coordination in the programming of facilities, which meant “missing out on possible synergies” and perpetuating the area’s problems, notably the “lack of adapted housing, waste of agricultural land, sprawl, and degradation of the landscape,” while what the area most needed was spatial policies for improving its image.30 Parallel to the Region, the central government engaged its own deliberations on the Roissy sector. Its reflection paper of early 1989 predicted the role of the area as ­European gateway, its future inextricably linked to the transformations of the French economy, prompted by the internationalization of markets, the growth of trade, and the restructuring of the production system.31 This international role of Roissy, together with its regional role as employment hub in the context of “rebalancing” the IdF, made it an important stake in the revision of the regional plan. According to State planners, the CDG area had major advantages: international transport connections; established specialization in logistics; and availability of space. But there were also severe “black spots”: traffic congestion; noise zones; and degraded urban areas between the airport and the capital. These made it necessary to tackle the area in urban planning terms, and to mediate among projects. Initial planning goals were the compactness of development, the provision of housing to match employment, and the organization of green spaces.32 It was not very specific, but a big step in relation to the State’s indifference for the area during the previous decade and a half. These reflections testify to two contrasting representations of the CDG airport region: as strategic sector and as problematic territory. Region and State planners seemed to agree about the necessity of reconciling the two, yet this surface agreement was undercut by the lack of explication on how to do so. This required articulating how to prioritize two distinct goals: contributing to the competitiveness of Paris in response to the emerging economic context, and “rebalancing” the metropolitan territory so as 170

to “correct” a strategic planning omission, namely the neglection of the ­northeastern sector, especially in terms of tertiary activity. The one undisputed element, in any case, was the potential of the CDG airport to spur a new kind of urban and economic development.

The awakening of ADP The changing perception of the CDG airport as a magnet for businesses played in favor of ADP ’s plans for on-site commercial development. The prospect of the TGV station in particular provided a boost to an already growing trend, namely that of real estate development as an important part of the operator’s business activity. In 1986, com-

the authority’s venturing into real estate – a move deemed “bold” by property development professionals.33 The approaches to building development were expanded: in addition to developing surfaces itself, ADP would also open up plots to other investors to undertake development, sales and/or marketing.34 The new real estate policy was presented as a diversification strategy against traffic-related income fluctuations, but also as a way of enhancing competitiveness by taking advantage of the land reserves of the CDG airport.35 Under the leadership of Commercial Director Francis Clinckx and Director of Real Estate Guy Bernfeld (until 1989), ADP ’s on-site building projects crystallized into various types of “real estate products.”36 The most closely aviation-related were the socalled “villages d’entreprises” or “villages de fret” (“business villages” or “cargo v ­ illages”), addressed to typical airport clients like air cargo ground handlers. A variant of this type of facility had already been developed in Orly in the 1970s for the American firm IBM . ADP now scaled up the operation, and by 1993, 25,000 m 2 of surface had been developed in Roissy and 15,000 m 2 in Orly. The “villages” were located in the freight zones of the airports; their architectural design was unassuming, yet they possessed advanced technical infrastructure, and attention was paid to landscaping, p ­ edestrian

Fig. 6.8  Location and site plan of a “cargo village” in CDG . Buildings are arranged in such a way as to have offices on one side (in bright blue) and storage space on the other (in white).

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

mercial building activity was already making up 9.5 % of ADP ’s turnover, and by 1988 it had risen to 12 %. That year, ADP ’s president Bernard Lathière officially announced

171

connections among buildings, and ample parking spaces (Fig. 6.8 and Fig. 6.9).37 A second type of real estate product could be described as American-style “business parks.” These were also located peripherally on

Fig. 6.9  View of “cargo village” in CDG in 1994 .

the airport sites but with good road access; they were more prestigious than the “villages” and more ­h ighly priced.38 The first park of 28,600 m 2

opened in Orly under the name “Orly­ tech,” in reference to the high-tech companies targeted; “Roissytech” followed in CDG in 1991, with 13,500 m 2 and a similar logic (Fig. 6.10). The tech parks consisted of

two-story buildings complete with the latest in telecommunications infrastructure, and were advertised as “high-tech hubs” where tenants would have access to a variety of services by ADP.39 By far the most unique and prestigious real estate venture of ADP, nonetheless, was no other than the “airport city” project of CDG . Initially dubbed “Charles de Gaulle ­International Business Center” (“Charles de Gaulle Centre d’Affaires International”), this office and service complex would be tailored to the “intermodal hub” status of the CDG airport, where the already remarkable connectivity by air, road and regional rail (RER ) would be enhanced by the arrival of high-speed rail with the new TGV station. The first masterplan for the project was produced in 1987 under the supervision of Paul Andreu.40 As forecasted in the Rapport Rudeau, it provided for up to 200,000 m 2 of built surface, developed on about 30 hectares of land. Over time, 500,000 m 2 were projected on a total of 50 ha. The existing structures around the RER station – the Cité Air France, Hotel Arcade, and most recent hotel Novotel – would be integrated in the program, which included various office buildings, an additional four-star hotel, conference and exhibition spaces, facilities for shopping and recreation activities (Fig. 6.11).41 A golf course of 18 holes was also envisaged. ADP undertook a dissemination campaign to promote the CDG International Business Center project to potential tenants, as most surfaces would be developed en blanc. The most important group of targeted tenants were high-order, multinational or internationally active firms – big French, American, Japanese, or Korean tech, financial, or legal firms looking for a prestigious address to locate their European headquarters – or companies providing services to their transiting executives.42 The airport business center was expected to be particularly attractive for those firms, as estimated by the real estate company Bourdais, a consultant to ADP, in 1989: “Roissy seems like the best location in Europe for a ­ ultinational company, better than m La Défense.”43 At the time, the first surveys were showing that such com172

Fig. 6.10  View of Roissytech in 1991.

Fig. 6.11  Three-dimensional masterplan of the “Charles de Gaulle International Business Center” in early 1989.

panies valued quick access to an international airport as highly as access to the road and rail network.44 The facilities of the business center, which after 1989 was renamed

We are not looking for gigantism or glitz, but rather agreeableness and sustainable quality. Of course, we … [will offer] wide views of the spectacle provided by the runways and terminals, but at the same time we build balanced and intimate spaces. Hence the importance of outdoor spaces, patios, passages, gardens, which will also constitute transitions. Hence also the attention given to ‘urban’ functions, especially to circulations, and the priority given to services and amenities.46 This masterplan was further elaborated with a number of “high-end” building projects. One breakthrough was the interest shown in early 1989 by a partnership of the French insurance company GAN and the real estate group Cible to set up on site the “Vitrine de France” (VDF ), a permanent exhibition showcasing French small- and medium-sized companies and industries (PME -PMI).47 The concept involved the development of a massive building in the western part of the airport central zone (Fig. 6.12). Dubbed “the Rectangle” and totaling 75,800 m 2 , the building would give French companies the opportunity to present their activity either in traditional stands or in “intelligent displays” (“vitrines intelligentes”), with specialized facilities and staff at their disposal (reception, meeting rooms, teleconference facilities, consulting services, translators

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

as “Roissypole” (“Roissypôle”), would cater to their needs: offices would be “intelligent,” equipped with fiber optic cables and connected to an on-site “teleport,” and companies would be supported by various services available on a 24-hour basis, such as meeting rooms, secretarial support, consulting etc.45 Tenants would essentially find there all the facilities of a city, in addition to the connectivity of an international airport. Besides, while not having claims to poetic architecture, the project did carry an aspiration for a certain city-like or urban quality. Already in the initial masterplan, Andreu had envisaged the architecture of the complex to be civic and familiar:

173

Fig. 6.12  Visualization of the location of the “Vitrine de France” in the airport central zone, occupying about 7 hectares.

etc.).48 Projected to open in 1993, the VDF was marketed as part of the national effort to promote the competitiveness of the French economy. Though this type of “mart”-style facility was fashionable at the time, the novelty here lay in its conception as part of an “airport city.” The exhibiting companies could be involved in anything from chemicals to clothing to ICT services, as long as they were export-oriented: the 500,000 visitors that VDF aimed to attract per year would predominantly consist of foreign professionals visiting Paris by air for business, or transiting at CDG .49 Projects like the VDF reinforced the image of Roissypole as a regionally important development, but also as a new kind of urban center of metropolitan stature. The ADP dissemination campaign played on these dimensions to bolster the project’s acceptability and popularity to public authorities and the broader public, as well as to improve its marketability among investors. A big part of the campaign was the promotion of the concept of “aéroville” or “airport city.” The ambition expressed by this concept was embraced by the press: “An international tertiary node in Roissy. The airplane, the TGV and the RER at the foot of offices” (05.1988), “An international business center in 1992 at Roissy” (01.1989), “Roissy: soon the first airport city” (07.1989), “Roissypole: first business and service airport city of the continent” (04.1991), read some ­newspaper ­titles of the period that denote the fascination with the idea of a city-like business center inside the airport.50 Besides, the co-organization of the 1989 CREPIF colloquium (“Les aérovilles”) by ADP was indicative of the interest in promoting the idea of airport-led development to planning actors. In the colloquium, Roissypole was the starting point for a discussion about how such a project could be significant beyond the airport site – not only by becoming an important center itself, but also by facilitating the transformation of an entire spatial domain. This narrative was important to ADP so as to gain the ­support 174

of the State, who had agreed to authorize the development of 125,000 m 2 for the first phase of Roissypole; but also that of the Region, which the authority hoped would contribute to financing the infrastructure for the further development of CDG .51 In the narrative, CDG was the test field of an innovative urban concept that would constitute a development motor for the region and a competitive asset, not only for ADP but also for Paris and France.52 Roissypole would support the goal of “rebalancing” Ilede-France: “By creating new jobs and stimulating urbanization around Roissy, we are helping to break the eternal dichotomy: housing in the west, jobs in the east,” claimed Guy Bernfeld in early 1989.53 In parallel, by successfully competing against similar office-based development projects in or near Frankfurt, Amsterdam, or London airports, it would promote Paris’s standing in relation to these metropolises, and become an “engine for the region,” similarly to big economic centers like La Défense and Marnela-Vallée.54 This narrative was all the more valuable to ADP, as the ambitious plans for Roissypole were initially met with skepticism by certain governmental actors. Some saw them as complicating regional spatial planning priorities; and others, like the Minister of Transport Michel Delamarre, considered this type of project to be altogether beyond the scope of activity of the airport authority.55

It was not long before local actors followed suit in attempting to benefit from the development prospects of the CDG airport region. For many long-disadvantaged communities of Plaine de France, a new role for the area in the spatial planning agenda promised to change their fate. Besides, the designation of Roissy as “strategic sector” already showed an effect on the dynamics of land development. The twelve communities included in the sector became a hotspot for real estate speculation, with the newspaper Le Point reporting that investors bought agricultural plots at 20 to 50 times their original value, in expectation that they would be designated as constructible in the upcoming schéma directeur.56 Local administrations participated in the speculation: in a matter of months, many had extended their ZAE , against the restrictive spatial directions set by the central state and partly in defiance of statutory plans. At the same time, many also found themselves short of financial and administrative ­resources, planning expertise, and operative power to organize their participation in the expected development. In Val-d’Oise, this prompted the mobilization of the Departmental Council, which was concerned that the economic impact of the Roissy “hub” – the airport plus the ZAE along the A1 – was little felt in the department’s easternmost sector, a group of

around thirty communities located west of CDG .57 Val-d’Oise planners estimated that only 2 – 3 % of the workforce of this sector was employed in the “hub,” against a much higher percentage in the nearby communities of Seine-Saint-Denis and Seine-et-Marne. In addition, the area was marked by poor accessibility, lack of facilities and amenities, and regulatory limitations to urbanization, such as the “green belt,” noise-related constraints, and power lines. A reflection paper in late 1988 defended the development of Eastern Val-d’Oise, urging for suitable “economic leadership,” as well as for state action to remedy the sector’s constraints so that it could benefit from the hub’s growth. This

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

The awakening of local actors

175

Fig. 6.13  Map compiling AEREVO ’s suggestions for Eastern Val d’Oise. The “structuring hub” for activities can be seen as a rectangle southwest of the airport platform.

growth was expected to be massive, even in a “moderate” scenario predicting the development of 950 ha of commercial and housing development by 2010, corresponding to 32,000 new jobs and 24,000 new residents.58 The departmental council’s initiative was concretized with the creation of AEREVO (Association d’Etudes pour la Révision du S.D.A.U.R.I.F. dans l’Est du département du Vald’Oise): an association bringing together, under the council’s aegis, the mayors of the thirty communities and representatives of the interdepartmental Chamber of Commerce, local institutions (intercommunal syndicates, sectorial agencies, etc.), private investors, as well as ADP, AFTRP, and IAURIF. AEREVO ’s first publication, entitled “Eastern Val-d’Oise: Promoting a New Space” (“L’Est du Val-d’Oise: Promouvoir un nouvel espace”) clearly set the tone: The Roissy-en-France hub will experience unprecedented growth. On this growth depends the rebalancing of Eastern Val-d’Oise, hitherto disadvantaged. However, in the current state of urban planning documents, this sector is unable to meet the needs of businesses. The implementation of the vital means to allow a necessary evolution could not be envisaged without close consultation with local elected officials … The administrative due dates announced by the State for the revision of the SDAURIF led the Association to express as soon as possible the guiding principles of its reflections.59

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These guiding principles consisted in a large-scale restructuring of the Eastern Vald’Oise sector, exploiting in particular the land reserves situated closer to the airport. AEREVO envisaged two new “structuring hubs” (“pôles structurants”): one for activities

in the triangle defined by the towns of Roissy, Gonesse, and Bonneuil south of the platform, and one for housing between Louvres and Villeron to its north. It also foresaw the extension of urbanized zones throughout the sector, and the implementation of a series of both heavyweight and finely meshed transport links (Fig. 6.13). The proposed development project also contained suggestions to alleviate unemployment through new educational centers for jobs related to the airport-driven hub, and recommendations for the preservation and valorization of agriculture and green spaces. But the

main argument of AEREVO for such large-scale urbanization, predominantly geared towards economic activities, was that the recent dynamic of the Roissy hub had selectively boosted the development of a handful of zones, while the territory of Val-d’Oise, though well situated to respond to demand, was “left out” due to restrictive land use regulation. The zones alluded to were Paris Nord 2 and PEX : both falling mostly within the limits of the Seine-Saint-Denis department; they provided few fiscal benefits to the communities of Val d’Oise. In 1990, the thirty municipalities participating in AEREVO went a step further, creating the intercommunal syndicate SIEVO (Syndicat lntercommunal de l’Est du Vald’Oise), a structure more legally suited to table planning proposals. The goal was to strengthen and formalize their position as interlocutors with the state authorities.60 Besides, the idea that the economic impact of the airport hub can be spatially steered inspired further mobilizations. In 1989, a group of communities in the department of Oise in the Picadie region north of the airport formed the association “Oise la vallée,” which envisaged the development of a “techno-hub” and promoted the offer of a high-quality living environment to the better paid employees of the Roissy hub.61 In Seine-et-Marne, the Syndicat Intercommunal d’Etudes et de Programmation de Dammartin en Goële (SIEP Dammartin) and the Syndicat Intercommunal de Marne-Nord (SIEP Marne Nord) also advanced ideas for development projects. In Seine-Saint-Denis, the community of Tremblay-en-France counted on the extension of Paris Nord II on its territory. Tremblay was also part of the Syndicat d’Équipement et d›Aménagement des Pays de France et de l’Aulnoye (SEAPFA ), together with Aulnay-sous-Bois, Le BlancMesnil, Sevran, and Villepinte.62 All in all, almost every community in the area around the CDG airport, alone or in coalition with others, envisaged development projects. As put by the authors of a dossier dedicated on Roissy in the journal Urbanisme in May 1989: “At present everyone agrees that the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport sector in Ile-de-France is one of the region’s main development hubs.”63 Partly, it was about promoting construction in the reserves already marked as urbanizable in the respective POS (zones NA), and often about revising the POS to reserve those zones for economic activities.64 Further, many communities longed for a large-scale ZAC , Paris-Nord-2 style, which would give them the opportunity to leverage taxes and provide employment. These outlooks are well illustrated in a map and list compiled by DREIF for a perimeter of twenty-five

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

new urbanization spaces were at its core. Their amount was substantial: for activities, 1,000 hectares in addition to the 250 hectares available in the POS of the concerned communities; and for housing, 700 – 900 ha in addition to the available 340 ha. The

177

Fig. 6.14  Map of development zones and transport infrastructure in the CDG region compiled by DREIF in 1989.

­communities around Roissy (Fig. 6.14 and Table 6.1).65 According to the documentation of DREIF, a striking 1,400 hectares were projected for activities, commerce, offices, and / or leisure in addition to the already developed 750 hectares; the amount of projected housing was significantly lower. Of those 1,400 ha, only 270 were compatible with the 1976 regional plan. In addition to their sheer size, the programmatic aspirations of especially the largest among these projects was notable: high-value businesses, wholesale and retail centers of European vocation, high-end recreation centers, development with an international identity. Let me provide here a brief illustration of these aspirations by reference to three of these projects. 178

No

COMMUNE

ZONE

DATE

TYPE

ZAC Activities

Surface (ha) –  total projected

Surface (ha) – to develop

1

Aulnay-sous-Bois

Garonor

Activities

72

 –

2

Aulnay-sous-Bois

Citroën

Activities

212

49

3

Villepinte / Roissy

Paris Nord II

Activities / Commerce

300

70

4

Villepinte

Parc des Expositions

5

Tremblay-en-France ZAD AFTRP

6

Roissy / Le Thillay

6 bis Gonesse 7

Commerce

108

5

Activities / Leisure

320

320

AREC/CITEP

Commerce / Activities / Leisure

392

392

Semavo

Activities

250

250

1989

Activities / Offices

3 .5

3 .5

Roissy / Le Thillay

Parc de Roissy

8

Goussainville

ZAC

Commerce / Activities / Leisure

170.5

170.5

9

Gonesse

ZAC Grande Vallée

1988

Activities / Offices / Commerce

7

7

10

Villepinte

ZAC Saes

Activities / Offices / Commerce

16.2

9. 7

11

Tremblay-en-France ZAC Petits Ponts

1986 / 1988 1978 / 1988

Activities

31.4

28 .2

12

Mitry-Mory

ZI

13

Sevran

ZAC ex-ZUP

Activities

193

60

Commerce / Offices

8 .4

8 .25

Roissypole

1976 / 1988 1995

14

Roissy (ADP )

15

Roissy (ADP )

Offices

40

10

Roissytech

1995

Activities

10

16

6 .5

Roissy (ADP )

Sogaris

1995

Activities

2

1 .5

17

Roissy (ADP )

Village d’entreprises 1995

Activities

5

2 .5

18

Roissy (ADP )

Flexitech

1995

Activities

3

1 .5

19

Sevran

Les Beaudottes

1987

Activities

3 .4

2.25

TOTAL Activities 2,147.4 ZAC Housing

Housing (units)  –  total projected

1,397.4

Housing (units)  – to develop

20

Survilliers

La Porte

Housing

55

55

21

Fosses

La Thuilerie

Housing

420

420

22

Roissy

Centre

Housing

10

10

23

Louvres

ZAC Fontaine

1987

Mixed

200

200

24

Le Thillay

ZAC Anevir Sud

1986

Housing

100

20

25

Marly la Ville

Centre INA

Housing

475

475

TOTAL Housing 1,260 (~45 ha)

1,180 (~40 ha)

Zones NA 30 – 49 30 – 49

Various

Various

Housing

Various

Various

Activities

2,915 units (123 ha)  ~260 ha

TOTAL  ~2,575 ha

2,915 units (123 ha)  ~260 ha

 ~1,820 ha

Table 6.1  “Roissy hub: projects and zones NA ” (“Pole de Roissy: Projets et Zones NA ”); list of development projects and zones. The projects that were incompatible with the regional plan are highlighted in pink.

179

Fig. 6.15  Left: Site plan of AREC . Right: Model photo of AREC .

The so-called “Roissy Export Center” or AREC (ZAC No 6 in Table 6.1) was one of the first projects to be publicized. Conceived and promoted by the private investor Sodarec, AREC was envisaged as a vast commercial center of “third type,” featuring innovative concepts from robotic parking to automated indoors circulation.66 It was placed south of the airport and west of the A1 highway and comprised 78,000 m 2 of retail surface, including a hyper-market of 15,000 m 2, 360 high-end boutiques, several large shops and exhibition halls. Promising to deliver more than 3,200 jobs in its first phase alone, AREC had the firm support of the Val-d’Oise Departmental Council and the communities of Roissy-en-France and Gonesse, on the territory of which it would be located. It constituted the main component of the “structuring hub” envisaged by AEREVO , an area of 400 hectares that also included the following: a zone for technology-oriented businesses dubbed CITEP (Centre des Industries de Technologies de Pointe); a convention center; an outdoors sports area; a recreation center complete with a golf course and a thalassotherapy facility; and three hotels. These programs were juxtaposed in the vast site without obvious connection among them (Fig. 6.15).67 The initiators of AREC described the project as “entry to the 21st century,” “storefront of France,” and first-of-its-kind “site of commercial tourism.”68 Thanks to its privileged location next to the airport and the TGV station, it was expected to draw not only the r­ egional population but also a European clientele in correspondence by plane or train. More ambitiously yet, AREC was proclaimed to be in a unique position to promote French trade, industry and crafts in view of the upcoming common European market; and in so doing, to induce a positive synergy with CDG , contributing to the increase of air traffic and the overall attractiveness of the Roissy hub. In parallel, the anticipated FIFA World Cup of 1998 was the opportunity for ­another project idea, the Grand Stade (ZAC No 5 in Table 6.1). When the need for a new stadium was announced by Jacques Chirac in 1988, the municipality of Tremblay-en-France was one of the first to prepare a dossier. As the Roissy 180

Fig. 6.16  Draft plan of the “sport metropolis” in ­Tremblay-en-France.

sector rose in public discourse, Tremblay’s candidacy gained in popularity: what better idea than having an international stadium located next to an international airport? Moreover, the Tremblay site offered ample space, so that the investors of the expensive stadium project could get a return on their investment through the accompanying real estate development.

Fig. 6.17  Location of the Projet Charlemagne and extent of its projected first phase.

tion to the stadium of 80,000 spectators, various other sports facilities, a university campus and research facilities, offices, economic activities, retail, hotels, recreation activities, as well as housing and schools outside the noise zone (Fig. 6.16).69 A deviation of the RER B line was suggested to serve the new development. The project was strongly supported by the deputies of the SeineSaint-Denis department, as it presented an opportunity for the famous “rebalancing” of the economically disadvantaged northeastern sector of the region. A last project of this period indicative of the development “fever” having grasped local actors was the so-called Projet Charlemagne. Initiated by private investors with the support of five rural communities north of the airport platform (Louvres, Chennevières-lès-Louvres, Epiais-lès-Louvres, Mauregard, Le Mesnil-Amelot), it was p ­ resented as an alternative to projects in the southern part of the Roissy sector. Occupying an immense area of 2,000 ha, it was envisioned to host international high-value businesses in an “urban” environment. Its first phase alone would cover 250 ha and involve 850,000 m 2 dedicated to high-level tertiary activities, creating or securing ­nearly 40,000 jobs on site (Fig. 6.17).70 Projet Charlemagne was over-ambitious and stood l­ ittle chance of moving to realization given the many other competing projects. Yet in combination with the aforementioned projects and other, smaller ones, it testified to the concerted local enthusiasm for the prospect of urban development. The emerging role of the airport as driving force, and the endorsement of this role by the State and the Region appeared to have unleashed project-making activity and overcome political barriers.

Airport impacts and a difficult dialogue To fully appreciate the motivations of local actors for the multitude of development projects by the late 1980s, it is important to position those in the context of a growing discontent about the impacts of the airport and their distribution, as well as the top-down attitude of state planners and ADP. It was seen in Chapter 5 how especially the traditionally low-income communities of the area west and southwest of CDG had urbanized before noise-related constraints were put in place. As a result, the chronic

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

The community proposed an ambitious urban plan for a site of 330 ha, dubbed “sport metropolis” (“métropole du sport”). It included, in addi-

181

Fig. 6.18  Projected noise impact curves and other constrains around the Paris CDG airport in 1989.

disinvestment in these communities was aggravated by nuisance, depreciation, increased car traffic, and the difficulty of pursuing urban renewal plans due to airport-­ related restrictions. The regulations instituted with the 1985 law “on urban planning in the vicinity of airports” may have provided a much-needed framework, but they also complicated the situation of some communities. These criticized the PEBs for imposing too many restrictions and preventing them from developing. At the same time, others criticized them for their timidity, as several types of building were allowed in Zone C (commercial facilities, single-family housing, and residential extension of existing urban cores).71 Thus, it was no surprise that their elaboration was fraught with disagreements.72 For CDG , the new PEB was finally produced in 1989. The IP values were stricter than the 1973 limits: IP 96, IP 89, and IP 78 for zones A, B, and C respectively. The noise curves covered an area of little more than 20,000 people, stretching mostly to the extension of CDG ’s northern east-west runway. Among the communities that most suffered from noise impact and PEB -related limitations were the densely inhabited communities of the southern part of Eastern Val-d’Oise, including Gonesse, Goussainville, Garges-lès-Gonesse, and Sarcelles. These communities, in addition to incurring noise pollution, enjoyed neither the fiscal benefits of immediate proximity to CDG , nor any other direct benefits from airport operation. Further, PEB -related restrictions froze urbanization, incurring property depreciation and encouraging the accumulation of “unwanted” uses. The effect was particularly pronounced in the “old villages” (“vieux bourgs” or “vieux pays”), the rural cores of Plaine de France, many of which lay in the high noise impact zones, and were thus unable to evolve; some were even abandoned.73 Moreover, noise annoyance was ­exacerbated 182

by the disquieting impact of other infrastructures crossing the landscape, partly airport-related, such as electricity lines, the TGV rail line, and highways (Fig. 6.18). In this context, for many communities the only motivation to support the growth of CDG was the expectation of indirect or induced economic benefits – through the

ing to block further air traffic growth, through rejection of expansion projects, and through the support of local civic groups such as ADVOCNAR against noise pollution. There was certainly a contradiction in the co-existence of the two approaches. Subra has even characterized the attitude of many local officials as a “genuine double game, refusing to integrate the issue of nuisances into their development policy while they constantly denounced these nuisances under pressure from associations and their voters.”75 This double-sided approach can nevertheless be understood in relation to the “abandonment” by the State and ADP that these communities experienced. Certainly, in the second part of the 1980s and early 1990s a better understanding of the need to manage the negative effects of airport operation emerged. In 1990, the airport authority declared the intention to “find compromises” and “live in peace with our environment.”76 Some attempts to respond to the concerns of the inhabitants of the CDG region followed. In 1992, ADP adopted its first Plan Environnement, which included provisions to limit noise pollution and improve the transparency of information. In the same year, a new instrument was introduced, the Plan de Gêne Sonore (PGS , plan of sound discomfort), defining areas in which residents were entitled to a subsidy for soundproofing their homes.77 This subsidy would be financed by a special tax, the TNSA (Taxe sur les Nuisanes Sonores Aériennes), paid by airlines at each take-off, in conjunction with the noise level of the aircraft. But these measures did not go far enough in counterbalancing the acute local drawbacks of airport presence with positive effects. The pro-development argument was thus a powerful platform to unite ­local governments in putting pressure on the State to deliver a new vision and new spatial strategy for the sector.

The airport area enters planning discourses With the designation of the CDG area as “strategic sector” and “international gateway,” the planning authorities of the State and the Ile-de-France Region had inspired the multitude of development projects discussed above. Yet simultaneously, these authorities had to counteract the dangers of over-excitement. Already in the 1988 reflection paper, the planners of IAURIF had described urban development impulses in the area as “a juxtaposition, without coherence, of local initiatives” that threatened to under-

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

localization on their territory of tax-generating, job-providing activities attracted by the airport. The coalition of the “urban” communities of the southern part of Eastern Val d’Oise with their better-off counterparts of the northern part in AEREVO , so as to jointly put pressure on planning authorities, is therefore no surprise. Nor is that the argumentation of AEREVO for the large-scale urbanization proposed, despite its factual and logical fallacies,74 was justified by the fact that these communities had until then mostly incurred the negative implications of airport proximity, while their population sustained poor standards of living and high unemployment. At the same time, the most proactive mayors of these communities pursued the parallel strategy of seek-

183

mine its competitive advantages.78 They had pointed to the necessity of an overall development strategy that would achieve b ­ alance and complementarity among the area’s three-scale function: international, as European “gateway,” exchange node and “storefront” for French business; regional, as the agglomeration entrance, center of regional logistics system and employment hub; and local, as place of qualitative living and working. These conclusions Fig. 6.19  Division of the Roissy sector into sub-sectors by IAURIF .

were further elaborated in a large-scale study that the institute undertook in parallel, with

the financial contribution of ADP.79 The study suggested a study perimeter for the Roissy sector, consisting of 59 communities and reaching all the way to the city of Paris. On the basis of its division into six sub-sectors (Fig. 6.19), the study drew up an inventory of

the area’s spatial, economic, and social situation through several thematic analyses.80 From the hundreds of pages that resulted, a few notable elements regarding planning emerged, in addition to the general orientation to balance international, ­regional and local vocation. First, whereas connectivity at the European level was exceptional thanks to the airport and TGV station, the saturation of the A1 / A 3 highway and inappropriateness of the RER network were so problematic that, even if all planned projects to enhance transport infrastructure were duly implemented, supply would probably still lag behind the demand generated by the rapid development of the area’s activities and their dependence on the automobile. This implied that either transport infrastructure projects had to be multiplied, or development curtailed. Another important element concerned the large socioeconomic differences between the urbanized communities south and west of the airport and those to its north, with the former having higher population densities and employment growth, but also lower education levels, larger immigrant populations, higher unemployment, and inferior urban environment, dominated by inter-war pavillonnaire and post-war grands ensembles. This discrepancy suggested that any overall development strategy for the area should include urbanistic measures to improve the conditions of these districts, for their own sake, but also for ­ ducation and trainthe image of the airport area. In parallel, public action in terms of e ing was necessary to give these populations access to the new kinds of jobs created in the Roissy hub, replacing the industrial jobs of the previous decades. In late 1989, DREIF produced a study that focused on conflicts between urbanization and the rural environment of Plaine de France. It was declared that “the dynamic of the Roissy sector, promising for the future on a European scale, must neither irreversibly question the enhancement and conservation of high-quality natural sites, nor be limited to an overly small area of a few communities.”81 High-quality sites included the area’s rich cereal cultivations, forested creeks, and small hilly ranges to the north and west. As for the “dynamic” of the sector, DREIF proposed to classify development “events” in two categories. The first included the housing, commercial and other projects that were within the purview of local authorities and generally of limited size. The second comprised all projects “dependent” on the transport hub: large-scale plans 184

such as AREC , the Grand Stade etc., the projects of ADP on the platform, as well as the major infrastructures. This category was associated with the most potential conflicts, endangering the continuity of landscape, in particular the connection of the “agricultural entities” east and west of the airport. This however did not mean renouncing the projects; rather, DREIF proposed a “landscape raster” that would include the most important natural sites and act as a “barrier” to urbanization.82 These reflections indicated a new appreciation of the airport area specificity in official planning discourse. But what this new role entailed in terms of urban development was still to be debated, against the backdrop of generalized commotion among territorial actors in expectation of the new schéma directeur. In the summer of 1990,

new towns of the 1970s? Would it be located in the north of Val-d’Oise or between Roissy and Marne-la-Vallée? 84 Whatever the case, it was a blessing for the local actor coalitions in the Roissy area, chief among them AEREVO and SIEVO , as Krieg’s proposal indirectly supported their urban development ideas. Another small victory for SIEVO came in October 1990, when, after a positive intervention of the Minister of Interior Pierre Joxe, the Eastern Val-d’Oise perimeter became official by state decree, allowing the communities to move their proposals into a draft local schéma directeur (SD ).85 In the meantime, IAUR IF had undertaken a new study in collaboration with ­A EREVO and Seine-et-Marne. The goal was to examine possible evolutions for the Roissy area based on different hypotheses on housing, employment and land consumption. This led to the elaboration of three spatial development scenarios for the horizon of 2015, with varying distributions of urbanization (Fig. 6.20).86 By January 1991, IAURIF had distilled a “basic scenario,” corresponding to a happy medium between restructuring existing suburbs and extending the agglomeration towards the airport. This was based on hypotheses for population and job growth, and housing and commercial development of Z AE and their spatial distribution.87 The imperative of “balance” permeated

Fig. 6.20  The three scenarios of IAURIF for the CDG area.

the scenario, along with that of harmonizing housing and employment offers across localities. For the sector’s core (­sub-sectors IS 93,

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

the President of the Regional Council Pierre-Charles Krieg visited the Prime Minister Michel Rocard, seeking to reaffirm the Region’s involvement in the elaboration of the plan. Among his proposals came an unexpected one that elated the actors of the airport area: Krieg proposed to create a sixth new town in the vicinity of Roissy, “where [urbanization] pressure is strongest” and a nascent “airport city” was already emerging.83 Soon speculation was rampant: Was the concept viable? Would it resemble the

185

DEPARTMENT  / SUB-SECTOR

POPULATION

HOUSING (units)

ZAE (ha)

TERTIARY HUBS excl. CDG (m2)

EMPLOYMENT (jobs) excl. CDG

incl. CDG

+200,000

+7,900

+29,300

Evolution 1990 – 2015 Seine-Saint-Denis (93) 1S93

+29,800 (+11.5 %)

+23,200

+225

1N95

+17,500

+7,900

+275

+8 ,200

+8 ,200

1S95

+23,500

+18 ,100

+575

+32,850

+39,150

+26,000

+850

+41,050

+47,350

Val-d’Oise (95)

TOTAL 95 +41,000 (+18 .1 %)

+300,000

Seine-et-Marne (77) 1N77

+14 ,550

+6,700

+ 175

+6,000

+13,000

1S77

+14 ,200

+7,900

+300

+17,000

+46,500

TOTAL 77 +28 ,750 (+41.5 %)

+14 ,600

+475

+ 100,000

+23,000

+59,500

TOTAL CORE +99,550 (+17.9 %)

+63 ,800

+ 6 00,000 +1,550 (+62 ha / year)

+71,950

+136,150

Table 6.2  Hypotheses of the IAURIF “basic scenario” for the Roissy area regarding housing, population, activity zones, and employment

IS 95, IN 95, IS 77, IN 77), IAURIF projected 63,800 new housing units, 136,000 new jobs,

600,000 m 2 of office space, and 1,550 hectares of ZAE by 2015, split among the departments of Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-d’Oise and Seine-et-Marne (Table 6.2). The last two numbers were in fact close to those envisaged in the local projects. Certainly, they pertained to a horizon of 25 years, yet it is hard not to see in them a contradiction with the IAURIF ’s initial assessment about ZAE in the Roissy sector being disproportionate to the market. That said, in terms of spatial planning orientations IAURIF ’s proposals embraced a more compact approach than existing trends, orienting development closer to existing cores when possible, replacing some of the commercial surfaces with housing projects, and incorporating the whole in a raster of green spaces (Fig. 6.21).88 But no sooner had IAURIF advanced its development scenario than the report of a State-appointed task force on Roissy was circulated, cutting short the aspirations of urban growth in the airport area. Appointed by the Regional Prefect and entrusted to Jean-Paul Lacaze, Ponts-et-Chaussées engineer and regional planning specialist, the task force, known as Mission Lacaze, made two sets of arguments. The first concerned the area’s realistic potential for economic development. “Is the sector destined … to rapid economic development with a broad diversification of activities? It would be unwise to state so,” maintained Lacaze.89 The reasons for cautiousness were numerous. To begin with, the area was far from offering the conditions to properly accommodate tertiary or technological activities: it lacked business services, training, public facilities and housing for a skilled workforce. In addition, recent land transactions were 186

often made by intermediaries eager to make capital gains on land to become buildable, their projects thus having no guarantee of completion whatsoever. Also, studies were starting to show that companies having recently settled near Roissy took airport proximity little into account; their settlement was rather a suburbanization movement triggered by highways, proximity to other businesses and spillover from nearby suburbs. What is more, analyses of the spatial distribution of employment types showed that tertiary, creative, and research jobs were almost exclusively concentrated in the southwestern quarter of the Parisian agglomeration, whereas the northeastern sector massively attracted storage and distribution functions. The expansion of European trade and the development of just-in-time manufacturing would, more than anything, strengthen Roissy’s role as a logistics hub. Based on this assessment, the second set of arguments stemmed from the planning complexity of the “Roissy problem.” This should be approached on three levels: first, that of regional spatial planning (aménagement du territoire); second, that of its function as gateway to a major European capital; and third, that of the development of the strategic sector stricto sensu. The second level posed the most difficult questions. For Lacaze, CDG should be understood as a central facility, because international air connections served the central areas of Paris where most economic, political, social, cultural, and tourist activities were located. Alas, the transport connections between CDG and these areas were inefficient and unattractive, jeopardizing the very complementarity between Paris and its international airport. Ensuring the quality of

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

Fig. 6.21  Visualization of the “basic scenario” of IAURIF for the development of the airport area.

187

t­ ransport links thus needed to be a top priority, if Paris were to “play the role that it alone can play in France in international competition between very large cities.”90 This concerned not just carrying out the projected ring roads and extension of RER B, but also admitting “without hypocrisy” the unattractiveness of the airport surroundings and seeking to implement direct links between CDG and the Parisian decision-making centers. According to Lacaze, this high-level connectivity had an absolute priority over the area’s development per se: “Only to the extent that this prerequisite [of satisfactory ­access] has been fully satisfied, can the level of the development of the strategic sector itself be meaningfully addressed.”91 This reasoning led to suggesting two main planning actions for the Roissy sector. The first consisted in stopping the urbanization of the rural land between the airport and Paris, especially through ZAE . Instead, these terrains had to be treated as a longterm reserve for a truly international and prestigious use, such as an international institution, public or private research or meeting centers of global standing – if and when interest for such a use arose. Second, the modest amount of development to authorize had to be channeled to the north of the platform, specifically the sites of Dammartin-­ Othis (Seine-et-Marne) and Louvres-Villeron (Val-d’Oise), that lay just outside the ­C noise contour. In these communities, plans combining housing, economic activities and public services could be implemented. Finally, the report, though recognizing the right of self-determination of local communities, stressed the role of the State in defining a global development strategy for the sector. Its recommendations underscored the long-standing rationale of “protecting” airport operation from urbanization, a rationale embraced in the Paris Nord report twenty years earlier, if for different reasons (see Chapter 4). They also clearly prioritized the role of the airport in regional competitiveness over local development, in particular by stressing airport access over ­local connectivity. Lacaze’s stance found many supporters among those that worried about “asphyxiating” the capital’s international airport, or viewed the projects of local ­authorities as unrealistic, even megalomaniac.92

In search of a development strategy With the work of IAURIF and the Mission Lacaze, it started to become clear that the elaboration of a development strategy for the CDG area was in itself a wicked problem, with the chances of finding an all-satisfying model appearing ever slimmer. Against this backdrop, planning and development actors escalated their efforts to promote their agendas and to have their wishes represented in the upcoming regional plan that state planning services had started to draft. The Eastern Val-d’Oise deputies initiated a coalition with the other syndicates of Ile-de-France, resulting in early 1991 in the creation of the “Association of Greater Roissy” (AGR , Association du Grand Roissy), which had the support of the Region. The Val-d’Oise representative in the CRIF, Michel Bernandin, played a key role in the formation of the association. AGR brought under one roof 70 communities, its rallying cry being the “balanced” development of the CDG sector across the three departments (Fig. 6.22). More accurately though, it was about pushing for the inclusion of Val-d’Oise and Seine-et-Marne in the plans of the State for the area, and thwarting its intention to reshuffle intermunicipal assemblages.93 The press release 188

on the creation of AGR reiterated the assets of the CDG airport area, declaring its intention to influence the governmental planning agenda: The Association of Grand Roissy is the result of the common desire of local elected officials in the Roissy sector to act outside political divisions in order to obtain an overall development of the future European hub. … [Its] aim is to draw up a synthesis of the various projects Fig. 6.22  Perimeter of the Association of Greater Roissy. under preparation with a view to submitting a single document to the Regional Prefect responsible for the revision of the SDAURIF. … Our work … is intended to facilitate the task of the State, which has itself decided on the European future of Roissy, without having clearly defined the modalities of its development.94 Of course, this translated into urbanization territories. The related map produced by syndicates, was filled with development zones in every possible direction around the airport, of which most were incompatible with statutory documents (Fig. 6.23). For the local authorities, the reconceptualization of the Roissy area as a strategic development sector put this statutory incompatibility to question; and by visualizing their projects, they put pressure on the State to include them in the new SDRIF. Another initiative came from the economic development agency of the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, so-called COMEX (Comité d’Expansion). With its homologues of Val-d’Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Oise and Aisne, they created the “Club of Roissy,” an informal structure aiming at providing recommendations for economic development based on the views of the main economic actors of the “airport zone” (“Aéropôle”). In a study submitted to the planning services of the State and the IdF Region in early 1991, the Club of Roissy placed the focus on the com-

Fig. 6.23  Synthesis of the land use proposals of the intercommunal syndicates participating in the Association of Greater Roissy; the striped areas are new urbanization zones (orange), zones destined for economic activities (pink) or new green and recreation spaces (green).

pletion and extension of land transport infrastructure as a prerequisite for the sector’s development. The authors suggested that the economic activities with the most growth potential, based on the vocation of the hub, were international exchanges, distribution, exhibitions and congresses, and high-value market-oriented ser-

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

AGR , providing a synthesis of the project proposals put forth by the intercommunal

189

vices,­and proposed to structure them in six dedicated zones around CDG .95 The draft regional plan, ­presented in April 1991 by the newly ­appointed Regional Prefect Christian Sautter, complicated things further. The plan, introducing its trademark “polycentric” organization of Ile-de-France, presented the Roissy sector as “center of European excellence,” “strategic hub” of the grande couronne, and part of the region’s “great spaces of development” (Fig. 6.24).96 This designation was accompanied by the prediction of 120,000 new jobs and a Fig. 6.24  Map of the draft regional plan of 1991 showing the “4 whopping 200,000 new residents by great spaces of development” of Ile-de-France. 2015, in the interest of “balancing the region.” In agreement with the Lacaze proposals, housing would be predominantly channeled to the north of the airport, and urbanization in the south would be cautious, pending the realization of transport links. The prescriptions of the draft regional plan raised objections from different directions. Within the state planning machinery itself, they met the criticism of the Ministry of Spatial Planning (Ministère de l’Aménagement du Territoire) and the DATAR . Minister Jacques Chérèque characterized the urbanization of Roissy as a “worst case scenario,” declaring that it was “essential to avoid excessive urbanization around Charles-de-Gaulle airport in order to guarantee its accessibility and preserve the quality of life of the inhabitants of this area. … I do not want us to repeat the mistakes made around the Orly airport, whose disastrous social consequences we must manage today.”97 From the side of the Region, there was also fear that the development of Roissy was premature. The CRIF remarked that several transport infrastructures had priority over urbanization in the Roissy area: doubling of the A1, Cergy-Roissy rail link, completion and reinforcement of the Francilienne, BIP, local roads, and connection of Roissy airport to the Montmorency valley.98 The communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise were also unsatisfied with the draft plan, but for very different reasons. The relegation of half of the 200,000 new residents in the territory of the department came with the need for housing that many communities were unwilling to provide, on the one hand fearing to become even more of a “­dormitory,” on the other hand preferring to develop activity zones that provided jobs and business taxes. Also, as mayor of Roissy-en-France André Toulouse affirmed, for rural communities “[t]he quantity of social housing units is problematic … it goes against their way of life and the lifestyle of their populations.”99 Equally disturbing was the lack of clarity about the future of local large-scale projects and the timeline of implementation of road infrastructure. This was made even more frustrating by the endorsement of the projects of ADP, who unlike local administrations was ­granted liberty in pursuing its urban development ambitions with Roissypole. As Michel ­Bernardin, Regional Councilor for Val-d’Oise, denounced: 190

We are sometimes told that the development of the Roissy sector is not possible without an improvement in road access. Except that Aéroports de Paris, a public establishment, is keeping its plans to extend the airport, is continuing to create business zones within its boundaries, without worrying too much about the consequences on the transport network that is already saturated.100 With most mayors, representing various political orientations, not desiring to enter into conflict with the central government, SIEVO advanced instead its proposal for a local SD , hoping to be heard in the next phase of elaboration of the regional plan. The draft Eastern Val-d’Oise Plan of 1991 reiterated the goals stated in previous documents, with greater focus on the natural environment and adaptations in housing surfaces to approach the State targets (Table 6.3). Two main goals were put forth: achieving a “rebalancing” of the sector’s ratio of jobs to workforce, by doubling the amount of the former; and finding ways to distribute the fiscal fruits of economic growth, so that the develop-

Projection for ­Eastern Val d’Oise

POPULATION

HOUSING (units)

ZAE (ha)

EMPLOYMENT (jobs)

EMPLOYMENT RATE

 + 55,000 (incl. CDG ) (+ 9 0.2 %)

 + 0.36 (incl. CDG )

 + 65,000 (excl. CDG ) (+ 127.5 %)

 + 0.4 (excl. CDG )

Evolution 1990 – 2015 Draft regional plan (State)

 + 9 4 ,000

 + 4 0,000 – 45,000

SIEVO

 + 72,000

 + 30,500 – 34 ,500 (of which 45 % in zones NA )

 + 1,450 – 1,750 (of which 15 % in zones NA )

Expected Status 2015 Draft regional plan (State)

280,000 – 290,000

120,000 (incl. CDG )

0.96 (incl. CDG )

SIEVO

260,000 – 270,000

120,000 (excl. CDG )

0.9 (excl. CDG )

Table 6.3  Comparison of the proposals of the draft regional plan and the draft SIEVO plan on housing and employment, as presented in a colloquium held in December 1991

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

ment of a ZAE in one community could benefit several others.101 Timing was crucial: a plan for Roissy should be implemented quickly, as “everything would play out before 1993” (“tout se joue avant 1993”): the area had to be ready, in terms of both statutory plans and institutional structures, to attract investors at the opening of the Single European Market.102 SIEVO was dependent on the State for these steps. The State was however taking its time, assessing the situation, prioritizing other areas and topics, and conducting hearings with administrative and planning actors before composing the final version of the new regional plan. The situation for Eastern Val-d’Oise was becoming a battle of numbers, with its representatives declaring not wanting “to become the ‘poor relative’ of Ile-de-France” and criticizing the State suggestions for “burying any hope of economic development … by emphasizing housing at the expense of employment.”103

191

(Re)Designing CDG as competitive asset While the orientations of the new regional plan were being debated, things on the ground proceeded rapidly, including on the airport itself. As introduced earlier, in 1989 ADP had launched an ambitious investment program to increase the competitiveness of the Paris platforms. The numbers gave cause for optimism: from 33.5 million in 1986, by 1990 the two airports handled 46.9 million passengers, of which CDG handled 22.6 million.104 Despite a small traffic decline in 1991 due to an economic recession across the Western world, growth quickly bounced back, with traffic reaching 50.4 million in 1992 and CDG coming on a par with Orly. Next to passenger traffic, air cargo also became increasingly competitive: from 714,000 tons in 1986, it was 874,000 tons in 1990, and 1.2 million by 1994, of which more than 75 % at CDG .105 The focus of ADP was on making CDG an attractive European hub. Orly would be the supporting actor, even though it also saw considerable developments: reconfiguration of Halls 2 and 3 of the West Terminal to accommodate larger aircraft, opening of Hall 1, and implementation of the long-awaited link to RER B station Antony via a light driverless metro, the “Orlyval.”106 But these developments did not change the fact that the Orly’s expansion possibilities were limited, and that CDG was destined as Paris’s largest airport and competitive asset. There, the projects of the early 1990s incarnated a large-scale transformation. In terms of terminal infrastructure, Terminal 2D was put to service in two parts in 1989 in 1991, to be followed by 2C in 1993, each able to receive up to 5 million travelers. The two buildings adhered to the design concept of 2A and 2B, but included various technical innovations. A separate small terminal for charter and seasonal flights, the T9 (future T3), opened in 1991.107 With the airport enjoying a renewed popularity,108 in May 1991 ADP organized a large-scale exhibition in Pavillon de l’Arsenal, the Parisian center for architecture and urbanism. Entitled “Roissy, les metamorphoses,” the exhibition presented “the airport of the year 2000” with a series of models, plans, photos, and architectural visualizations of the airport’s existing and future components. CDG ’s development program was introduced as “not simply expanding the existing infrastructure. On the contrary, it will significantly change the configuration of the platform, provide new services and transform travelers’ habits by offering them new transport possibilities and increased comfort.”109 The program’s centerpiece was the “module of exchanges”: located between T2 and the future T3, this megastructure promised to bring ­together the airplane, the train, the metro, the car and the pedestrian. Designed by Paul Andreu in collaboration with SNCF ’s Jean-Marie Duthilleul and Irish engineer Peter Rice, it consisted of two 350-meter-long Fig. 6.25  Plan and sections of the “module of exchanges.”

192

curving buildings placed on an east-

west axis between CDG 2 and 3, perpendicular to the underground TGV station, which would be covered by an immense glass canopy. The four-level complex would include shops, restaurants, offices, a business center, and would be topped by a hotel (Fig. 6.25 and Fig. 6.26). Apart from the TGV, to which six platforms were assigned, there was space for a new RER B in extension from the existing stop, as well as, on a separate level, a mini-metro Fig. 6.26  Model of the “module of exchanges,” showing the hotel topping the complex among access roads.

given to Air France for exclusive use, and the third terminal “CDG 3.” Located along the central infrastructural axis in extension of the “module of exchanges,” CDG 3 would have two buildings, twice as long as those of T2. Each of them would consist of a ­slightly curving main volume with two “peninsulas” attached on the airside, allowing direct access to the airplanes through footbridges (Fig. 6.28). CDG 3 was advertised as incarnating a new design concept that integrated the operating constraints of airlines and new security needs, while providing increased comfort. One of its key innovations was the separation of departures and arrivals levels. On the occasion of the exhibition in Pavillon de l’Arsenal, the architectural plans for Roissy received a great deal of publicity. Andreu was at his most popular, giving interviews in newspapers and publishing a monograph about his work. The ­structural audacity of the structures, the intertwining of the buildings and road network, the fluidity of the trajectories, the ubiquitous transparency inviting natural light and encouraging frequent visual contact with the airplanes, and not least the unique convergence of airplane, train, metro, car, and pedestrian, inspired a new public fascination.111 Also, these elements consolidated the logic introduced with the planning of the Roissy platform in the late 1960s: the airport design, composed of independent ­elements tied together by an internal logic, did not seek to directly relate with the city, but rather propose its own kind of urbanity, experiential and fluid, while “marking the

Fig. 6.27  Visualization of the mini-metro connecting the modules of T2.

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

system to link the station with the terminals. (Fig. 6.27).110 Other highlights of the masterplan were the Terminal 2C, which would be

193

Fig. 6.28  Layout plan of CDG 3 (left) and photo of model showing one of the “peninsulas” providing access to airplanes (right).

landscape” at a territorial scale.112 Le Moniteur, which had introduced the projects in CDG as “a vast project of modern urbanism” in a first article in 1989,113 now proposed: What is more surprising in Roissy’s latest projects? Their dimension? Their cost? Their program? Their ambition? Or, beyond objective considerations, the extraordinary continuity of a project developed for over twenty-eight years. … Totally abstract, the ground plane of Roissy terminals invokes a printed circuit board, or, in close zoom on terminals 2 and 3, molecular biology. Paul Andreu considers the ­airport as a gigantic machine … of infinite complexity.114 Interestingly, the “airport city” that ADP developed in parallel was only described in passing in the exhibition and the press releases; the authority ostensibly wanted to disassociate the core aviation projects – meant to impress a larger public – with those addressed to a specific clientele and potentially more prone to criticism. Besides, in the exaltation of the extremely functionalistic yet poetic architecture of the terminals, competitiveness provided the overarching rationale. CDG ’s ambitiously designed components were both prerequisite and proof of its success against its competitors. They were also, once again, an expression of the elite status enjoyed by the airport authority, which was particularly irritating to communities. As mayor of Tremblay-en-France François Asensi commented on the occasion of the Pavillon de l’Arsenal exhibition: “A certain tradition exists that ADP is its own master behind its fence, but is it normal that we discover their intentions during an exhibition?”115 Indeed, it was poignant that while a large-scale debate over the future of the Paris region was taking place, ADP felt little compelled to share the details of CDG ’s major projects with the neighboring communities. Another characteristic episode ensued with the announcement of the ­“Roissy 3,” the extension of CDG that included the construction of the CDG 3 Terminal as well as three additional runways, with the target to boost capacity to 120 million passengers by 2015 (from 25 million in 1992).116 To implement “Roissy 3,” a public inquiry was legally mandated, as the additional 310 ha of land required a declaration of public utility. According to Halpern, ADP treated this inquiry process as a simple formality so as to move the plan to realization. It showed little interest in discussing the project’s specifics and spatial effects beyond the necessary, or in addressing the concerns of the communities that rejected it.117 Meanwhile, a host of facilities were being developed at CDG . To attract airlines, good docking space and state-of-the-art services in ground handling and mainte194

Fig. 6.29  Model masterplan of Roissypole in 1992. Seen from left to right: The Rectangle, Hilton Roissy, Continental Square, RER station and hotels, the Dome. Aéronef; to the bottom right, the Air France headquarters.

nance were developed; for passengers, amenities such as comfortable spaces for layover, shopping areas, and parking spaces. Capacity and services for air cargo were enhanced with terminals, storage and handling facilities in the dedicated zone. A “postal hub” was implemented in 1992 in collaboration with the French Post; an air-route distribution center with the major logistics developer Sogaris followed.118 In parallel, the airport authority invested in the landscaping of the airport site. All these actions promoted the goal of making CDG a competitive asset.119 The role that CDG was called to play in the European aviation landscape called for an outstanding “architectural performance,” even if this meant sidestepping the airport’s spatial and territorial embedment.

Parallel to expanding the aviation infrastructure of CDG , ADP continued to promote its real estate plans for the Roissypole “airport city.” In mid-1992, its new President Jean ­Fleury (1992 – 1999) and General Director Jean-Pierre Beysson presented the finalized program for the complex (Fig. 6.29). In addition to the “Rectangle,” described earlier, the program included several “high-end” office building projects. The first, freshly opened, was the “Continental Square.” Consisting of four office buildings placed symmetrically around a glass pyramid over an underground restaurant, this project of 25,000 m 2 would be the first part of a complex of 64,000 m 2 (Fig. 6.30).120 Its investor Générale Continentale Investissements was strongly convinced about its attractiveness thanks to the site’s international transport connections.121 The next major office project expected was the “Dôme,” featuring 40,000 m 2 of office Fig. 6.30  View of the Continental Square after its opening in 1992.

space, to be developed by Kaufman & Broad on account of ADP (who retained half the surface) and NNI , subsidiary of the Dutch insurance

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

The airport city takes off

195

giant ING (who acquired the other half).122 Comprising eight buildings interconnected by a glass-covered, curving pedestrian “street” intended to facilitate circulation and encourage exchanges among its transient users, the Dome was similarly aimed at an i­ nternational, corporate clientele attracted by the hub’s connectivity.123 When it opened in 1993, the design declared its high-end orientation: leading-edge office services and communication technologies were combined with an architecture of grandeur, with large glass surfaces, marble and granite finishes, and tropical vegetation (Fig. 6.31).124 South of the Dome, the largest-scale office project of Roissypole was projected: the headquarters of Air France. The national airline had been considering transferring the bulk of its offices to CDG since the development of the Cité Air France, so as to be closer to its center of operations. This desire Fig. 6.31  Today’s view of the Dome interior corridor. turned into a necessity when the transformation of CDG into a hub airport was set forth. The plan for the Roissy headquarters of Air France provided for 62,000 m 2 of surface in three interlinked buildings, creating space for successive internal courtyards – the intention of the architects being to efficiently respond to the organizational needs of the airline while also providing its employees with “a maximum opening towards ­nature” (Fig. 6.32).125 The office buildings were complemented by other programs that were anticipated to reinforce the aspiration of “cityness.” Between the Dome’s curved internal side and the Air France headquarters, ADP was building the “Aéronef,” a 6,000-square-­metercommercial center to “respond to the needs of urbanization and vitality in the international business center of the CDG airport, which will accommodate over time around 12,000 people.”126 The building’s design, evoking airplane wings, was elaborated by the deconstructivist architect Claude Parent and expected to serve as a visual reference to visitors of Roissy. Inside the Aéronef, a host of facilities were planned: various shops, luxury boutiques, restaurants, cafes, and lifestyle services (Fig. 6.33). Besides, the promise of a tangible urban quality permeated all promotional materials for Roissypole, which projected an intensive use not only for the interior of the buildings, but also for outer spaces (Fig. 6.34). The “airport city” label, and the relation to urbanity that it connoted, were aptly used by the air196

Fig. 6.32  Three-dimensional visualization of the Air France headquarters complex.

port authority to convey the image of an attractive place to potential investors and tenants. The idea was that the multiple transport connections provided in the airport would constantly feed traffic to the site, giving it round-the-clock liveliness.127 Conceived as an independent component of the site, Roissypole did not seek to architecturally “mark the landscape” like the terminals. Here, the aspiration was of a different kind: In its presentation, ADP described Roissypole as a “new concept of a business city in direct contact with the world,” revolving around three pillars: a privileged location in terms of transport connections (international, national, and local), a strategic appeal for multinational firms, and an attractive living and working environment.128 The promotion of these assets was even more important as, by 1992, a real estate recession was grasping the Paris region, which was largely due to the oversupply of office space. In view of the precarious real estate market, Beysson ascertained in fact that no new building projects would be launched before 60 % of the available office space had been rented.129 At the same time, to the concerns of surrounding communities about the potentially negative effect of Roissypole on economic development in their own territory, ADP responded by stressing the “real” need to which the project responded: “We do not build there for pleasure. We respond to a real economic necessity. We provide offices but also services, hotels, and access to the future interconnection station T.G.V.-R.E.R. to companies that ask for them.”130 In parallel, the authority promoted the idea that Roissypole was not an isolated project but a catalyst for its surroundings. As Beysson stated in the press release:

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

Fig. 6.33  Visualization of the envisaged interior and facilities in Aéronef in a promotional brochure by ADP .

197

Fig. 6.34  Visualization of the atmosphere in the open spaces of Aéronef (left) and Continental Square (right).

Roissypole is an important project because of its specificity and its quality l­evel, but this operation will constitute less than 10 % of the development of the sector. Roissypole is therefore is not a competitor for neighboring municipalities. On the contrary, it should be a support or even an engine for surrounding projects.131

A new wave of projects and a persistent stalemate With ADP finalizing the Roissypole project and the aspirations of local actors for the Roissy area maturing, a new wave of project-making and visioning activity arose. The public agency AFTRP led the way with the continuation of its own major project, P ­ aris Nord II , taking advantage of its autonomy. By 1991, the developed surfaces in the business park approached 600,000 m 2, the located companies 300, and about 7,000 people worked there.132 Its regional importance and positioning evolved accordingly. In an article analyzing the strategic evolution of the public developer AFTRP, Franck ­Scherrer noted about Paris Nord II : Little by little emerges a novel conception [of Paris Nord II] – still only implicit in the discourse of the developer [AFTRP] – as place of articulation of multiple territories at different spatial scales: the northern suburbs, the Paris region, the North of France, and Northwestern Europe, the rest of the world… The development of this vocation can be seen in the qualitative evolution of settlements.133 The “qualitative evolution” referred to the shift towards offices instead of warehouses, in turn associated with the endeavor to attract higher-value businesses. As AFTRP ’s newly appointed president Georges Constantin declared: “We have become very selective with regard to the choice of companies. … Demand is very strong on behalf of foreign or national companies for which proximity to the Roissy airport is essential.”134 This strategy made emerge a potential conflict with ADP, since the two actors had both turned towards higher-value office-based development. But when asked about 198

the competition between Roissypole and Paris Nord 2, representatives from both authorities insisted that the two projects were complementary rather than competing, addressing different market segments.135 AFTRP did not stop there: it also looked for opportunities to develop additional business parks in the area, preferably high-value. “We are working on a number of projects, located within a radius of 10 to 15 kilometers around the airport … to meet the demands of companies wishing to set up near CDG ,” Constantin had affirmed by mid-1992.136 The biggest of these opportunities emerged in collaboration with the community of Tremblay-en-France. While the latter was still lobbying for the Grand ­Stade, the State created a 330-hectare ZAD on the site projected as the “sport metropolis,” so as to secure its pre-emptive right on all transactions concerning the land south of blay joined forces with AFTRP, who had been studying the extension of Paris Nord II , for a possible Paris Nord III . At the same time, the CCIP also expressed interest in extending the Villepinte Exhibition Center into the territory of Tremblay.139 The interest of these large public agencies increased the chances of these projects being realized, putting Tremblay-en-France in a favorable position. The community’s mayor François Asensi (PC) used this opportunity to ensure that control of urbanization would not be unequivocally ceded to state authorities, and that facilities needed by the population would also be implemented. Under his perceptive leadership, agreements were signed between the State, AFTRP, and Tremblay that allowed the latter to have the final say on development and acquire control of the developed land.140 In parallel, the community negotiated with ADP the creation of a landscaped green buffer zone and circulation network at the airport’s limit. These accomplishments of Tremblay-en-France triggered the antagonism of the communities of Eastern Val d’Oise, whose agenda, as seen earlier, was treated with skepticism by the state planning authorities. The ambitious project of AREC had just been abandoned, and communities aspired to (re)take the lead in the development of the Roissy “hub” with a new, formalized project, signed if possible by an architect with recognized authority.141 In late 1991, Roissy-en-France, Gonesse, Bonneuil-en-France, Vaudherland, and Thillay together with public and private partners, including AFTRP, formed the association “Euro Val-d’Oise.”142 Its purpose was to study the urban development prospects of the so-called Triangle de Gonesse – the triangular area of 1,000 ha located between the highways A1 and RN17 and the CDG airport.143 During 1992, Euro Val-d’Oise organized an international urban design consultation with six multidisciplinary teams of architects and urbanists.144 The teams were invited to: on the one hand, imagine the identity of one of the great sectors of international [economic] activities of the Paris Region next to the CDG and Le Bourget airports, and on the other hand, organize and structure an innovative and balanced urban development between housing, employment and the environment, in a part of the region that today has a large employment deficit and a very “chaotic” urban ­image.145 The consultation brief, prepared by AFTRP, asked the teams to devise the characteristics of a “future international urbanity at the northern entrance of the capital,”

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

CDG .137 When it became clear that the Grand Stade would not move forward,138 Trem-

199

Fig. 6.35  Projects submitted to the Euro Val d’Oise international consultation, teams from left to right: Oriol Bohigas, Hans Kollhoff (top); Richard Rogers, Michel Macary (bottom).

integrating 21st-century businesses, education facilities, services, and diverse housing – while mitigating the spatial and regulatory constraints of the site. The project should be bold and engage with the prospect that “[t]he increase in international and air travel, induced by the normalization of the economy, will make airports and their surroundings privileged sites for international activities.”146 The submitted proposals, publicized in September 1992, exhibited a range of programmatic and formal approaches, testifying to the various ways in which airport-related urbanity could be conceptualized (Fig. 6.35). The winning project, by the team led by French architect Michel Macary, relied on an easily memorable image, especially when viewed from an aircraft, thanks to a 250-meter-wide strip of greenery around the site. It proposed 940,000 m 2 of surface (excluding public amenities), corresponding to 24,000 jobs and 7,000 residents, in three urban “situations”: in the center, a dense urban fabric on either side of a 200

large central mall, hosting the main commercial and cultural activities in extension of the town of Gonesse; in the south, large buildings organized around a body of water; and in the north, golf course and recreational facilities in a forested milieu.147 In parallel, Tremblay and AFTRP produced a general “sector plan” (“schéma de secteur”) for the “South CDG ” zone to serve as framework

buffer enveloping the whole (Fig. 6.36).148 Also,

Fig. 6.36  Schéma de secteur for the 700 -ha zone south of the CDG airport.

the partners launched an international urban design consultation, similar in logic to the one for the Triangle de Gonesse area.149 Here, the four invited teams150 were asked to reflect on four different scales, corresponding to different perimeters: the “big landscape” of the area comprised between the airport and the highways A1 and A104; the entire northern part of the c­ ommunity; the “western sector” as a compilation of “international quarters” devoted mostly to economic activities; and the “station quarter” around the projected RER station (Fig. 6.37).151 The size of the overall project was massive, and sure enough, the consultation brief contained the by-now-usual argumentation about the gateway role of the airport and the international economic activities that it was expected to attract. However, it also showed interest in taking into account the local culture and needs, and in promoting environmentally friendly approaches and urbanistic quality – elements missing from most other projects of the time. The team led by Massimiliano Fuksas emerged as the consultation winner, l­ argely thanks to the incorporation in the proposal of the existing rural landscape. The Vieux Pays (“old core”) of Tremblay and surrounding cultivations would be “shielded” through a ring-shaped park connected with the “green belt” (see Chapter 5). In the rest of the site, the agricultural land would be “pre-urbanized” by a landscape framework consisting of rows of trees and canals, following a perpendicular grid (Fig. 6.38). The resulting “plots” (5 to 10 ha) could thus be developed according to needs and demand. Urban development would be low- to medium-density, appropriate for light industrial and airport-related tertiary activities. Conversely, the station quarter would have relatively high density and an urban appearance. The total surface of the “western sector” was estimated at 1,300,000 m 2 and that of the station quarter at 360,000 m 2 .152 The Paris Nord III  /  South CDG ­project (330 ha / 1,300,000 m 2) and the Euro Val d’Oise / Fig. 6.37  Study perimeters for the South CDG zone ­provided for the international urban design consultation in 1992.

Triangle de Gonesse project (1,000  ha  / 2 940,000 m ), in combination with Roissypole­ (30 ha / 200,000 m 2 eventually) and Paris-

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

for future plans. It included a dense part in the west, around a projected new RER station, and less dense zones across the site, with a green

201

Nord II (300 ha / over 1,000,000 m 2 ­eventually), already well underway, testified to an urban development ambition equally big if not bigger than that of the first projects promoted in the CDG area following its designation as “strategic sector.” And yet all these projects were largely speculative: a jointly agreed development strategy for the CDG area was yet to be formulated, with “a wild uncertainty weighing on Roissy’s future.”153 In addition, there were still strong voices within the state machinery, against not necessarily particu-

Fig. 6.38  Overall plan proposal by Massimiliano Fuksas.

lar projects, but altogether the logic of urban development in the airport region. The words of François Wellhoff, a DATAR planner in charge of the regions and departments adjoining Ile-de-France, are characteristic: Roissy is a major asset for the Paris region, provided that it is not saturated with ­urbanization and that we do not repeat the stupidity we did at Orly. We are not completely against offices built at the foot of the runways, but we want them to be reserved for companies directly linked to airport activity. … Our position is clear: we do not wish to develop office activities either on the airport site or around it. Roissy must stay in the middle of beetroot fields.154 This statement, held against those of the representatives of ADP or AFTRP, indicated the persistence of major ambivalence and different priorities on how to plan the airport platform and the airport region, even at the heart of the public sector.

Planning the CDG region: the plan of Mission Roissy In spring 1992, the State finally streamlined planning actions. Task forces were set up to scrutinize development options for the “centers of European excellence,” under the supervision of DREIF and the departmental Prefects. Among them was the so-called “Mission Roissy.” Placed under the direction of Ponts-et-Chaussées engineer ­Michel ­Quatre, it was tasked with defining an urban and economic development project for the CDG strategic sector, taking into account the projects of the local authorities. Its perimeter was larger than the perimeters used until then, comprising 68 communities (Fig. 6.39). Mission Roissy diligently met with local stakeholders, negotiated priorities, defined and redefined population, housing and employment targets, and eventually presented, in November 1992, its “Development project for the zone of influence of Roissy.”155 It was an important breakthrough: the proposal integrated the orientations of the draft regional plan, set up long-term directions for the development of the area, and provided a reference urban development plan (Fig. 6.40). In many ways, it was 202

Fig. 6.39  Study perimeter of Mission Roissy and administrative limits.

The presentation document opened by enumerating the main drivers of transformation in the Roissy area: the development of high-speed connectivity by air and rail; the emergence of a new demand by businesses; and the intensification of exchanges with northern Europe in the context of the European Single Market. Evidently, they all had to do with the impact of the CDG airport, actual or expected. The document then proposed a project articulated around three components – urban and spatial planning (I), economic development (II ), and transport (III ) – complemented by suggestions on land policy and fiscal policy. In terms of urban planning (I), the sector was divided into four zones, for each of which a different strategy was proposed, corresponding to different targets for housing and population growth (Table 6.4). First, the banlieue (1) dominating the southern part from Sarcelles to Villeparisis would be restructured, revitalized through the network of green spaces, and densified where possible to accommodate one third of the projected new population by 2015 (43,000 residents). A major stake here was to “irrigate” the territory with roads and public transport to give the local population better access to the big employers: airport, Paris Nord 2, PEX , Citroën, etc. Second, the area directly south of CDG , labeled “international activity zone” (2), would be the subject of a quality urban design, including an “urban boulevard” to link the new business quarters: the Tremblay-South CDG zone (250 ha); the Triangle de Gonesse (1,000 ha); and Roissy­ pole. Over time, the entire complex would accommodate 3,000,000 m 2 of activities or offices, including Paris Nord 2 and PEX . In addition, the zone would host educational facilities and, as far as noise restrictions allowed, a small population (10,000), to ensure its diversity and vitality. Here, Mission Roissy endorsed in principle the ­projects

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

also emblematic of the expectations, dilemmas and compromises of planning action regarding the spatial impact of the CDG airport and its territorial context.

203

Fig. 6.40  Overall development plan for the CDG area by Mission Roissy.

of the local actors; but stressed that the zone would be developed progressively depending on demand and the implementation of the RER network. Third, the territory northwest of CDG , the core of Plaine de France (3), largely constrained by noise-related building limitations, would keep its rural character and receive little development (8,500 residents), with the exception of a major residential extension in the town of Louvres (25,500). Fourth, the zone north and east of the airport (4), also rural but more sparsely populated, would see its small towns all grow moderately, mostly with residential development (35,000 people).156 The proposed economic development project (II ) was based on the consideration of three co-existing “dynamics”: the international, airport-triggered dynamic; the traditional role of the area as logistics hub for goods transport; and the “fringe effect,” related to the attraction of tenants looking for cheap land. According to Mission Roissy, public action should prioritize and reinforce the first dynamic. This meant preserving the possibilities for growth of the CDG airport, which was not only a national asset but also a significant employer, providing 36,300 jobs in 1990, expected to grow to 79,000 by 2015. It also meant supporting the development of existing projects of international vocation – the Villepinte Exhibition Center and Roissypole – and reserving the Triangle de Gonesse and South CDG zones for businesses or institutions with a truly international outlook. In parallel, Mission Roissy emphasized the importance of putting economic development “at the service of the urban project.” This entailed creating sufficient jobs to match population growth and to support localities with high unemployment, as well as investing in education to facilitate the population’s access to well-paid jobs. Altogether, the evolution of the sector was estimated at an additional 104,000 jobs and 126,000 residents by 2015, signaling a mid-way solution between the targets of the draft regional plan and those advocated for by local associations ­(Table 6.4, see also Table 6.3). 204

DEPARTMENT  /   Z ONE

POPULATION

URBANIZATION SURFACE (gross ha, housing + ZAE)

EMPLOYMENT (jobs)

Evolution 1990 – 2015 Seine-Saint-Denis (93) Banlieue (1)

+6,500 (SIEVO )

Internat. ZAE (2)

+8 ,000 (Tremblay-en-France)

+300

Other

+2,500

+70

TOTAL 93 +17,000

+93

+463 (of which 198 in SDAURIF  / 265 new)

+25,000

Val-d’Oise (95) Banlieue (1)

+23,000

Internat. ZAE (2)

+2,000 (Triangle de Gonesse)

+425 / +744

Plaine de France (2)

+4 ,000 (Goussainville, Le Thillay …)

+160

+4 ,500 (Luzarches)

+90

Sector North (4)

+370

+25,500 (Louvres)

+500

+11,000 (Survilliers)

+470

TOTAL 95 +70,000

+2,334 (of which 625 in SDAURIF  / 1,709 new)

+50,000

Seine-et-Marne (77) +15,000 (SIEP Marne Nord)

+809

Sector North (4)

+14 ,500 (SIEP Dammartin)

+443

+9,500 (Saint-Pathus, Moussy …)

+557

TOTAL 77 +39,000

+1,809 (of which 235 in SDAURIF  / 1,574 new)

Total (1) +43,000

+1,272

Total (2) +10,000

+1,044

Total (3) +34 ,000

+750

Total (4) +35,000

+1,470

Total other +2,500 TOTAL +126,000

+29,000

+70 +4,606 (of which 1,508 in SDAURIF  / 3,548 new)

+104,000

Table 6.4  Projections of Mission Roissy for growth of population and employment in the Roissy area by 2015

Finally, with regard to transport (III ), Mission Roissy reiterated what had been stressed repeatedly over the previous years: namely, that the success of the area depended on the implementation of efficient and attractive connections, both in terms of rail-based public transport and in terms of road infrastructure. Tangential links were particularly important, as they would alleviate the load of the radial ones and improve access to the airport hub. New was the level of detail in the plan, especially with ­regard to public transport. It included the multiplication of rail links around the airport with a loop

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

Banlieue (1)

205

Fig. 6.41  Existing and proposed public transport.

Fig. 6.42  Existing and proposed road network.

of the RER line, and the implementation of a system of rapid bus connections (Fig. 6.41 and Fig. 6.42). The work of Mission Roissy was important. For the first time in the history of the Paris region, a plan for the region of its major airport was produced. The plan sought to embed the emerging dynamic of airport-related connectivity into a coherent program for land use and development in the airport periphery. Yet behind the appearance of coher206

ence, we can trace a number of underlying tensions, reflecting the attempt to reconcile the wishes of different actors. The first tension had to do with reality versus expectation.

mistic. Finally, the necessity of efficient and attractive transport for air passengers was difficult to reconcile with that of a meshed transport network for locals. Mission Roissy recognized this difficulty and offered some solutions, like the alternation of d ­ irect and stopping RER trains and a path for the tangential route that included stops both at the airport and business zones. But it was far from a satisfactory solution to the inherently wicked problem of airport access (see also Chapter 5). Finally, a third and crucial tension concerned the recognition of the self-determination of local development actors, against the need for comprehensive management of the multi-dimensional issues of the CDG area. The proposed approach consisted in distinguishing between two kinds of land use-related public action. “Ordinary” urban development would remain in the hands of local actors and steered through the regular planning instruments of local SD and POS . Whereas for the “zones of international activity,” Mission Roissy recommended the creation of a “managing structure” with the participation of the State, to ensure their prudent development in space and time. These tensions were characteristic of the dilemmas arising around international airports and the dualities of their impact, at a time when their role was becoming important for the global economy. But they were also characteristic of the restructuring forces affecting the Paris region in the early 1990s, in the economy, urban space, and planning practice. Mission Roissy started to recognize the complexity of the problems, but the solutions that it proposed – when not relegating them to a future point in time – contained hard choices, and implied overcoming the fragmentation of public action.

Airports as centers of European caliber and the 1994 SDRIF The long-awaited revised Schéma Directeur de la Région Ile-de-France (SDRIF ) was published in April 1994. Approved by state decree despite local objections, it was seen as a tour de force of the central government. At the same time, the plan constituted an ­attempt at balancing various wishes: the overarching imperative of responding to

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

The premise of attraction of high-order functions could only partially be observed in reality, against a more clearly observable trend of settlement of low-value, logistics-related economic activities. Hence, the success of planning action in steering urban development towards the first trend depended on the presence of a demand that was uncertain. The second tension was between the dynamic of global economy and international connectivity associated with CDG , and its embedment in the local context. Ostensibly, the plan wanted to promote both. But in a world of divergent priorities and limited public resources, choices eventually had to be made among development options. For one, most kinds of urban development had at least some clash with airport operation and growth, either because they would endure noise impact, or because they would increase traffic in access roads, or both. Further, the airport-related dynamic was associated with a kind of workforce lacking in the area; hence, the expectation that its economic benefits would trickle down to the local population through jobs was overopti-

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­ uropean inter-regional competition, the social and economic development needs of E the sub-regions, and the demands of environmentalists for land preservation. Not least, it had to take into account the nationwide priorities set at the preceding national debate on aménagement du territoire, where the agreement reached brought back the imperative of controlling the development of Ile-de-France.157 Hence, the SDRIF affirmed the capital region’s assets – concentration of high-value businesses, existence of research hubs, central position in the transport network, international airports – as the pillars of its European ambition. At the same time, it stressed the need to project these at the scale of the Parisian Basin. There was restraint in the regional population and employment targets: 11.8 million inhabitants by 2015, against 13 million if present trends continued unchecked.158 Restraint was also demonstrated in the approach to urbanization: the plan determined an amount of maximum developable land (44,000 ha) and set the target of reducing the agricultural land consumption rate by 30 %. The spatial strategy suggested in the SDRIF revolved around three goals, that largely followed up on its 1965 and 1976 predecessors: the valorization of the rural and natural environment; the polycentric organization of the region; and the rationalization and reinforcement of the transport network. In the polycentric model of the SDRIF, there were four types of “hubs”: a) the “centers of European caliber” (“centres d’envergure européenne”), attractive for high-value economic development thanks to their accessibility, facilities and land availability; b) the “redevelopment sectors” of the petite couronne; c) the new towns; and d) the towns of the rural ring. Novel in relation to the previous plans was the interest in territorial competitiveness, and the focus on the renewal of deindustrializing districts, especially in the first ring. The proposed transport system reflected this organization, consisting of both high-level links (“grand gabarit”) connecting the hubs, and suburb-to-suburb links, such as a tramway line in the first ring. These orientations were not the bold answer to the problems of the metropolis expected by the urbanistic intelligentsia of the time.159 Above all, the plan was an exercise at balancing “[t]he pursuit of a strong planning scheme and the need to respect the competences of municipalities and public inter-municipal institutions in the field of urban development.”160 It incorporated projects already engaged by local authorities, but also sought to impose limits to urbanization, holding back local initiatives, and attempting to develop a well-served land supply in the name of regional attractiveness and quality of life. The approach to the CDG region was characteristic of this balancing exercise. The SDRIF announced the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, which, with 26.2 million passengers, had just surpassed Orly in terms of passenger traffic, as a key competitive asset of Ile-de-France. The region’s success in increasing its “openness,” reinforcing and promoting its assets, and organizing the “reception” of investment in terms of sites and services depended indeed on the growth and attractiveness of its international airports. The first lines of its spatial strategy set the stage for the role of CDG : The Roissy airport … is located in the heart of a spider’s web of high-speed rail lines linked to London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne; it is the only major European airport to have so much space to develop. It is an additional asset for the growth in Ile-de-France of high value-added activities and services generated by the increase in European trade.161 208

Accordingly, the CDG area was designated as one of the five “centers of European caliber” (“centre d’envergure européenne”), or territories of strategic importance, along with the city of Paris, La Défense, Marne-la-Vallée and the area of Orsay-Saclay-Massy-Orly (Fig. 6.43). The plan reiterated the reasons for this designation introduced in previous plans – connectivity, international exchanges, availability of space – and advanced the position that “[Roissy’s] privileged location must be exploited to accommodate, as a priority, businesses that are demanding in terms of access efficiency, particularly those related to European and international relations in the fields of high technology or decision support services.”162 The implications of the designation for urbanization were however equivocal. The SDRIF cautioned that “economic development must not hinder accessibility to the international airport, whose capacity will increase significantly in the future. Job creation on the platform will have to remain reasonable. Generally speaking, urbanization around Roissy airport will be limited.”163 The plan advised a “selective” policy of implementation so as not to prematurely exhaust valuable land south of the airport. All the same, the development of the site was posited to benefit all three concerned departments of Ile-de-France as well as Picardie, and participate in the “rebalancing” of Ile-de-France. This would be ensured by “new settlements well located in the interesting sites of Plaine de France” and an approach “respecting the quality of sites, [its] agricultural richness and the constraints of good airport operation.”164 In ­parallel, the SDRIF referred to the need to update the PEB of CDG , which, though relatively recent, took the traffic of 1995 as its reference, and was based on the assumption of a northsouth runway that Aéroports de Paris had since renounced. But the SDRIF also declared that “the low level of urbanization around Roissy makes it possible to accommodate traffic day and night. It is essential to preserve this facility at this airport, the

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

Fig. 6.43  The “centers of European caliber” in the 1994 SDRIF .

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Fig. 6.44  Excerpt of the 1994 SDRIF general map for the area of the CDG airport.

largest in Europe. The PEB of Roissy PEB must therefore be reviewed on the basis of expected traffic at saturation.”165 The placative impression that these all-encompassing statements exuded was not unrelated to the aforementioned tensions in the work of Mission Roissy, whose suggestions the regional plan followed upon. Zooming in on the SDRIF ’s general land use map, intentions appeared somewhat clearer. A raster of green spaces along the airport’s southern border is well visible. This project, initiated in the mid-1970s as seen in the previous chapter, was elaborated by Mission Roissy in collaboration with IAURIF and was a strong wish of the Ile-de-France Region.166 It also fitted well in the SDRIF ’s larger agenda on the preservation of green and agricultural space. At the same

time, the role of the CDG area as development space is witnessed in the multitude of “partially urbanizable” zones (Fig. 6.44). This, in the language of the SDRIF, referred to areas intended to accommodate new urbanization as a result of its provisions, as opposed to simply “urbanizable” areas, whose vocation to accommodate new urbanization had been fixed in the 1976 SDAURIF. The definition of “partially urbanizable” effectively relegated to the local authorities the duty to designate specific land uses in their local SD and POS , with the SDRIF fixing certain obligations, like keeping 40 % of space for agriculture or greenery. The approach of the SDRIF to the Roissy cluster thus 210

­attempted to reconcile economic and urban development with the protection of agricultural and forested spaces from rampant urban sprawl. In parallel, there were under­ lying political motivations: appeasing the environmental concerns of some elected officials (notably in Seine-et-Marne), all while satisfying the expectations of SIEVO about profiting from CDG ’s presence compared to Seine-Saint-Denis.167 The SDRIF was more decisive when it came to measures to enhance the ground

Overall, the 1994 SDRIF made obvious, unwillingly, the conundrum accompanying the planning of the CDG airport region. Namely, the crucial stake of connectivity put airports and high-speed rail stations among the region’s key assets; in this imperative, the CDG airport, rising star of the capital, should be allowed to pursue its hub function, grow according to its capacity, and be endowed with land access worthy of its role. At the same time, the competitive context also required new economic spaces to attract and host businesses of the new global market economy. Next to the established business centers like La Défense, these were sought in restructured de-industrialized first ring suburbs, and in areas with good connectivity. In that imperative, the area of the CDG airport should be planned as a receptor of such activities. Until then a “specialized hub,” CDG thus became a “development hub.” But this in turn threatened to hinder its function as a regional gateway. The plan thus incorporated a fragile balance: the airport was a domain for strategic public action, yet also a sensitive area in terms of spatial impact. Its strategic conception ultimately provided little guidance about how the airport could be embedded in its surroundings, and by not offering a solution to this conundrum, implicitly condoned trends of territorial specialization.

1  Bruce Barnard, “Airlines Privatizing Worldwide,” JOC , 29. 03 . 1987.  2 Original: “Nous devons tout faire pour rester le deuxième aéroport d’Europe [après Londres]. Si nous n’y parvenions pas, nous finirions par nous contenter de regarder les avions passer au-dessus de nos têtes.” Quoted in “L’Europe se pose à Roissy,” Le Monde, 26. 11. 1987.  3 Original: “Ce serait une erreur que la TGV Nord passe à une dizaine de kilomètres de Roissy sans s’y arrêter alors qu’il desservira dans de meilleures conditions les aéroports de Bruxelles et d’Amsterdam.” Quoted in “Roissy: Dans l’attente du TGV Nord,” Les Echos,

16 .04 .1987.  4 “Un pôle tertiaire international à Roissy. L’avion, le TGV et le RER au pied des bureaux,” Décideurs, 23.05.1988 .  5 Original: “jouer la carte de la complementarité air-rail.” Quoted in Philippe Le Ray and Daniel ­Ducher, “Le défi de la porte de l’Europe de 1993,” Urbanisme / Dossier Roissy: de l’aéroport à l’aéroville, mai/juin 1989.  6  Instead of the TGV Nord, as originally projected, it would be part of the TGV Interconnection Est, a branch allowing the main TGV routes to bypass central Paris. 7 “Aéroports: La bataille européenne,” Le Figaro, 10. 02. 1988; Laurence Monroe, Nathalie Seyer, and Odile

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

connectivity of the CDG airport. Notwithstanding the plans regarding the TGV station, access to the airport, either by road or by rail, had worsened in the preceding years, and its improvement was presented as a major stake.168 In addition to the TGV, there would be direct and more frequent RER B connections to Paris; a loop of RER B to serve the new urbanization area south of the airport; tangential links with Cergy-Pontoise and Marne-la-Vallée; and an entirely new rail line linking CDG and Orly, passing by the inner suburbs to the east of the agglomeration. In terms of road connections, the completion of the Francilienne would be a major improvement, while the local network would be enhanced.

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Fillion, “Les visées d’Aéroports de Paris,” Le Moniteur, 24 .03.1989.  8 In 1986, less than 4 % of the 33.5 million passengers of the Paris airports had transited to another destination, compared to almost 12 % for Amsterdam’s 12 million passengers for the same year. “L’Europe se pose à Roissy.”  9 Original: “L’avantage, c’est de disposer d’un espace aérien pas encore saturé et de terrain disponible à Roissy, ce qui autorise tout développement. Le désavantage c’est d’avoir un établissement composé de deux aéroports et de quatre aérogares.” Quoted in “Aéroports: La bataille européenne.”  10 In 1989, Parisian air passenger traffic reached 45 million, of which 24 .3 million were handled in Orly and 20.7 in CDG . Michel Capillon, “Saturation inquiétante des accès,” La Croix, 22.04.1990.  11 Bernadette Colson, “Accéleration des investissements. Aéroports de Paris: l’accueil sur terre avant tout,” ibid., 18 .01.1989.  12  Daniel Ducher and Philippe Le Ray, “Territoires et urbanisation,” Urbanisme / Dossier Roissy: de l’aéroport à l’aéroville, mai/juin 1989.  13  Yves Hervaux, “Urbanisme: Les projets de l’Ile-de-France. Iv. – Paris-Nord en plein décollage,” Le Quotidien de Paris, 20.01.1990. 14  According to data provided in various documents of the Val-d’Oise Departmental Council in 1989 – 1990. 15  Data from INSEE .  16  The Orly hub featured 64 ,000 jobs, of which 29,000 were in the airport. A geography master thesis from 1990 in Sorbonne University that analyzed the main ZAE in the vicinity of Orly registered various relations between them and the airport, especially in the domain of air cargo. Hawa Timera, “La plate-forme aéroportuaire d’Orly et ses retombées sur les entreprises de la banlieue sud” (Université de Paris IV -Sorbonne, 1990).  17  Nathalie Moutarde, “L’Etat ne veut pas renouveler l’expérience d’Orly à Roissy,” Développeurs, juin 1992 .  18  Concrete evidence, however, remained scant. The aforementioned thesis, for instance, concluded that ultimately, for most companies the airport presence was not seen as a determining factor, but rather as an added bonus of the location. Timera, “La plate-forme aéroportuaire d’Orly et ses retombées sur les entreprises de la banlieue sud.”  19  Formed after the first regional elections in 1986 with a majority of the RPR party.  20 Original: “comporte d’importants pôles d’activité qui ont permis la mise en valeur du secteur … Sur un tel site, aux caractéristiques exceptionnels à bien des égards, il était tentant d’en­ visager une diversification des activités, tant sur la ­plate-forme que sur les zones de frêt, au Sud-Ouest de l’Aéroport.” “Intérêt d’un pôle d’activités à Roissy-Charles-­ de-Gaulle,” p. 2.  21  Philippe Le Ray and Daniel Ducher, “Les espoirs d’un aménagement local concerté,” Urbanisme / Dossier Roissy: de l’aéroport à l’aéroville, mai/juin 1989.  22  CREPIF , ed. Les aérovilles: nouveau concept d’intercommunication et de localisation d’entreprises, vol. 27, Cahiers du CREPIF (CREPIF , 1989).  23 Original: “Les aérovilles: il s’agit bien là d’un nouveau concept que le Conseil régional se devait d’étudier. Comprendre la nouveauté, saisir, au milieu des aléas du temps, ce qui doit perdurer et se développer, n’est-ce pas bien notre tâche? … L’urbanisme évolue et les aérovilles seront une nouvelle étape de notre conception urbaine de l’habitat et de tout ce qui en découle.” Pierre-Charles Krieg, “Allocution d’ouverture du Président,” in Les aérovilles: nou-

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veau concept d’intercommunication et de localisation d’entreprises, ed. CREPIF (CREPIF , 1989).  24 Original: “L’aéroville devient … une arme tactique de choix pour la promotion de chaque pays dans la CEE. Elle fait de l’aéroport un pôle de développement économique d’envergure européenne et mondiale.” Jacqueline Lieutaud, “Les aérovilles: le cas européen,” ibid.  25 Conseil Régional ­Ile-de-France and IAURIF , “Ile-de-France 2000: vers un ­projet régional” (Paris: IAURIF , 1988).  26 Original: “Des ­éléments nouveaux … ont modifié le contexte régional: stagnation démographique accompagnée de transformations familiales, baisse de la population en zone centrale et accroissement en zone extérieure, internationali­ sation de l’économie et perspectives de 1993 , réalisation des TGV … explosion depuis 1985 de la construction de bureaux surtout dans l’ouest, urbanisation dans des zones non prévues… Ces évolutions et la persistance des déséquilibres justifient qu’un nouveau projet se plaçant dans une perspective à long terme soit élaboré pour la région d’Ile-de-France.” Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-deFrance and DREIF , “Réflexions préalables à l’actualisation du schéma directeur de la Région d’Ile-de-France” (1989), p. 3.  27 Original: “une valeur de situation exceptionnelle, un dynamisme de développement existant ou potentiel, des potentialités foncières importantes, … un basin de solidarité au niveau de l’emploi et de l’habitat”; “porte d’entrée internationale en Ile-de-France.” The other strategic sectors were Défense Montesson, the plateau of Saclay-Palaisseau, the southeastern Seine valley, and the five new towns. Conseil Régional Ile-de-France and IAURIF , “Ile-de-France 2000: vers un projet régional.”  28 Roissyen-France, Epiais-lès-Louvres, Mauregard, Le MesnilAmelot, Compans, Mitry-Mory, Tremblay-en-France, Villepinte, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Gonesse, Le Thillay, and ­ Gous­sainville.  29 Original: “un grand intérêt au niveau des équilibres régionaux car il permettra de réduire le fort déficit d’emploi qui marque actuellement les quadrants nord et est de la banlieue extérieure.” Conseil Régional Ile-de-France and IAURIF , “Ile-de-France 2000: vers un projet régional.”  30 Original: “disproportionnés par rapport au marché: plus de 1,000 hectares, ce qui représente cinq ans de commercialisation dans l’ensemble de la région, vingt-cinq ou trente ans au rythme de développement actuel du secteur”; “passer à côté de sy­ nergies possibles”; “absence d’une offre d’habitat adapté, gaspillage des terres agricoles, mitage et dégradation du paysage.” Ibid., p. 32.  31  Préfecture de la Région d’Ilede-France and DREIF , “Réflexions préalables à l’actualisation du schéma directeur de la Région d’Ile-de-France.” 32  DREIF , “Le pôle de Roissy” (1989).  33 Gérard Muteaud, “200.000 m2 de bureaux au bord des pistes de Roissy,” 05.05.1988; “Aéroports de Paris ‘développeur’ immobilier.”  34  Over time, the second way became more common. Guy Schwarz, “Aéroports de Paris: le foncier assure plus de 10 % des recettes,” Les Echos, 17.10.1996. 35  Monroe, Seyer, and Fillion, “Les visées d’Aéroports de Paris.”  36  “Les ambitions immobilières d’Aéroports de Paris,” Les Echos, 06 .10.1988 .  37 The “cargo villages” consisted of contiguous lots, each approximately 300 m2 , intended for use by small- and medium-sized companies, with space provided for both storage (about two thirds

affaires en 1992 à Roissy”; Maurice Cazaux, “Roissy: bientôt la première aéroville,” Le Parisien, 17.07.1989; “Roissypôle: première aéroville d’affaires et de services du Continent,” Le Figaro, 26.04 .1991.  51  Christophe de Chenay, “Une ville pousse entre les pistes de Roissy,” Le Monde, 13.09.1992.  52  Jean-Pierre Beysson, “La naissance d’une aéroville: L’aéroport Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle,” in Les aérovilles: nouveau concept d’intercommunication et de localisation d’entreprises, ed. CREPIF (CREPIF , 1989). 53  Original: “En créant de nouveaux emplois, en stimulant l’urbanisation autour de Roissy, on aide à briser l’éternelle dichotomie: les logements à l’ouest, les emplois à l’est.” Quoted in Monroe, Seyer, and Fillion, “Les visées d’Aéroports de Paris,” p. 40.  54  Honoré Bérard, “Roissypôle, un moteur pour la région,” ibid., 16.10.1992.  55  “Roissy, centre de souci,” Libération, 09.10.1989.  56 F. L., “Ile-deFrance: le pôle nord. Autour de Roissy, les prix des terrains flambent.,” Le Point, 18 .09.1989.  57 When the term “Eastern Val-d’Oise” was first used by the departmental council, it corresponded to 21 communities: a southern part, including Sarcelles, Garges-lès-Gonesse, Arnouville-lès-Gonesse, Villiers-le-Bel, Bonneuil; a central part, including Roissy-en-France, Gonesse, Vaudherland, Le Thillay, Goussainville, Louvres, Puiseux; and a northern part, including Fosses, Survilliers, St-Witz, Marly-la-Ville, Vémars, Villeron, Chennevièves-lès-Louvres, Epiaislès-Louvres. Direction Départementale de l’Equipement du Val d’Oise and ECODEV -Conseil, “Réflexion préalable pour une poltique d’aménagement de l’Est du Val d’Oise” (Conseil Général du Val d’Oise, 1988). See also Fig. 6.3. 58  The second scenario, corresponding to “strong” development, projected 1,400 ha of land to be developed in Eastern Val-d’Oise, of which 400 ha for economic activities; this would mean 60,000 new jobs and 44 ,000 new residents. Ibid., pp. 46 – 4 8 .  59 Original: “Le pôle de ­Roissy-en-France va connaitre un développement sans précédent. De ce développement dépend le rééquilibrage de l’Est du Val-d’Oise, jusque-là défavorisé. Or, dans l’état actuel des documents d’urbanisme, ce secteur est dans l’incapacité de répondre aux besoins des entreprises. Les mise en place des moyens indispensables pour permettre une évolution nécessaire ne pouvait être envisagée en dehors d’une concertation étroite avec les élus locaux … Les échéances administratives annoncées par l’État pour la révision du SDAURIF ont amené l’Association à exprimer le plus tôt possible les lignes directrices de ses réflexions.” In the words of Raymond Lamontagne, Vice President of the Departmental Council, in the publication’s foreword. AEREVO , “L’Est du Val d’Oise: Promouvoir un Nouvel Espace” (1989).  60  Didier Micoine, “Trente communes prennent l’aménagement en main,” Le Parisien, 29.10.1990. A Syndicat Intercommunal is a public establishment with its own management structure, constituted by a group of municipalities with the goal of cooperating on services of intermunicipal interest. In particular, a Syndicat Intercommunal d’Etudes et de Programmation (SIEP ), like the SIEVO , deals with the elaboration of a local schéma directeur (SD , SCoT after 2000), whereas a Syndicat Intercommunal à vocation multiple (SIVOM ) also has implementation authority. After 1992 and mostly 1999 these structures were partly replaced by

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

of built surface) and office (about one third). Aéroports de Paris, “Le Village-Fret” (1994).  38  Rental prices in the “villages” ranged between 430 – 650 F/m2, whereas for Roissytech they were close to 1,000 F/m2.  39  The first floor offered space appropriate for both offices and services while the second was devoted to classical office space. “Les ambitions immobilières d’Aéroports de Paris”; Aéroports de Paris, “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle. Roissytech” (1991).  40  “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle: Nœud des communications européennes,” Les Décideurs, 14.12.1987. 41  Muteaud, “200.000 m2 de bureaux au bord des pistes de Roissy.”  42  “Une cité internationale des affaires en 1992 à Roissy,” Le Quotidien de Paris, 20.01.1989.  43 According to Jean-Louis Sylvestre, Director of Bourdais International. Original: “Roissy apparaît comme la meilleure implantation d’Europe pour une entreprise multinatio­ nale, meilleure que La Défense.” Quoted in Le Ray and Ducher, “Le défi de la porte de l’Europe de 1993.”  44 In the presentation of the Roissypole project, Beysson referred to a study on the location criteria of multinational companies in which 80 % of the participants cited the access time to an international airport, the proximity to a business airport, and the access to the highway network and public transport network; and 60 – 8 0 % of the participants, criteria like advanced telecommunications, medical services, hotels and congress halls – all of which were aspects in which the Roissy site was considered well placed. Aéroports de Paris, “Dossier de presse Roissypôle,” news release, 30.09.1992 .  45 “Les ambitions immobilières d’Aéroports de Paris.” A new technology at the time, a “teleport” signified a ground center providing interconnections between different forms of telecommunications, mainly via satellite.  46 Original: “Nous ne recherchons ni le gigantisme, ni le tape-à-l’oeil mais plutôt la convivia­ lité et une qualité durable. Bien sûr nous … [offrirons] de larges vues sur le spectacle qu’offrent les pistes et les aérogares. Mais en même temps nous construisons des espaces équilibrés et intimes. D’où l’importance faite aux espaces extérieurs, patios, passages, jardins, qui seront autant de transitions. D’où aussi l’attention portée aux fonctions ‘urbaines’, en particulier aux circulations, et la priorité faite aux services et aux équipements.” “Aéroport Charles de Gaulle: Nœud des communications euro­ péennes.”  47  The masterminds of the VDF concept were Claude Giraud, CEO of GAN , and Pierre Bansard, president of Cible, a group specializing in distribution facilities and retail outlets. The banks CIC and Paribas, ADP , and other private investors participated in the capital of VDF , worth 2 .5 billion francs. “Vitrine de France. Charles de Gaulle Airport Trade Center,” news release, 31.05.1989.  48 Agnès Rotivel, “Roissy s’enrichira d’un ‘Rectangle’,” La Croix, 12.10.1990.  49  “Vitrine de France. Charles de Gaulle Airport Trade Center.” Related examples at the time were the “Mart” in Dallas and the World Trade Center in Taipei, from which the creators of VDF had drawn inspiration. Jean Nouvel was initially commissioned to design the building, which resembled a “match box on pilotis,” denoting its function as “storefront.” Claire Fargeot, “Vitrine de France prêt à décoller,” Le Moniteur, 11.10.1989.  50 “Un pôle tertiaire international à Roissy. L’avion, le TGV et le RER au pied des bureaux.”; “Une cité internationale des

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EPCI (see Chapter 3).  61  Le Ray and Ducher, “Les espoirs d’un aménagement local concerté.”  62  These communities, long home to industrial facilities, were associated with the “red belt” of Parisian suburbs and, with the exception of Tremblay, initially showed little interest in the economic impacts of the airport, wanting little to do with their politically discerning counterparts in Val-d’Oise. 63 Original: “Chacun s’accorde actuellement pour voir dans le secteur de l’aéroport de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle en Ile-de-France un des principaux pôles de développement de la région.” Philippe Le Ray, Daniel Ducher, and Danielle Rouquié, “Dossier Roissy: de l’aéroport à l’aéroville,” Urbanisme, mai/juin 1989.  64  Conseil Régional Ilede-France and IAURIF , “Ile-de-France 2000: vers un projet régional.”  65  References to this study by DREIF are taken from Le Ray and Ducher, “Les espoirs d’un aménagement local concerté,” where the study is extensively described.  66  Gérard Muteaud, “Roissy Export Center: la naissance du charter-shopping,” Les Echos, 15.04 .1988 . 67  AREC , “Projet d’aménagement de Roissy Export Center (AREC )” (1989).  68 Original: “entrée dans le 21e siècle,” “vitrine de la France,” “site de tourisme commercial.” Ibid., pp. 3 – 4 .  69  Yves Hervaux, “Le Grand Stade à Tremblay-en-France,” Le Quotidien de Paris, 10.01.1991. 70  Hugh Ardoin, “Projet Charlemagne. Aménagement en péripherie nord de l’aéroport Charles de Gaulle” (1990). 71  Circulaire du 19 janvier 1988 relative à l’urbanisme au voisinage des aérodromes; Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.”  72  Faburel and Barraqué, “Les impacts territoriaux du bruit des avions. Le cas de l’urbanisation à proximité de Roissy CDG . Ne pas évaluer pour pouvoir dire tout, et son contraire.”  73 Ibid. 74  AEREVO referred to the how airport growth had boosted Paris Nord 2 and PEX , even though the development of these zones was neither as recent as presented, nor necessarily an offshoot of the hub’s dynamic, but rather one of its components. Also, if demand for buildable land in Val-d’Oise was as high as the local mayors claimed, this was in contradiction with their simultaneous claim that the area lacked the qualitative conditions for attractiveness.  75 Original in French: “refusant d’intégrer la question des nuisances dans leur politique de développement alors qu’ils ne cessaient par ailleurs de dénoncer ces nuisances sous la pression des associations et de leurs électeurs.” Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport,” p. 50.  76  “Un nouveau plan d’exposition au bruit pour l’aéroport parisien. Les communes riveraines d’Orly veulent être entendues,” Le Monde, 01.11.1990.  77 The PGS is developed with the same simulation method for determining noise curves as the PEB ; however, its perimeter is different. The PEB is a long-term document, referring to a 15 -year horizon, synthesized according to projected development of air traffic, extension of infrastructures, and evolution of flying procedures. Its implementation is a matter of spatial policy and negotiation. Conversely, the PGS corresponds to the traffic of the coming year, and its implementation is immediate and concerns individuals.  78 Original: “une juxtaposition, sans cohérence, d’initiatives locales.” Conseil Régional Ile-de-France and IAURIF , “Ile-de-France 2000: vers un projet régional.”  79  Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “Développe-

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ment du pôle de Roissy. Mission exploratoire,” ed. Etienne Berthon (Région Ile-de-France, 1989). The study was ­supervised by urbanist Etienne Berthon, who would be IAURIF ’s main delegate for the CDG airport for the next 25 years.  80  Specifically, on population and employment; the history of urbanization; the history of urban planning; transport infrastructure and access; the natural environment and agriculture; the market for activity zones, offices, commercial centers, and housing; local taxation; and airport-related development projects elsewhere in Europe. 81 Original: “La dynamique du secteur de Roissy, porteuse d’avenir à l’échelle européenne, ne doit ni remettre en cause, de manière irréversible, la mise en valeur et la sauvegarde de certains sites naturels de qualité, ni se limiter à un périmètre trop restreint de quelques ­communes.” DREIF , “Secteur de Roissy. Propositions d’aménagement et de protection” (Direction Régionale de l’Equipement Ile de France, 1989), p. 3.  82  The landscape framework included: the small valley of Rhin / Croult west of the airport; the agricultural zone south of the airport up to Mitry-Mory; and practically the entire rural space north of the airport up to the communities of Saint-Witz and Survilliers. For DREIF , a realistic expectation was for the landscape raster not to stop urbanization but rather to be integrated into urban development projects. Ibid. 83  Philippe Le Ray and Daniel Ducher, “Une sixième ville nouvelle aux alentours d’une aéroville?” Décideurs d’Ilede-France, 24 .07.1990.  84 Isabelle de Gaulmyn, “La sixiè­me ville nouvelle sera localisée entre Roissy et Marnela-Vallée,” Les Echos, 24 .07.1990.  85 Micoine, “Trente communes prennent l’aménagement en main.”  86  In the “trend scenario,” the urban area would grow mostly through low-density encroachment on rural areas. Housing production and land consumption would be moderate, but development would be inefficient in terms of urban infrastructure. The “re-centered scenario” encapsulated the preservation of rural space and development through restructuring and densification of the inner suburbs. It would be the most difficult to implement as it corresponded to proactive planning policies. Finally, in the “oriented scenario,” peri-urban growth would be oriented towards a few isolated urban areas, with parallel densification efforts in already urbanized areas. See Fig. 6.21. Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région d’Ile-deFrance, “Trois scenarios pour le secteur de Roissy,” ed. ­Etienne Berthon (1990).  87 “Le secteur de Roissy. Hypothèses de développement et propositions d’orientations en matière d’aménagement” (1991).  88  “Le secteur de Roissy. Tendances de développement et simulation graphique du développement spatial correspondant aux hypothèses de programme proposèes par l’IAURIF ” (1991).  89 Original: “Le secteur est-il promis … à un déve­ loppement économique rapide et porteur d’une large diversification des activités? Il serait imprudent de l’affir­ mer.” Jean-Paul Lacaze, “La Plaine de France. Rapport d’étape sur l’aménagement du secteur stratégique de Roissy,” in Schéma directeur de la Région Ile de France (1991), p. 1.  90 Original: “jouer le rôle qu’elle est la seule à pouvoir jouer en France dans la concurrence internationale entre très grandes villes.” Ibid., p. 5.  91 Original: “Ce n’est que dans la mesure où ce préalable aura été

d’aménagement de l’Est du Val d’Oise. Avant-projet” (1991).  102  Ibid., p. 61.  103 Original: “L’Est du Val-d’Oise ne veut pas devenir le ‘parent pauvre’ de l’Ile de France. Or, [les propositions de l’avant-projet du schéma directeur de l’Ile de France] enterreraient tout espoir de développement économique … en mettant l’accent sur l’habitat au détriment de l’emploi.” “Colloque ‘Déve­ loppement de l’Est du Val-d’Oise’” (Roissy-en-France, 12 .12 .1991).  104 Aéroports de Paris, “Roissy les métamorphoses,” news release, 1991.  105  “L’envolée du fret aérien”; Aéroports de Paris, “Roissy-Charles de Gaulle premier centre d’échanges européen” (Aéroports de Paris – Direction de la Communication et des Relations Extérieures, 1995).  106  The opening of Orlyval in October 1991 was the result of long deliberations concluding with the decision to have the line operated by a private company, Matra. For its first two years of operation, Orly fared badly, with passenger numbers lagging well behind predictions and Matra registering deficits. After its appropriation by the RATP in 1993, numbers slowly rose. However, Orlyval’s use remained moderate, notably because of the high cost of its ticket. See also: Marc Lomazzi, Pascal Grassart, and Michel Chlastacz, “Orlyval. Histoire d’un échec,” La vie du rail, 14 .01.1993; Pascal Grassart, “Orlyval remonte la pente,” ibid., 13.07.1994 .  107  Website “Entre Voisins,” http://www.entrevoisins.org. Section L’Aéroport / Paris-CDG  / Historique  108  As encapsulated in various press articles of the time. See for example: Carine Didier and Jean-Frédéric Tronche, “A Roissy-Charles-deGaulle, c’est tout nouveau tout beau,” France-Soir, 05.01.1990.  109 Original: “Ce programme ne vise pas seulement une simple extension des infrastructures existantes. Il va au contraire modifier considérablement la configuration de la plateforme, apporter des services nouveaux et transformer les habitudes des voyageurs en leur offrant de nouvelles possibilités de transport et un confort accru.” Aéroports de Paris, “Roissy les métamorphoses.”  110  The mini-metro would consist of small cabins linked by a cable, running regularly at a speed of around 36 km/hour. Two lines were planned: the first, 3.5 km long, would link T1 with T2, passing by the parking facilities; the second, 850 m long, would connect the buildings of T2 to each other. In the following year, the system SK 6000 of the small company Soulé, that had implemented a similar model in the Exhibition Park of Villepinte, was chosen. A consortium was formed to carry out the project, consisting of Soulé, RATP , and the financial institution CLF .  111  Odile Fillion, “Les aérogares du futur à Roissy,” Le Moniteur, 07.06.1991.  112  Aéroports de Paris, “Roissy les métamorphoses.” 113 Monroe, Seyer, and ­Fillion, “Les visées d’Aéroports de Paris.”  114 Original: “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a de plus étonnant dans les derniers projets de Roissy? Leur dimension? Leur coût? Leur programme? Leur ambition? Ou bien, au delà des considérations objectives, l’extraordinaire continuité d’un projet élaboré, depuis plus de vingt-huit ans. … Totalement abstrait, le plan-masse des aérogares de Roissy tient du circuit imprimé, ou encore, en zoom rapproché sure les aérogares 2 et 3 , de la biologie moléculaire. Paul Andreu considère d’ailleurs l’aéroport comme une gigantesque machine … d’une complexité infinie.” Fillion, “Les aéro­

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

pleinement satisfait que l’on pourra aborder utilement la question de niveau du développement du secteur stratégique proprement dit.” Ibid.  92  Philippe Le Ray, “Stopper l’urbanisation autour de Roissy: elle va asphyxier l’aéroport de l’Europe…,”Décideurs d’Ile de France, 27.03.1991.  93  Fouad Awada, “Note à l’attention du Prési­ dent Pierre-Charles Krieg et du Président Charles Ceccaldi-Raynaud. Objet: Roissy,” ed. Conseil Régional Ile-deFrance (1991).  94 Original: “L’association du Grand Roissy résulte de la volonté commune des élus locaux du secteur de Roissy d’agir en dehors des clivages politiques, pour obtenir un aménagement d’ensemble du futur pôle européen … [Elle] a pour but d’établir la synthèse des divers projets en cours d’élaboration dans le but de soumettre un document unique au Préfet de Région, chargé de superviser la révision du SDAURIF … Notre travail … est destiné à faciliter la tâche de l’État qui a lui-même décidé de l’avenir européen de Roissy, sans en avoir clairement défini les modalités d’aménagement.” “Naissance du Grand Roissy,” news release, 1991.  95 The Oise valley to the north, the Plaine de France to the west, the zone of Dammartin-en-Goële to the north-east, the zone between Goussainville, Oissy and Bonneuil-enFrance to the south-west, the zone extending from ­Mitry-Mory to Marne-la-Vallée in the south-east, and the zone along the A1 highway to the south. Club de Roissy, “Roissy Aéropôle. Propositions de développement” (1991). 96  Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “Avant-projet du schéma directeur de la Région Ile de France,” ed. Direction Régionale de l’Equipement (1991).  97  Orginal in French: “[C’est] indispensable d’éviter une urbanisation excessive autour de l’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle afin de garantir son accessibilité et de préserver la qualité de vie des habitants de cette zone … Je ne souhaite pas qu’on recommence les erreurs qui ont été faites autour e l’aéroport d’Orly et dont nous devons gérer aujourd’hui les désastreuses conséquences sociales.” Quoted in “Urbanisation de Roissy: les critiques de Chérèque,” Le Quotidien de Paris, 05.03.1991.  98  Jean-Claude Boucherat, “Contribution à la réflexion engagée sur l’esquisse de schéma directeur d’Ile-de-France” (Conseil économique et social régional Ile-de-France, 1991).  99  Orginal in French: “La question du nombre de logements sociaux pose pro­ blème. Beaucoup de maires sont ruraux et cela va à l’encontre de leur façon de vivre et du mode de vie de leur population.” Quoted in Didier Micoine, “Le projet des élus: 1,400 ha d’activités,” Le Parisien Val d’Oise, 21.03.1991. 100  Orginal in French: “On nous explique quelquefois que le développement du secteur de Roissy n’est pas envisageable sans une amélioration des dessertes routières du secteur. Hors, Aéroport de Paris, établissement public, maintient ses projets d’extension de l’aéroport, poursuit la création de Zones d’Activités dans son périmètre, sans trop se soucier des conséquences sur les réseaux de transports qui sont déjà saturés.” “Naissance du Grand Roissy.”  101  All in all, 30,500 – 3 4 ,500 housing units were proposed for 68 ,000 – 76,000 new inhabitants, and the areas reserved for activity ranged between 1,450 and 1,750 hectares. This corresponded to 126,000 jobs (outside the platform) instead of the current 58 ,300 jobs. SIEVO , “Proposition d’esquisse de schéma directeur

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gares du futur à Roissy.” 115 Original: “Une certaine tradi­tion veut qu’ ADP soit maître chez lui, derrière ses grillages, mais est-ce normal que nous découvrions leurs intentions au détour d’une exposition?” Quoted in de Chenay, “Une ville pousse entre les pistes de Roissy.” 116  Aéroports de Paris, “Avant-Projet de plan de masse se l’aérodrome de Paris – Charles de Gaulle” (Paris: ADP  / Direction de l’Architecture et de l’Ingénierie, 1992). 117  Halpern, “Les ressorts politiques de la décision publique en matière de planification aéroportuaire: les mobilisations autour de l’aéroport Paris-Charles de Gaulle.” 118  CDG became the region’s first airport in terms of freight long before it did for passengers. Aéroports de Paris, “Roissy les métamorphoses.”  119  Conversely, the discourse regarding Orly was about awareness of its limits. When Orly’s Hall 1 and CDG ’s 2C opened simultaneously in June 1993, the difference was obvious. Although Hall 1 did not fall short in terms of technical facilities, comfort or capacity, and despite being designed by the same Paul Andreu, it had none of the spectacle or sophistication that characterized 2C. Not surprisingly, 2C cost 900 MF francs against 600 MF for Hall 1. Odile Fillion, “Deux terminaux,” Le Moniteur, 18 .06.1993.  120  Aéroports de Paris, “Dossier de presse Roissypôle.”  121 “Roissypôle. Futur centre d’affaires de l’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle,” Le Figaro, 23.06.1992. The company’s President Paul Raingold was at the forefront of supporting the “airport city” idea. Thierry Mouthiez, “‘Continental Square’: Le pari d’un promoteur sur Roissypole,” L’Immobilier d’Entreprise, 10.1992.  122  Aéroports de Paris, “Dossier de presse Roissypôle.”  123  The initial rental price in both the Continental Square and the Dome was 1,450 F / m2, noticeably higher than in other real estate projects on airport terrain, though still much lower than in established business areas like central Paris or La Défense, where rents easily reached 3,000 F / m2 or more.  124  “La cité du ciel. Le Dôme,” ed. CpL (1993). The architects responsible were Arte and Charpentier.  125  Yves Hervaux, “Air France se ‘délocalise’ de Montparnasse à Roissy,” Le Quotidien, 21.04 .1992 .  126 Original: “répondre aux besoins d’urbanisation et d’animation de la cité d’affaires internationale de l’aéroport qui devrait accueillir à terme environ 12000 personnes.” “L’Aéronef. Galerie Commerciale,” ed. ADP (1993).  127  “Roissypole Pass. 7 clés d’accès à un pôle d’excellence,” ed. Aéroports de Paris (1992). 128 Original: “nouveau concept de cité d’affaires en prise directe avec le monde.” Aéroports de Paris, “Dossier de presse Roissypôle.”  129 Yves Hervaux, “Roissypôle: ça décolle,” Le Quotidien, 21.04 .1992.  130 Original: “Nous ne construisons pas là pour le plaisir. Nous répondons à une véritable nécessité économique. Nous fournissons des bureaux mais aussi des services, des hôtels et l’accès a la future gare d’interconnexion T.G.V.-R.E.R. à des entreprises qui sont demandeuses.” ADP representative, quoted in Didier Micoine and Philippe Larue, “Roissypole: une ville en bord de pistes,” Le Parisien, 07.10.1992 . 131 Original: “Roissypole est une opération importante par sa spécificité et son niveau qualitatif mais cette opération constituera moins de 10  % du développement du secteur. Roissypole n’est donc pas un concurrent pour les communes voisines. Il doit être au contraire un appui,

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voire un moteur, des projets environnants.” Aéroports de Paris, “Dossier de presse Roissypôle.”  132  Julie Richard, “Grandes manœuvres au pôle nord,” Développeurs, juin/ juillet 1991.  133 Original: “Petit à petit émerge une nouvelle conception de [Paris Nord II] – encore implicite dans le discours de l’aménageur – comme lieu d’articulation de multiples territoires à des échelles spatiales différentes: la banlieue Nord, la région parisienne, le Nord de la France et le Nord Ouest de l’Europe, le reste du monde… Le développement de cette vocation se lit dans l’évolution qualitative des implantations.” Scherrer, “L’Agence foncière et technique de la région parisienne. De la planification à l’urbanisme opérationnel,” p. 80. 134 Original: “‘Aujourd’hui, nous sommes devenus très sélectifs quant au choix des entreprises. … La demande est très forte, de la part de sociétés étrangères ou nationales, pour lesquelles la proximité de l’aéroport de Roissy est capitale.” Quoted in Richard, “Grandes manœuvres au pôle nord.”  135 Moutarde, “L’Etat ne veut pas renouveler l’expérience d’Orly à Roissy.” 136 Original: ­ “Nous travaillons sur un certain nombre d’entreprises, situés sur un rayon de 10 à 15 kilomètres autour de l’aéroport,… pour satisfaire les demandes des entrepri­ ses qui souhaitent s’implanter à proximité de CDG.” Quoted in ibid.  137 The ZAD (Zone d’Aménagement Differé) was among the made-to-measures instruments introduced during the De Gaulle Presidency to designate areas for development by the public hand. It was however ­rarely used, as the most common means of carrying out development operations remained the ZAC (Zones d’Aménagement Concerté). Its use in this case indicated the strong will of the State to control the development of the zone.  138 In 1991, the new town of Melun-Sénart was chosen instead, only to be replaced in 1992 by Saint-Denis, where the Stade de France was eventually inaugurated in 1998 . Legitimate concerns about accessibility due to the overloading of the road network prevented the choice of Tremblay, although political sympathies seem to have also played a role. Guillaume Rebière, “Grand Stade: les dessous d’un choix,” Le Journal du dimanche, 10.02.1991.  139  Richard, “Grandes manœuvres au pôle nord.”  140  Jean Aubert, “Tremblay-en-France. La moitié de la commune reste à aménager,” La Croix, 05.12.1991. As can be discerned in Fig. 6.3, the curiously shaped Tremblay-en-France comprises two inhabited areas. The Vieux Pays to the north is the initial medieval core, closer to the airport and hardly growing, whereas to the south lies the modern town, largely made up of pavillonnaire and collective housing built from the 1950 s to the 1970 s. The agreements covered preliminary planning of the 700 -ha area framed by CDG in the north, Paris Nord II in the west, the extension of the Francilienne in the east and the ­urban fabric of Tremblay, Villepinte and Mitry-Mory in the south; development studies for the 330 -ha area directly east of Paris Nord 2; and exclusive communal responsibility for the 100 -ha area between the Vieux Pays and the modern town.  141  Gilles Davoine, “Concours Euro Val d’Oise. Inventer l’urbanisme du prochain siècle,” Moniteur Architecture – AMC, 09.1992 .  142 The public partners were the CCI of Yvelines & Val-d’Oise, SEMAVO (Société société d’économie mixte départementale pour l’amé­

CHAPTER 6  Development in times of ­liberalization (1986 – 1994)

nagement du Val-d’Oise), SEM Roissy, AFTRP , and the would ensue through construction on greenfield sites; a DDE (Direction Départementale de l’Environnement) of part of it would take through “de-densification” or Val-d’Oise. The private partners were AXA , GRC , and “­restructuring” (densification) of existing settlements. CFI .  143  AFTRP , Démarches Urbaines (Presses de l’Ecole 157  Newman and Thornley, Urban Planning in Europe. Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, 1994).  144 Repre- 158 Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “Ile de sented by Oriol Bohigas (Spain); Michel Macary (France); France. Schéma Directeur 2015.”  159 Catherine Blain, Richard Rogers (UK ); Hennin-Normier-Lamy-RTKL (France, “Paris-Banlieue: À la recherche de l’urbanité,” in ArchitecUS ); S’pace (France/Japan); Hans Kollhoff (Germany). tures 80: Une Chronique Métropolitaine, ed. Lionel En145 Original: “d’une part, imaginer l’identité d’un des grand and Soline Nivet (Paris: Editions A & J Picard, 2011). grands secteurs d’activités internationales de la Région 160 Original: “[l]a recherche d’un parti d’aménagement Parisienne aux abords de l’aéroport de Roissy Charles de fort et l’exigence du respect des compétences des comGaulle et de l’aéroport d’affaires du Bourget, et d’autre munes et des établissements publics de coopération inpart, organiser et structurer un développement urbain tercommunale dans !e domaine de l’urbanisme.” Préfecinnovant et équilibré entre l’habitat, l’emploi et l’environ- ture de la Région d’Ile-de-France, “Ile de France. Schéma nement, dans un secteur de la région parisienne qui Directeur 2015,” p. 44 .  161 Original: “L’aéroport de Roiscompte aujourd’hui un gros déficit d’emplois et une im- sy … est posé au cœur d’une toile d’araignée de TGV reage urbaine très ‘chaotique’.” Euro Val d’Oise, “Concours liés à Londres, Bruxelles, Amsterdam et Cologne; il est le International d’idées: ‘Pour une nouvelle urbanité in- seul grand aéroport européen à disposer d’autant d’estégrant des activités à vocation internationale’. Cahier des pace pour se développer. Il constitue un atout suppléCharges” (1992).  146 Original: “future urbanité interna- mentaire pour l’essor en Ile-de-France des activités et tionale à l’entrée nord de la capitale”; “L’augmentation services à haute valeur ajoutée suscité par l’accroissedes déplacements internationaux et aériens, induits par ment des échanges européens.” Ibid., p. 18.  162 Original: la normalisation de l’économie aurait pour conséquence “Sa situation privilégiée doit être exploitée pour accueillir de faire des aéroports et de leurs alentours des sites par priorité les activités exigeantes sur la performance privilégiés d’implantations d’activités internationales.” des dessertes, notamment celles qui sont liées aux relaIbid.  147 Davoine, “Concours Euro Val d’Oise. Inventer tions européennes et internationales dans les domaines l’urbanisme du prochain siècle.”  148  AFTRP , “Tremblay de la haute technologie ou des services d’aide à la déen France. Le secteur Sud du pôle de Roissy. Synthèse des cision” ibid., p. 165 .  163 Original: “ce développement études 1990 – 1994” (1994).  149  It is also interesting to économique ne doit pas encombrer l’accessibilité à la note that another urban design consultation was launched plate-forme aéroportuaire internationale dont la capa­ in parallel by the operating company of the Villepinte cité ira en augmentant fortement dans le futur. La créa­Exhibition Center (PEX , subsidiary of the CCIP ) for its tion d’emplois sur la plate-forme devra rester raisonna­extension. This consultation used the sector plan and ble. D’une façon générale, l’urbanisation autour de specifications produced by AFTRP and Tremblay as basis. l’aéroport de Roissy sera limitée.” Ibid.  164 Original: “des 150  Represented by Massimiliano Fuksas (Italy); Cheme- urbanisations nouvelles bien localisées dans les sites intov + Huidobro (France); Jean-Paul Viguier (France); and téressants de la Plaine de France”; “respectant la qualité Ian Ritchie (UK ).  151  Ville de Tramblay en France and de ses sites, la richesse agricole de la Plaine de France ­A FTRP , “Tremblay en France. Appel d’idées international et les sujétions du bon fonctionnement aéroportuaire.” d’urbanisme et d’environnement” (1992).  152  AFTRP , Ibid., p. 166.  165 Original: “la faible urbanisation autour “Tremblay en France. Le secteur Sud du pôle de Roissy. de Roissy permet d’accueillir le trafic jour et nuit. II est Synthèse des études 1990 – 1994 .”  153 Original: “une indispensable de préserver cette facilité sur cet aéroport, ­incertitude folle pèse sur l’avenir de Roissy.” “Le Su- le plus grand d’Europe. Le PEB de Roissy devra en per-Roissy: trop d’ambitions?” Le Point, 16 .05 .1992 . conséquence être revu sur la base du trafic escompté à 154 Original: “Roissy est un atout capital pour la région l’échéance de la saturation.” Ibid., p. 121.  166  AFTRP , parisienne, à condition de ne pas le saturer avec l’urba­ IAURIF , and Mission Roissy, “Une trame verte pour une nisation et de ne pas recommencer la bêtise que nous identité paysagère de Roissy” (1993).  167  Faburel and avons fait à Orly. Nous ne sommes pas hostiles à des bu- Barraqué, “Les impacts territoriaux du bruit des avions. Le reaux construits au pied des pistes mais nous voulons cas de l’urbanisation à proximité de Roissy CDG . Ne pas qu’ils soient reservés aux entreprises directement liées évaluer pour pouvoir dire tout, et son contraire.”  168 The à l’activité aéroportuaire … Notre position est claire: nous SDRIF ’s transport project was ambitious in general. It inne souhaitons pas développer d’activités de bureaux ni cluded the realization and expansion not only of additionsur le site de l’aéroport ni autour de ce site. Roissy doit al radial connections (RER E, Metro line 14), but also of rester au milieu d’un champ de betteraves.” Quoted in heavy-duty tangential rail links announced in the previous Moutarde, “L’Etat ne veut pas renouveler l’expérience schémas directeurs but never implemented, as well as a d’Orly à Roissy.”  155  Mission Roissy, “Projet de dévelop- complementary exclusive right-of-way public transport pement de la zone d’influence de Roissy” (1992).  156 The network (tramways or buses). plan specified that not all growth in terms of population

217

Fig. 6.45  Logistics and warehousing along the A1 highway south of the airport.

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004) What future for the airport-area projects? The airport city struggles An intractable expansion Promoting growth, managing impact: a compromise Competitiveness by design An undecided territory The renewal of the discourse Denial and acceptance: third airport and CDG Express In search of spatial governance A roadmap for planning?

 I

n the second part of the 1990s, Charles de Gaulle has become the largest and busiest airport of the Paris region, and seems predestined to continue growing. The same

cannot be said for the various urban development projects in and around the airport that struggle to find willing clientele. The urban and socioeconomic conditions of the CDG region are deteriorating, with many localities seemingly unable to harness economic benefits from airport operation, and aircraft noise affecting an ever-larger perimeter. As the airport authority plans a new wave of expansion projects at CDG in response to continuing air transport liberalization and European-level competition, it meets the fierce reactions of local authorities and ad hoc institutions. A period of large public d ­ ebates regarding the future of the Paris airports ensues between 1994 and 2002.

The debates expose the dilemmas of airport development, and show the dominance of the economic imperative in public discourse. At the same time, in an emerging context of participatory planning processes and with the notion of sustainable development on the rise, they also reframe the integration of airports in their environments and generate new accountability requirements for the airport authority. As the CDG airport is equipped with two new runways and ADP looks for ways to boost its attractiveness, there is a growing recognition of the need to counterbalance the positive regional and negative local effects of airport operation. In the first part of the 2000s, new efforts to improve the territorial embeddedness of the CDG airport ensue. Despite a growing recognition of the specificity of the airport region, there is persistent ambivalence and difficulty in finding appropriate governance structures and scales of planning action.

What future for the airport-area projects? The publication of the 1994 SDRIF concluded a six-year period of debate and anticipation on the future of the CDG airport area. The plan confirmed the new role of the area as one of the “strategic centers” and “development hubs” of Ile-de-France, but left questions about the implications of these designations lingering. The work of translating them into planning and development actions was just starting. But in 1994, market conditions had changed markedly in relation to 1988. Since 1992, the Paris region had entered a real estate recession due to the oversupply of office space, and in this situation the market for the most ambitious of the airport area projects was in any case limited. Also, the expectation that CDG would be a magnet for advanced services and technology-intensive international activities had started to dampen. Already before the dissemination of the SDRIF, Mission Roissy had commissioned a large-scale study on the market potential of its so-called “international activity zone.” The study concluded that “while the objective of a development center in Roissy may seem relevant, the modes and characteristics envisaged (in particular the concept of “airport city” and of a major tertiary center) seem unrealistic.”1 This conclusion was based on several elements. A survey of companies already ­located in Roissy showed that most were (still) involved in distribution rather than advanced services, and that the airport was not a major factor of attraction for them. I­nterviews with executives of international companies further showed that Roissy was seen as having an unclear and inconsistent identity, and that while reliable access to an international airport was important, proximity was not. More generally, ­changes 222

to the structure of businesses towards greater mobility and flexibility had reduced ­demand for classic concentrations of office space. Finally, the review of “airport city” developments in Europe and the USA revealed that their success was either limited or

nificant investments would have to be mobilized, already in the short term and much more in the long term, to expand the road and rail network.2 Such studies, though not negating the idea of urban and economic development in the territory surrounding CDG , exposed its severe limitations. Certainly, a development strategy for the airport area was necessary. But this strategy should primarily aim to protect the airport from suffocation, as well as promote coherence in an area marked by lack of urbanistic identity, sprawl, congestion, infrastructural breaks, and noise-related constraints. Only upon ensuring these aspects could a selective and qualitative installation of economic activities ensue, in “a cluster that attracts companies that actually need Roissy, but that excludes those that Roissy does not need.”3 Of course, this idea was politically unpopular, as it diminished or deferred to a distant future the economic development that local actors were hoping for. Thus, the CDG area was not explicitly presented in this light, yet these recognitions found their way into the SDRIF through the suggestion of “selectivity” in the localization of tenants in the strategic sector and the relegation to the future of major developments. With regard to the large-scale visions outside the airport terrain, this was not good news. Especially the Triangle de Gonesse (TdG) project was surrounded by major uncertainty. Certainly, the collaborative organization of the Euro Val-d’Oise consultation and wide dissemination of the proposals had helped initiate a public debate on the ­f uture of the Triangle de Gonesse in particular and the “Roissy hub” generally. Indeed, they had prompted a novel and useful exploration of urbanistic approaches to territories of the metropolitan periphery dominated by large-scale transport infrastructure.4 Based on the consultation, planning orientations ensued. The immense site was divided in three parts: the northern, closer to the airport, where some small activity zones and recreation facilities (golf) could be integrated in a landscape composition; the southernmost part closer to Le Bourget, adjoining heavy industrial facilities where a more “urban” situation would be sought after; and the central part, which would host facilities of large size in a low-density green setting. This part constituted the biggest challenge, as its realization was largely contingent on the improvement of the implementation of rail access. Overall, out of the 1,100 ha of the TdG, about 300 ha would eventually be urbanized, but there was no urgency whatsoever. Given an optimistic commercialization of 50,000 m 2 per year for the “Roissy hub,” which would be channeled by priority to Paris Nord 2 and South CDG , state planners concluded that “the

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

dependent on conditions missing from Roissy, such as greater proximity to the main city center. Based on these elements, the prospect for the airport area was that, if left to follow market trends, it would continue to spontaneously attract economic activities related to logistics and distribution. But the concentration of such activities could ultimately compromise the very airport operation – through congestion and degradation of the environment – rather than induce a mutual beneficial synergy with it. Another study, this one regarding needs in transport infrastructure, showed that previous analyses had grossly underestimated the prospective gap between supply and demand in the CDG area, especially if urban development projects acquired the envisaged dimensions. Even in a limited growth / limited urbanization scenario, sig-

223

commercialization of the central part of Triangle de Gonesse would only become necessary after 2010.5 The South CDG zone in Tremblayen-France had more follow-up, thanks in part to the direct involvement of AFTRP and the interest of the CCIP for an expansion of the PEX . After the 1992 – 1993 consultation, an “Ur-

ban Development Contract” (Contrat de Déve­ loppement Urbain, CDU ) was signed among the State, the Region, ADP, CCIP, the Val-d’Oise Department and the communities of Tremblay, Villepinte, and Mitry-Mory (as the project af-

Fig. 7.1  Development perimeters south of the CDG ­ irport according to Mission Roissy in 1995. a

fected all three communities). In early 1995, Mission Roissy produced a document intended to clarify the challenges of the Roissy area and the development options endorsed by the SDRIF as a framework for the preparation of detailed local plans. There, it described Roissy as a “limited but essential project” (“un projet limité mais indispensable”). The targets of 2015 for population and job growth were reduced to 92,000 – 97,000 inhabitants and 82,000 – 85,000 jobs – compared to 126,000 and 104,000 respectively in the 1992 plan.6 The Mission Roissy also set priorities for infrastructure and urban development: first the road network around the airport, then the extension of the RER and the housing projects north of the airport; the South CDG zone would start with the extension of the PEX . Communities could pursue the developments that fell under their direct purview, whereas the State would focus its efforts in the provision of infrastructure. It was also attempted to compartmentalize and highlight areas of collaborative and / or contractual work among planning actors. In a “framework document” (“document cadre”) produced shortly afterwards with the involvement of ADP, the South CDG zone was determined as the first part to develop from the “international activity zone,” on the grounds of its better accessibility by RER B and adjacency to the Paris Nord II business park and the Villepinte Exhibition Center.7 The document defined development principles for an overall area of 1,000 hectares, dividing it into intervention perimeters (Fig. 7.1). At the outset, it pointed out that the success of the development was not granted, but depended on five fundamental conditions, namely: (1) the quality of the developments and the enhancement of the site, so as to give it a strong and coherent image, participating in the requalification of the north-­ eastern suburbs of Paris, in particular through the implementation of the regional green belt …; (2) the preservation of the airport’s extension possibilities by ensuring good accessibility and operating conditions; (3) the need to establish a certain selectivity of companies (directional centers, business functions and training) in order to maintain the European ambition …; (4) the taking into account of the housing needs of the cluster’s active workers by developing a diversified high-quality housing outside nuisance zones, connected by public transport to the cluster of jobs; (5) a partnership approach and a coordinated intervention of all stakeholders in the development.8 224

Clearly, these elements were not present yet. Hence, the planning work was expected to be substantial and long-lasting. In terms of program, a building surface of 1,415,000 m 2 was projected for the horizon of 2015, of which the largest parts were economic activities and offices (545,000 m 2) and the extension of the exhibition center (450,000 m 2); these would be developed in the main zone of 240 ha, in the municipality of Tremblay with a small part in Villepinte. In addition, there were projections for community and training facilities, shops, services and hotels (125,000 m 2), housing for students and young workers (295,000 m 2), as well as a revitalization plan for the Vieux Village of Tremblay.9 Overall, developments were expected to lead to 9,000 new jobs and 8,200 additional inhabitants by 2015. Things started small, with the initial focus lying on infrastructural and landscape studies, especially the design of a “green raster,” and in particular the “ring park” of the Fuksas proposal, in synergy with the “green belt” project promoted by the Ile-­deFrance Region.10 ADP participated in this effort. In 1994, it commissioned a large-scale

Fig. 7.2  Landscape masterplan for the CDG airport and immediate surroundings from 1995.

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

landscape study intended to “rediscover a new unity inside the site [and] connect the airport to its surroundings.”11 The landscape architects,12 under the supervision of ­A ndreu, were called to give prominence to the impressive gigantism of the site all while trying to make its edges more welcoming and connect to the “green raster.” Their proposals included extensive reforestation to the south of the platform and the implementation of tree-lined alleys (Fig. 7.2). This study was very partially implemented, especially outside the airport terrain, but overall the “green and landscape raster” (“trame verte et paysagère”) was among the few planning projects that seemed to get some traction in the mid-1990s (Fig. 7.3). The project had the strong support of the Ilede-France Region, who eventually proceeded to define a perimeter of acquisition for the implementation of parts of the “raster.”13 Few parks or landscape compositions were actually implemented, but the acquisition of the land ensured that these areas

225

Fig. 7.3  The “green raster” of the area south of the CDG airport.

would at least remain free of urbanization, in particular the sensitive landscape of the Vallée du Croult (Croult Valley) west of the airport. In the uncertain market environment, and with the discourse of airport proximity and international vocation fading, local actors were forced to hold back their ambitions and make do with what they could get. The Association du Grand Roissy was dissolved. The SIEP Marne Nord had a local schéma directeur (SD ) approved in 1996, with modest development plans. The SD of the SIEP Dammartin was only approved in 2000 but without becoming enforceable. SIEVO made another attempt at a SD in 1995, adopting more realistic targets for development to conform to the SDRIF. This one was also criticized by IAURIF and the state planning authorities for encouraging too much land consumption and jeopardizing the natural landscape.14 In late 1996, Mission Roissy together with the municipality of Gonesse launched a new study to define a plan for TdG, building on the results of the Euro Val-d’Oise consultation and in accordance with the ideas of the SDRIF.15 The resulting plan, produced by the office of architect and urbanist François Grether, encapsulated an attempt to treat the site not as an empty land to be filled, but as a territory anchored in a few, but specific space-defining features – agricultural cul­ ather than attivations, interface with urbanized areas, large roads, visual vastness. R tempting to provide an urban identity deemed unrealistic, the plan integrated agriculture with landscape and a loose grid of plots of various sizes that could be progressively filled with economic activities (Fig. 7.4).16 These new ideas were reflected in another revision of the SD SIEVO , which was eventually approved in 1997, but only provisionally. Hopes for the realization of a project in the TdG seemed distant. But in 1997, the South CDG zone also took a hit, as the CCIP postponed its large plan for the extension of the PEX into the zone. A development protocol a minima was signed in 1998, but with an uncertain implementation horizon.17 With the biggest player having renounced its project, at least for the foreseeable future, things moved only slowly henceforth. From the big projects of the area, only Paris Nord II continued to grow and attract new companies. 226

Fig. 7.4  Reference plan (left) and site planning principles (right) for Triangle de Gonesse, as suggested by the Grether / Le Doeuff study in 1996.

Predictably, the projects of ADP for the CDG airport were also affected by the uncertain economic climate and real estate crisis of the period 1991 – 1996. The authority’s assertive building strategy paid off well for its earlier, more closely aviation-related “products,” such as the “cargo villages,” which became popular with tenants ­attracted to the facilities on offer and the proximity to the runways: wholesalers and distributors of high-value goods like flowers and electronics, and those providing services to them.18 The air-route distribution center Sogaris was also a success. There was an “economy of agglomeration” effect, thanks to the spatial adjacency of air- and land transporters, freight forwarders and other logistics service providers, and public authorities like customs and border control. The business parks, Roissytech and Orlytech, also became popular with various types of companies, reaching high occupancy rates before the real estate recession ensued.19 This success was an indication that the new commercial strategy was working, and that the interest of businesses in on-airportsite localization was there.20 However, the certainty of success proved flawed where ADP and its partners had put their highest stakes, namely in the Roissypole project (Fig. 7.5). Table 7.1 summarizes the projects of Roissypole and their eventual status of realization. Probably the biggest hit to Roissypole was the abandonment of the ambitious project of Vitrine de France: after numerous efforts to push the project forward, the difficulty of ­evaluating the ultimate success of the concept, along with the financial troubles of its investors, led to postponing its realization indefinitely, and eventually altogether abandoning it.21 As for office buildings, the airport authority, becoming aware of the changing

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

The airport city struggles

227

c­ limate, engaged no new projects after the Continental Square and the Dome. Besides, with these two, commercialization was much slower than expected. The Continental Square had rented less than 45 % of its surfaces six months after its opening, and those mostly to the “obvious,” directly aviation-related users: Air France and its affiliates Servair (catering) and Seresco (ground handling).22 The Dome was also slow to pick up, and attracted smaller companies than the ones envisioned – mostly regional ­P ME-PMI  23 interested in few square meters of space. Its first, and for long time only, occupant was the Dutch group Regus, who specialized in sub-letting spaces to companies looking for short- to medium-term accommodation.24 With few people working in Roissypole and even fewer willing to leave their climatized, sound-proofed offices, visitor figures to the Aéronef were also poor and ADP had to revisit the shopping mall idea and transform the spaces meant for shops into other uses.25 This was indicative of the over-optimism of the entire “airport city” idea. Several deficits of the urban design strategy became apparent: the incrementality of building resulted in a limited overall coherence, with only a small part of the central zone around the train station having a sufficient density to give it a “city” feel and function. The projection of outdoor urban life had likewise underestimated the disrupting impact of aircraft noise, and the exterior spaces of Roissypole lay largely empty of people. The notable exception to the mediocre success of airport city developments were hotels. These flourished in CDG as well as its close surroundings. From the 1,355 rooms in 4-star hotels developed in Ile-de-France between 1990 and 1995, 1,008 were in the “Roissy hub,” including the airport site, the village of Roissy, and the airport’s ­access road, where the Hyatt hotel opened in 1992.26 Within the airport, the Japanese-­ inspired beehive hotel Cocoon opened inside T1 in 1991 and the luxury Sheraton hotel

Fig. 7.5  Roissypole under construction in 1993, with Terminal 2 in the background.

228

NAME

SURFACE

ARCHITECT

INVESTOR

DEVELOPER

REALIZED

Buildings of the Unité Centrale before 1989 RER station (1974), Hotel Arcade (1980), Cité Air France (1984), Hotel Novotel (1989)

Roissypole projects Rectangle (VDF )

75,800 m2

Jean Nouvel / J .J. Ory (after 1991)

Cible / G AN

Dumez

–

Continental Square

25,000 m2 (first part) /  64 ,000 (evtl.)

Seifert International

GCI

GA

1992 (first part) /  2004 (second part)

The Dome

40,000 m2

ARTE  / Charpentier

ADP  & NNI

Kaufman & Broad

1993

Aéronef

6,000 m2

Claude Parent

ADP

ADP

1993

Air France Headquarters

62,100 m2

Valode / Pistre

Air France

1996

Hilton Roissy

377 rooms

Seifert International

Hilton

1994

TOTAL

~250,000 m2 (~140,000 m2 realized by 1996)

Table 7.1  The program of Roissypole as per the 1992 masterplan and the realization of its different components

Its inauguration marked twenty-nine years since the erection of a Hilton in Orly in 1965. That first Hilton located in an airport had been an outlier in the brand’s location strategy; but this had changed in the late 1980s, when the chain developed hotels in Amsterdam-­Schiphol, Zurich-Kloten, London Heathrow, and Manchester airports, foreseeing a profitable opportunity.27 Hilton Roissy built on this experience. Aiming at a business clientele, along with 377 rooms it offered an exclusive “business center” and various conference spaces. By the time of its opening, the CDG airport featured six hotels, ­together offering more than 1,800 rooms.28 In 1996 – 1997, as the region exited the real estate crisis, Roissypole finally started to pick up. The opening of the Air France Headquarters in 1996 gave a positive boost to its image. The southern façade of the building complex was dominant: a robust, linear structure overlooking the runways, declaring the airline’s dominant presence (Fig. 7.7).29 By the end of 1997, the Continental Square had finally reached 80 % occupancy rate, while the Dome was only still half-full (18,000 m 2 occupied by 14 companies).30 At any rate, the hotels and half-full office buildings could not give Roissypole the critical mass that would make it a vibrant “airport

Fig. 7.6  View of the Hilton hotel in the 2000 s.

city.” Besides, as the masterplan changed to accommodate the changing interested parties, the integrity and intentions of the ­original

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

was built as part of the “module of exchanges” in 1994. In Roissypole, in addition to Novotel and Arcade (changed to Ibis in 1994), a Hilton hotel was added in 1994 (Fig. 7.6).

229

Fig. 7.7  Views of the south (left) and internal west (right) façades of the Air France headquarters complex, shortly after its opening.

urban design were compromised.31 Also, ongoing developments indicated that the airport city was not due to attract the big international companies initially envisioned. Besides the unfortunate timing with regard to the real estate recession, it seemed that the appeal of the site’s “unique” assets was less strong than expected. Partly, these assets had been overstated, this being the case for ground accessibility in particular. Notwithstanding the appeal of the air-rail synergy, the road network displayed chronic problems: the A1 and A3 highways suffered from constant congestion, and the steps done to address the problem (i.e., additional lanes) were hardly sufficient given the development of the site.32 The situation seemed to confirm the worst fears of the planners of the 1970s, for whom one of the main reasons for discouraging airport area development had been to avoid overloading the transport network (see Chapter 4). Perhaps more importantly for its broader implications, the locational rationales of the users initially targeted eluded planning expectations, notably as these rationales shifted in the context of a globalizing economy. Multinational firms, especially those in advanced services,33 seemed to value direct access to a major airport less than the clustering found in established business centers of the Paris region like La Défense. Thus, the development of both Roissy airport and its surrounding area remained ­u ltimately much more linked to economic activities like logistics and transport services, and neither the business center role nor the urban atmosphere envisaged for Roissypole could be achieved. References to “airport city” or “aéroville” would conspicuously vanish from the vocabulary of ADP ’s planners for at least one decade. Nonetheless, as the airport continued to grow, it matured into an urban center of sorts, albeit different than the one promulgated. Having accepted the difficulty in commercializing office surfaces, ADP continued to develop real estate products that provided sustainable profits like cargo facilities, while also expanding retail offers as part of the terminals.

An intractable expansion Regardless of the mediocre success of the “airport city,” the core projects of CDG were posited to proceed with renewed speed after ADP swiftly got over the economic recession bump. The second part of the 1990s would see the focus of both airport and planning authorities shift to the airport itself and its development as international ­mobility 230

node, rather than its “strategic sector.” The development program of CDG was its entrance ticket into the arena of hub airports, a move crucial for the competitiveness not just of ADP, but also of the Paris region. The governmental support for the increase and safeguarding of traffic growth at CDG was reflected in the rhetoric of spatial planning, as expressed in the 1994 SDRIF : “Paris is fortunate to have, at its doorstep, an airport platform with significant capacity reserves. We must not waste this opportunity, unique in Europe. Even if it is not necessarily desirable to reach the maximum capacity, it is essential … to pace ourselves for the future.”34 But the road to the top was announced steep. In a context marked by the ongoing liberalization of the European air transport sector, the restructuring of the national carrier Air France,35 and the entrance of new stakeholders, there would need to be continuous expansion, improvement and adaptation. Moreover, the institution of the EU Internal Market for Aviation in 1992,

The emerging complications and problematic acceptability of airport development became overt when attempting to implement the “Roissy 3” extension plan. First announced in 1992, this plan had projected three new runways in addition to new terminals (see Chapter 6).36 In 1993, the newly-elected Edouard Balladur government (RPR ) put the first part of the plan into implementation by deciding the construction of a third runway in CDG , to be put into service in 1997. This extension was ­projected to bring CDG ’s capacity to 550,000 aircraft movements and 80 million passengers. The plan was approved in a new public inquiry process in the following year. However, a notable number of the inquired communities took a stance against airport expansion.37 These were mostly the densely populated communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise, as well as some rural communities of Seine-et-Marne (Fig. 7.8). The inquiry brought to the foreground many of their regrets related to the airport – aircraft noise, saturation of roads, and lack of public transport links – grafting a wedge between ADP and inhabitants of the airport area.38 A growing polarization ensued between, on the one hand, the nexus State-ADP, and on the other hand, local politicians and associations. The elected officials of communities like Gonesse and Montmorency constituted the spearhead of the opposition, together with civic groups such as ADVOCNAR and A ­ PELNA , that became increasingly militant.39 ADP tried in vain to convince them that the construction of a new runway would not increase nuisance as it would allow more efficient management of air traffic.40 The opposition to the CDG expansion project started gaining support across political lines in Val-d’Oise, as the upcoming local elections of 1995 put pressure on local politicians to draw popular support.41 At this point, the Ile-de-France R ­ egional Council (CRIF ) also stepped in, introducing the idea of building a new, third airport in the Paris Basin, away from urbanized areas. Fig. 7.8  Results of the consultation for a third runway in 1994 .

­ aving been sidelined in the elaboration of the H SDRIF, the CRIF saw in the CDG expansion

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

that started replacing national rules by a single set of EU rules, begat new regulation and accountability obligations with regard to the territorial context of the airports.

231

debate an opportunity to establish itself as the competent level for the coordination of public action at the regional level. Many local representatives and the departmental council of Val-d’Oise embraced its proposal for a third airport, putting further pressure on ADP and the government. Forced by the mounting opposition, the latter launched an expert task force to explore ways of alleviating the noise impact linked with CDG ’s growth.42 The resulting report recommended locating the new runway further to the east, along with increasing the landing fee for the noisiest aircraft, reserving night use of the runways only to the quieter aircraft, and modifying flight paths above the Montmorency Valley.43 To no avail: opposition kept intensifying. A demonstration organized by ADVOCNAR in September 1994 attracted more than 3,000 ­people, among which were elected representatives from all major political parties, unanimously demanding the abandonment of the third runway project and the launching of a study for a third Parisian airport.44 A period of dense and contrasting evolutions unfolded as, in parallel, Orly became the stage of a similar backlash. The opening to competition of several air routes in mid1994 foreboded an increase in its traffic, and indeed several airlines expressed interest in using Orly as a basis for their operations, attracted by the airport’s proximity to Paris.45 But representatives of the communities of Val-de-Marne and Essonne admonished the expected traffic growth and denounced the failure of the State to respect the promises made in 1989, when a threshold of 200,000 airplane movements had been agreed.46 The threat of large protests brought about results. In October 1994, the government introduced a ceiling of 250,000 airline slots, ordered a limited use of Orly’s north-south runway and cut down by half the number of take-off and landing slots in the early morning and late evening hours.47 Despite constituting a win for the inhabitants of the Orly region, the limitations of traffic there made the prospect of increased traffic at CDG more imminent. This prospective growth was underlined by the opening to the public, in November 1994, of the “module of exchanges,” renamed as “Aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle TGV-RER .” The inauguration ceremony, convened by President François Mitterrand, was marked by the presence of major political personalities.48 The TGV-RER station had been the region’s biggest construction work after the Bibliothèque Nationale, having cost a total of 2.39 billion francs.49 It was presented as the symbol of 21st century intermodality: the high-speed trains placed air passengers from Lille, Lyon, and Marseille within a few hours’ reach, while travelers to and from Paris were enabled by the extension of the RER B , with its new stop in direct proximity to Terminal 2 (Fig. 7.9).50 The architecturally audacious station complex, topped by a luxury hotel, proclaimed contemporaneity and the need for co-operation in the quest for increasing metropolitan attractiveness – since the project had become possible through the unprecedented collaboration of the two major transport actors ADP and SNCF. For the inhabitants of the CDG region, the benefits from the TGV station were however not obvious. Hostility towards the development of the airport continued to run high, prompting the government to engage in new actions. At the instigation of the President of the CRIF Michel Giraud (RPR ), yet another task force was launched, with the mission to establish a long-term action framework for the air connectivity of the capital region. This time, the task force was placed under the leadership of former ­ inister of Transport Jacques Douffiagues. The task force spent months collecting data M 232

Fig. 7.9  Left: View of the TGV station and its glass canopy in 1994 . Center: diagram of the TGV lines bypassing central Paris, including a stop at the Roissy airport. Right: newspaper advertisement about the RER as part of the new multimodal station.

low the airport to develop in accordance to its potential and safeguard the air connectivity of the Paris region.51 The new runways would be shorter than the existing ones, located more to the east, and used exclusively for landing; and thus, it was claimed, they would actually alleviate noise impact by improving air traffic flow. The report also stipulated noise-related compensation measures, and the reservation of a site for a potential third airport in Beauvilliers, almost 100 km southwest of Paris. Overall, the Rapport Douffiagues attempted to strike a balance among the different interests, recognizing the discrepancies between the platform’s positive economic and negative environmental impacts. But ultimately, the economic argument was given preeminence. The essentiality of the development of CDG was twofold: on the one hand, in relation to its European competitors, namely London and Frankfurt, which would inevitably capture the traffic that Paris was unable to accommodate; and on the other hand, in terms of its local economic impact, particularly airport-related jobs.52 In the meantime, the national and local elections altered the political landscape. The replacement of François Mitterrand by Jacques Chirac (R PR ) and the appointment of a new government announced more neoliberal and pro-growth politics. In the CDG surroundings, conversely, a number of mayors from the left were elected on an anti-airport-expansion agenda, such as Jean-Pierre Blazy (PS ) in Gonesse and Michel ­Toumazet (PC ) in Goussainville. Therefore, the conclusions of the Rapport Douffiagues were ­initially not taken well by populations of the CDG area. Another big ­demonstration organized in October 1995 was proof of the continuing local frustration. But in parallel, ADP went on a charm offensive on the basis of the airport’s positive effects on regional and local economic development. It also tried to improve communication on airport impact with the creation of information centers, the “Houses of the Environment” (“Maisons de l’Environnement”), in CDG in 1995 and in Orly in 1996. These offered multimedia presentations of airport activities and were intended to act as interfaces with ­local populations.

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and organizing debates with all involved stakeholders. The Rapport Douffiagues, as its multi-page product – eventually published in July 1995 – became known, was seminal for CDG . It concluded that not just one, but two new runways were necessary to al-

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Ongoing developments in the airport supported the economic argument. The national carrier Air France officially inaugurated its “hub” at CDG in March 1996, along with a concomitant reduction of its activities in Orly. One of the first major components of the airline’s large-scale restructuring process, the CDG hub promised to ­strengthen its position in Europe, and in so doing also contribute to economic development ­locally. Shortly afterwards, the American Federal Express (FedEx) Fig. 7.10  New runways in CDG as authorized in 1997. also announced the choice of CDG as its European hub. The world leader of express mail had been considering Roissy for a while, as it had been looking to concentrate its intercontinental activity and complement its North American hub in Memphis with a European hub. In 1993, Paris CDG had emerged as a suitable candidate, thanks to being “the only major European airport that does not impose draconian noise restrictions, which is open 24 hours a day, has considerable space available, is not at all saturated, and whose airport authority ADP acts as an effective partner.”53 The intermodality of air, road and rail also played an important role, as ADP had anticipated. But to secure the choice of FedEx, both the French government and ADP offered several concessions, including traffic rights to destinations in Asia, favorable tax conditions, staff training, and investment in road and other infrastructure.54 Indeed, FedEx confirmed the choice of CDG as its European hub in April 1996, against the competing candidate Amsterdam Schiphol. This came with the promise of 3,000 jobs, of which 1,800 were direct jobs, over the coming ten years. Of course, this meant that the advantages that had attracted FedEx in the first place – good accessibility, capacity reserves, night operation – had to be maintained and reinforced. These developments divided local representatives of the CDG airport region. Some continued to be militant, while others espoused the economic development and jobs connected with the growth of Roissy. In late 1996, the commission for the public ­inquiry regarding the two runways issued a favorable view, despite continuing local opposition, with some citizen associations characterizing the process as “mockery.”55 The project was declared of public utility in early 1997 (Fig. 7.10). The decision to go through with it had revealed the importance of the overarching imperative of competitiveness; but also, that of the expectation of regional and local airport-related economic benefits, whether direct or indirect.

Promoting growth, managing impact: a compromise The declaration of public utility of the third and fourth CDG runways may have sealed the project’s course towards implementation, but the debate regarding the future of the Paris airports was not over. The appointment of the Lionel Jospin government in June 1997, with Jean-Claude Gayssot (PC) as Minister of Transport, gave hope to local actors 234

of the CDG region. Mayors and associations launched a renewed wave of pressure on the government, asking to revoke the CDG extension project.56 Rather than actually stopping development though, they hoped to elicit responses towards a better management of airport impacts, both environmental (noise) and economic (jobs and taxes). The response of the Ministry of Transport consisted in a series of unprecedented measures on noise pollution control, transparency of information, and financial or

pushing local officials, who had seemingly scored a victory by instituting a limitation of aircraft movements, to modify their approach, even engaging in “declarations of love for their airport.”58 In response, the government supported measures to maintain jobs and to salvage traffic through specialization.59 For CDG , traffic growth was supported but also measures for economic development were put in place to promote access to airport jobs (establishment of a 24-hour bus service, training activities). An association was created in 1998, the GIP Emploi (Groupement d’Intérêt Public Emploi), co-funded by the State, local governments, ADP, Air France, and CCIP, to take actions in better matching the employment offer of the airport to the supply and skills of the local populations.60 The PGS perimeter was extended by 20 %, henceforth including Gonesse and its hospital. Finally, Gayssot committed to limiting Roissy’s traffic to 55 million passengers and 495,000 aircraft movements per year. This commitment was most crucial in appeasing the opposition, as it implicitly contained the promise of a new airport once the traffic cap had been reached.61 Overall, the significance of the decisions and concessions made during 1997 – 1998 has been debated. The geographer Philippe Subra has claimed that the principal purpose of the governmental measures was a smokescreen to weaken the mobilization provoked by the decision to build the two new runways at CDG .62 His argumentation is based on the inconsistencies of public discourse, such as the promise of Gayssot regarding a traffic cap at CDG . This promise was both technically senseless and unrealistic: technically senseless because passenger numbers and aircraft movements do not directly translate into levels of noise; and unrealistic as it meant that the CDG airport would have to be replaced by a new airport in a not-so-distant future, impossible as the third airport was not even officially decided, let alone planned. Despite this promise indicating a strategic postponement of the real issue, the governmental measures of the late 1990s demonstrated at least an effort at a better integration of airport-related environmental questions in growth policy. According to Charlotte Halpern, they even signaled the beginning of a better relationship of the Paris airports with their environment, thanks to an emerging alliance of public actors in search of a “sustainable airport development” paradigm.63 A new generation of local representatives emerged in the second part of the 1990s: they were acquainted with the theme of sustainable development, well-informed about airport issues, and

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

employment compensation for affected municipalities of both major Parisian airports. The fines imposed on airlines failing to comply with approach paths were raised, and the TNSA tax was increased by 20 %. Engine testing was prohibited in the night hours and special procedures for noisy aircraft were introduced. Local funds were created, to be managed by ADP and channeled towards local actions. Additionally, a new Zone D was added to the PEB : it had no limitations to urbanization, but gave an obligation of acoustic isolation for all new buildings. For Orly, things were nonetheless difficult, as the airport had stagnated since CDG had taken the traffic lead.57 This situation was

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proficient in the institutional means available to them. Their well-grounded requests prompted a new responsiveness. Importantly, many measures instituted in this p ­ eriod were decided collaboratively by the Ministry of Transports and the Ministry of the Environment, indicating a shift in the perception of airports and their environmental impacts. The creation of the independent airport noise control authority ACNUSA ­(Autorité de contrôle des nuisances sonores aéroportuaires) in 1999 was a further step in this direction. ACNUSA was given the mission to ensure that air transport respects the commitments made to local communities in terms of aircraft noise reduction. The translation of the new understanding into planning practices, however, was not easy. The attitude of local officials, advocating for economic activity zones in proximity of CDG , while simultaneously vocally opposing the airport’s extension, was perceived by the State and Region as two-faced. For instance, when the SIEVO presented its SD in 1995, the planners of the IAURIF commented that “SIEVO requires an extremely moderate development of the airport, an objective that is in contradiction with the desire to benefit from the economic effects it induces.”64 The process of revising the PEB of CDG to take into account the two new runways, starting in 1999, was also characterized by disagreements. Localities advocated for flight and approach paths with a different noise footprint. The increase in public sensitivity to noise was reflected in the adoption of an ever-smaller value for Zone C – IP 74 in 1999 / 2002 against IP 78 in 1989 and IP  84 in 1972.65 At the same time, smaller noise impact values also meant an increase in the perimeter enclosed by noise curves and hence an increase in the non-buildable area, implying in turn that engaged development operations would either result in new populations actually or legally exposed to noise, or would need to be abandoned. This led to further friction among communities and the State about who would bear the costs of resolving these problems. Faburel and Barraqué bring up the example of a ZAC for housing in the community of Gonesse, and the difficult position of the mayor Jean-Pierre Blazy in the negotiation of the PEB value for Zone C: although recognizing the irrationality of placing people under noise, including the ZAC in the C noise zone where new housing would not be allowed, would mean leaving the project unfinished and unconnected, and the municipality with a deficit.66 These instances show the complexities surrounding airport-related development and the difficulty of achieving win-win solutions. These started being recognized in the late 1990s. In the meantime, the CDG expansion plan was duly implemented: the third (08R / 26L) and fourth (09L / 27R) runways were opened to traffic in early 1999 and late 2000 respectively. To the question of environmental impact versus economic development, the debate had ended with local opposition ultimately succumbing to the argument of economic benefits. Nonetheless, the process had also initiated a collective redefinition of the problem “development of Paris airports,” with recognition of the need to counterbalance the negative effects of CDG and Orly on their regions.

Competitiveness by design Having received at least nominal public approval, the airport authority proceeded with a new round of projects at CDG in the late 1990s, aimed at increasing capacity and overall competitiveness. The “hub and spoke” model was starting to prevail, airplane sizes 236

were growing, and new security concerns were emerging. The economic environment was becoming tougher, as the European Union further promoted the opening of air transport to competition with the completion of the air liberalization process in 1997 and the lifting of protectionism in services offered by airport operators in 1999 and 2001. At that point, the first four buildings of Terminal 2 (A, B, C, and D) were in place, their conFig. 7.11 The CDG airport in 1994 . Terminals 2 A, 2B, 2C, 2D and the TGV-RER station CDG 2 in the foreground, the RER station CDG 1 and T9 in the background.

the TGV-RER station and the choice of CDG as a hub for Air France and Fed­Ex had constituted representative “success stories” (Fig. 7.11). However, not all efforts were equally successful, and domains where plans proved obsolete or unworkable were even more highlighted in the new competitive context.67 In particular, the case of the TGV station had demonstrated that prosperity in the competitive era relied on synergies: the co-operation of ADP and SNCF allowed both actors to achieve their goals – ADP to strengthen its position in relation to other European airports not having a high-speed rail link, and SNCF to increase its clientele by offering an attractive alternative to the car or the plane for long-distance air passengers from cities placed within a few hours from CDG . But collaboration among transport authorities proved less good when it came to regional and local land transport connections. Despite the popularity of the high-speed rail connection, the new RER station was far less successful, its passenger numbers falling behind predictions. About 2,000 passengers used the new station (CDG 2) in its first year of operation, one third of those using the old station (CDG 1). By 1997, still only 13 % of passengers at the CDG airport took the RER altogether, compared to 11 % by bus and 76 % by car.68 As seen in Chapter 5, the way the RER had been conceived made it more appropriate as suburban commuter rail than as an airport link. As the suburbs grew in population, the RER B became more crowded and less attractive to air passengers. Also, the trains were getting older and the line suffered from frequent disruptions. Despite attempts at improving frequency, by making four out of the eight trains per hour direct to the airport, service remained of low quality.69 In parallel, bottlenecks continued to plague the access roads, further worsening transport conditions for both air passengers and regional inhabitants. ADP also faced struggles in improving the connectivity within the CDG platform. The internal mini-metro, announced as part of the “module of exchanges” in 1991 that would link the airport’s facilities and terminals, was supposed to open in 1995. In fact, the authority hoped that its implementation would also help increase RER passenger numbers and thus alleviate the weight on the road access system. But the project ended up being a massive failure. The chosen SK 6000 system was found to be p ­ oorly adapted to the airport’s needs in terms of speed, capacity, technical reliability and

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

struction having stretched between 1981 and 1993. Then, the opening of

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passenger security. Its putting into service was delayed repeatedly, piling up losses on its financial partners, until the project was definitively abandoned in 1999.70 CDG was left to cope with the existing system of shuttle buses – less convenient and less attractive. In other domains, the airport authority fared better. The role of CDG for FedEx was consolidated in 1999, when a “super center” was established in a dedicated zone in order to accommodate the carrier’s hub activity. Implemented in a 28-hectare “enclave” at the airport site’s northwestern extremity, next to the Air France maintenance facilities, it consisted of a massive terminal building of 70,000 m 2 and sorting facilities able to handle 30,000 pieces of mail per hour (Fig. 7.12).71 But

Fig. 7.12  Aerial view of the FedEx super center.

ADP had had to share the costs with FedEx for the super center – a total of 1.2 billion

French francs, equivalent to 192 million euros or 200 million US dollars in 1999 prices – testifying to the establishment of a new paradigm. In this paradigm, the airport authority no longer planned the national infrastructure according to its own or the central government’s vision: rather, it was the needs of the passengers, the airlines and the other economically powerful actors, on which airport growth depended, that dictated priorities. If the installation of FedEx was an important stake, the prosperity of Air France – the publicly owned French flagship carrier and most important airport user – was even more essential. It was seen in previous chapters that ADP had always maintained a close collaboration with the national airline, taking into account its operational needs and allocating terminals for its exclusive use. The introduction of a hub policy for CDG , however, required a complete reconsideration of the airport’s design, as the operating logic of a hub had not been properly anticipated. As Andreu acknowledged: When we conceived Roissy 2 in 1981, we did not have a pressing problem of correspondence to resolve. It was a terminal station, with traffic spread over time and few parking stations for aircraft in direct contact with the terminal. This is no ­longer the case today with the ‘hub’ policy of Air France, which brings together many flights in a few time slots, requiring buses to bring passengers from remotely stationed planes.72 The design of Terminal 2C had partially tackled the issue by simplifying passenger paths, and ADP also invested in the adaptation of the other T2 modules through sign­ age and material indications.73 But the subsequent terminals fully embodied the concern for facilitating flows. Interestingly, one ramification of this concern was the renaming of the planned CDG  3 as 2F, the main reason being that the use of number 3 was thought to potentially give passengers the feeling that the new terminal was far from the others!74 In terms of design, 2F, which opened in 1998 / 1999, was a “third generation” terminal. Exclusively allocated to Air France, 2F greatly increased the number of aircraft “in contact” with the building, thus minimizing transfer time 238

for ­passengers (Fig. 7.13). More wideapplication of this concept spread ­ was inevitably due to lead to more linear airport structures. By the end of the decade, the importance of adapting airport design to the hub policy and more broadly the needs of the flagship carrier had

Fig. 7.13  View of Terminal 2F.

ture terminal infrastructure of CDG . Contrary to Andreu’s approach that favored aesthetics and experience, it was overwhelmingly functional. Inspired by the concept applied in Atlanta airport by Air France’s new partner Delta Air Lines, it consisted of successive linear satellite b ­ uildings Fig. 7.14  Planned Air France terminals at CDG . allowing the maximum number of aircraft to be accommodated in direct contact with the terminal building (Fig. 7.14). The newspaper Les Echos forthrightly expressed the new reality: “From now on, Air France conceives and designs the airport infrastructure that best suits it, and ADP pays for it. A new relationship, since in the past the national company often reckoned to have borne with the terminals developed by ADP, not necessarily optimal for its needs.”75 The complexity of the airport site at the advent of the millennium hence reflected the diversification of imperatives to which its planning was called to respond. Besides the evolving operational needs of Air France and other carriers, constant adaptations in airport design were made necessary by regulatory changes such as the eradication of “duty-free” shopping in 1998, which forced ADP to find ways other than price for making passenger shopping attractive. This was the case in the extensive shopping gallery installed in terminal 2F in 1999, that attempted to seduce passengers by proposing an “art de vivre à la française.”76 Also, even though ADP remained a public establishment against a wave of privatizations in European air transport, it pursued ­changes in its operation and structure. The stepping in of a new president in 1999 – Yves ­Cousquer, succeeding Jean Fleury – was followed by internal restructuring, introducing a more managerial logic, and also scrutinization of the profitability of its various activities, focusing on the domains that ensured more sustained profits.77 The airport authority was becoming acutely aware of the need to respond promptly and adaptably to changing circumstances. The inflexible, bureaucratic modus operandi of public authorities had no place in the competitive, fast-paced, 21 st-century world of airport growth.

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

become paramount. In early 1999, the capital of Air France was opened to the market, signaling the beginning of its privatization. Shortly after, the company revealed its plan for the fu-

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An undecided territory By the end of the 1990s, several changes could be observed in the Charles de Gaulle airport region in relation to a decade earlier. These changes were unevenly felt. The airport itself had grown by two terminals and two runways, and construction was underway for additional terminals, as discussed in the previous section. In the surroundings, despite the prolific rhetoric of the early 1990s about the vocation of the strategic sector, no grand plan had yet come to life. There were, nonetheless, several small- to medium-­ scale developments, that, slowly and cumulatively, produced some visible transformation of the urban fabric. The large-scale projects of the early 1980s – PEX and Paris Nord 2 – continued to dominate. Paris Nord 2 in particular grew substantially and was equipped with a new development plan (Plan d’Aménagement de Zone, PAZ ) allowing higher density in 1998. By then, the business park featured 400 companies and 12,000 jobs, and included banking and medical services, sports facilities, four hotels, eighteen restaurants and a major commercial center (Fig. 7.15).78 In the surroundings, smaller activity zones were initiated, such as in Goussainville, Gonesse, and Survilliers. In Triangle de Gonesse, the southernmost part of the triangle was opened to urbanization, with the development of two activity zones (ZAC des Tulipes, ZAC du Pont Yblon). These zones were generally the typical enclave-like, big box developments hosting warehouses, distribution facilities, or auto-repair services, having little to do with airport-related connectivity. In the South CDG zone, the main area destined for high-value activities and companies with international activity, things were stagnant. The partners AFTRP and Tremblay-en-France with Mission Roissy had finalized the plan, and started the acquisition of land (Fig. 7.16). But the implementation, by the public hand, of the green raster and the road network – the necessary infrastructure to jumpstart the project – was stalling. Also, though some transport projects moved to ­realization through the 11th State-Region Contract (CPER ) 1994 – 1998, the heavy-duty rail links that would enable compact, mixed-use development were still projects on paper. The last study for the zone by Fuksas (who continued to work on the plan on behalf of Tremblay) focused on how to “save” what was possible from the masterplan: “The Ring Park, the main structuring element of the station district, is limited to a marginal role, far from the heart of the district and reduced to a simple masking role … in the uncertainty of the future, the defi-

Fig. 7.15  Plan of Paris Nord II in 1998 .

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nition of the voids can be an element of regulation of the system.”79 In mid-1999, a new agreement was made between the State, ADP,

Fig. 7.16  Overall development plan of the South CDG area in 1998 .

for the near future (2001): a modest (29,000 m 2) extension of the Villepinte Exhibition Center, the creation of a 45-ha-ZAC for additional activities, the completion of the main roads, and the transfer of the racing track. But still, nothing seemed to materialize on the ground.80 The airport region was beginning to acquire a certain character, though not the one anticipated by spatial planners. The restructuring forces of the global economy appeared to polarize metropolitan space in ways unforeseen or even unwished for. During the 1990s, economic development and job growth was channeled to specific areas in Ile-de-France. Roissy was one of them: in the 63 communities comprising the “Roissy sector,”81 between 1975 and 1999 employment rose by 72 %, against 8 % in the Paris region on average, and by 2001, more than 500 foreign companies were located in the area.82 However, these companies tended to fall into one of two categories: either those directly dependent on airport operation, usually located on the platform – including ADP, Air France, and firms involved in ground handling, maintenance, transport services, customs, etc.; or those drawn to the road network – mostly warehouse operators, trucking companies, and distributors, often with a trans-European activity but unrelated or loosely related to the airport. Few were the companies involved in advanced services, and those were limited to Paris Nord 2. In the region as a whole, growth in high-order services employment was channeled primarily to the “golden ­triangle” formed by central Paris, La Défense, and Issy-les-Moulineux, and ­secondarily to the new towns of Marne-la-Vallée, Cergy, and Saint-Quentin-en-­ Yvelines.83 The spatial implication of those market trends for the CDG airport region was that the urbanization of the area consisted mostly in the expansion of the airport

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

the CCIP, AFTRP, and the communities of Tremblay and Villepinte, setting a few goals

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itself, a core of ­hotels and other air passenger-oriented facilities in Roissy-en-France and Villepinte, and several small- and medium-scale activity zones along the road axes. The international advanced services and technology-oriented businesses hoped for did not manifest a big interest, and no urban design plan could change that. Outside the airport fence, the airport region became a logistics hub, even a depository of functions ­unwanted elsewhere in the metropolitan area such as waste management facilities, scrapyards, or prisons. In parallel, communities struggled to keep up with the targets for housing that the State had imposed upon them with the 1994 regional plan. These targets were indicative of the incongruity of central planning action, as the State also insisted on keeping urbanization in the area limited. The application of the PEB did act as a brake to ad hoc and inappropriate urbanization impetuses rather effectively, evidenced by the weaker population growth and housing construction in the Roissy sector as a whole in comparison to the regional average.84 But the tightening of restrictions related to aircraft noise also made development more complicated and conflictual, as discussed earlier. It is no surprise that in the statutory plans of most communities, zones for housing paled in size in relation to zones for economic activities (Fig. 7.17). Furthermore, the spatial and urbanistic effects of airport-related nuisance were hardly documented until the 2000s. Mission Roissy undertook some studies that concerned urban renewal around CDG , but its perspective was mostly economic and not directly related to the negative effects of airport proximity. A notable exception were the diagnostic and prospective studies engaged in 1999 regarding the “old villages” of Plaine de France: Ecouen, ­Gonesse, Groslay, Villiers-le-Bel, Arnouville-lès-Gonesse, Le Thillay, etc., which led to the creation of a special fund for the rehabilitation of these villages.85 These contrasting and uncoordinated tendencies were not exactly unexpected: already in the first report of Mission Roissy in 1992, it had been proposed that the plan alone was insufficient without a “managing structure” that would guide and coordinate development. This structure was never created, however. Around CDG , local governments, tired of pleading for the State’s attention, became used to planning and steering urban development for themselves, mostly in a liberal way, leading to Roissy acquiring a reputation as the “wild west” of the Paris region.86 Even though Mission Roissy remained as coordinator for several years after the SDRIF to conduct studies and consult local authorities on development, its structure as a task force prevented it from having authority in carrying out plans. Its role was to give local stakeholders a framework of action with regard to the main quantitative targets and priorities, rather than working on urban design, infrastructure and program. As acknowledged by a DREIF planner, “the weakness of Fig. 7.17  Synthesis of local land use planning documents for the areas around CDG as of 2000.

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the Roissy Mission is that it was not operational, it was rather a mission of coordination, of coherence. … Our viewpoint [is] that [an oper-

ational structure] is what was needed.”87 Finally, in 1999 Mission Roissy was merged with the Mission Plaine de France, which focused much more heavily on the area of Plaine-SaintDenis rather than the airport region, reducing even more the State’s planning oversight. In these conditions, the airport region struggled to find a coherent identity, and by the dawn of the millennium, appeared undecided and contrasting. Disparities among local-

Fig. 7.18  View of the CDG southern periphery in the early 2000 s:

The renewal of the discourse The turbulent period of the 1990s set a new context for the Paris airports. The spectacular, if contested, growth of CDG and the stagnation of Orly exposed the importance of air transport for both the regional and local economies. Air traffic and the concentration of economic activities in airport surroundings transformed them into de facto centralities. At the same time, discontent with airport-related nuisance came to the foreground. But while a completely harmonic co-existence of airports and urbanized areas was in the sphere of imagination, the State and ADP became more accountable on airport-related decision-making, indicating the start of a greater understanding of the integration of airports in their environments. By the dawn of the 21 st century, the institutional context for planning and for airports had changed. The grip of the French

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

ities were aggravated. Communities Paris Nord 2 and Villepinte Exhibition Center in the foreground, Vieux village of Tremblay-en-France in the background. like Roissy-en-France and Tremblayen-­­France, whose territory was partly occupied by the platform, enjoyed enormous fiscal benefits. Others, such as Villepinte, Le Thillay, Goussainville, or Mitry-Mory, were able to economically benefit from the installation of large activity zones in their territories. Many rural towns north of the airport had focused on offering quality single-family housing in a semi-natural environment. Conversely, many communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise and northern SeineSaint-Denis faced difficulties, the former being gravely affected by aircraft noise and the latter by the inability to transform their economy post-deindustrialization. Accessibility remained problematic: except for a part of the bypass highway north of the airport, none of the projected major infrastructures had been realized, and the highway network was as saturated as ever. Housing construction had substantially slowed down, as vacancy rates increased.88 Nevertheless, property development was starting to pick up again after the relative stagnation in the 1990s (Fig. 7.18).89 Statistics indicated that a de facto economic center was emerging: by 2001, the broader sector was home to 20,000 businesses and 237,000 jobs, of which 72,000 within the airport and 16,000 in Paris Nord 2. In the latter, 17 % of the businesses and 23 % of the jobs were registered as “airport-related.”90

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central state on Ile-de-France was weakened after the 1995 LOADT law gave the Region control of the schéma directeur. Since 1998, the Regional Council was presided by the Socialist Party (PS ), reflected in a more decisive stance with regard to socio-­ spatial disparities. The legislative reforms of 1995 – 2000 (LOADT, Barnier, Chevènement, ­L OADDT, SRU ) encouraged the “territorialization” of planning and policy action, established a new armature of statutory and strategic planning instruments, advanced sustainable development as the overarching theme of sectorial actions, and introduced more participatory processes (see also Chapter 3). In this context, airports and air transport became more open to public scrutiny and collaborative policy-making. The creation of institutions like ACNUSA and the GIP Emploi mentioned earlier testified to a recognition of the territorial dimension of their impacts. The rising imperatives of sustainable development further encouraged the surge of a new stake for public policy, namely, how to maximize the positive (economic) effects of airport operation and minimize its negative (social and environmental) externalities on the surrounding territory, all while acquiring a better understanding of what scales were affected by each set of impacts. This stake applied to both Paris airports, even if the economic starting point was different – consolidating growth in the case of CDG , preventing decline in the case of Orly.91 Nevertheless, airports still held an ambiguous position in spatial strategy-making and urban planning; both discourse and action were in need of renewal. The beginning of this renewal was manifested in the State-Region Contract (Contrat de Plan Etat-Région, CPER ) 2000 – 2006, whose overall objective was defined as ­employing “a new process of open partnership with all actors in the Paris region, ­contributing to a renewed conception of regional planning through a territorial approach to policies.”92 In relation to this objective, ten “priority territories” were designated to streamline investment and area-appropriate measures.93 They c­ orresponded to the “redevelopment sectors” and the “centers of European caliber” of the 1994 SDRIF, but these designations were replaced with labels highlighting the territorial dimension of different policy domains. In the CPER , Roissy was described as “territory with strong scientific and economic potential,” with the airport as key component.94 Following up on this designation, a steering committee was created, headed by the Regional Prefect and implicating all actors of the area, with the goal of elaborating a “territorial convention” for the distribution of CPER funds to different projects. The committee defined five “axes of consideration” (“axes de réflexion”): employment, education and training, transport, living environment and economic development, and territorial promotion; urban planning and development were conspicuously missing from these axes. In parallel, actions at the European level, where regional planning was becoming a matter of EU policy, encouraged the emerging awareness and policy focus on airports. In 1999, the organization Airports Regions Conference (ARC) was created in Brussels, inviting the participation of local authorities having a major airport; the aim was to integrate their interests in European air transport policy. IAURIF became a ­member, along with thirty other administrative and planning authorities across Europe. S ­ hortly afterwards, the European Commission launched the project COFAR (“Common ­Options for Airport Regions”), that brought together local and regional governments associated with international airports in the “North West Metropolitan Area” (NWMA ) 244

of Europe: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Dublin.95 Aéroports de Paris, IAURIF, and the commune of Tremblay-en-France were among the partners.96 The goal of COFAR was defined as finding ways to accommodate the increasing demand for air transport in the NWMA , balancing the economic benefits, the social effects and the environmental impact in a sustainable way … [and] to develop practical measures that can help to reduce congestion in the air and on the ground while safeguarding or even improving the quality of the living environment.97 The final COFAR report, disseminated in 2001, advanced a wide range of common ­options towards fulfilling these goals: harmonization of environmental impact mon-

­airport city concepts, introduction of airport area governance structures (for a detailed list, see Annex 1).98 These suggestions were general and had no binding character, and hence did not correspond to specific planning rationales for airport territories. Nonetheless, the COFAR project was valuable in showing the similarities of issues across Europe and in promoting “airport regions” as a scale for policy. Regional and urban planning were recognized as crucial domains of public action regarding airports, and the mismatch between typically national-level airport planning and local-level needs and institutions was highlighted. In Paris, these European-level partnerships helped move the discussion about airports from issues of technical and environmental capacity to that of their “territorial” capacity – their acceptability by and reciprocal relation with surrounding territories.99 Putting CDG in juxtaposition with other airports also highlighted elements until then not made explicit. The “technopolitan effect” of the airport – a term coined by Etienne Berthon of IAURIF to signify the attraction of economic activities in proximity of the platform, as opposed to the “metropolitan effect” concerning economic impact at a larger scale – was shown to depend on numerous factors, including the size and mix of air traffic, the location of the airport in relation to privileged urban axes, the availability of land, and the quality of access. CDG and Orly had potentials and limitations. For instance, “airport city” development seemed to function well in airports like Frankfurt and Amsterdam where office, retail, terminals, and train stations were concentrated in space; whereas in CDG , the design that favored minimum routes to the aircraft and the isolation of the TGV-RER station from the central zone was not conducive to it. Another important realization was that both CDG and Orly lacked the urban governance structures facilitating integration in their environments seen in other airports.100 Prompted by these questions, the Parisian partners of COFAR  – ADP, IAURIF, and Tremblay-en-France – attempted to broaden the dialogue. At stake was the search for a new, transparent, and consensual relation between local actors and the airport ­“nexus,” represented by the central government and ADP. In December 2000, the conference “Airport and Regions, new driving forces” (“Aéroports et territoires, nouvelles ­dynamiques”) was organized in Tremblay, bringing together a wide range of stakeholders: local and national politicians, planners, business representatives, a ­ cademics,

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itoring, introduction of environmental policies, better compensation mechanisms, improvement of air-rail connectivity, land use regulation, application of integrated

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Fig. 7.19  Overall study sector (“secteur d’étude”) and “hub center” (“cœur de pôle”) of Roissy, ­corresponding to 63 and 7 communities respectively, according to IAURIF .

and the civil society.101 It was an opportunity to account for the status of airport-­ related discourse and action, and for the positions of the actors of the CDG region in the emerging context. In the viewpoints expressed by participants, a newfound consensus among state planners and local representatives started to appear. According to this consensus, air traffic and airport growth were inevitable, and indeed desirable, as they constituted major sources of wealth; but it was equally important to make the airport’s economic benefits trickle down to the local populations. As for noise, it was widely presented as an unavoidable side effect of a beneficial sector. While airport area residents continued to push for the abolition of night flights at CDG , there was also optimism that things would get better through technology and regulation. Overall, the discussions and measures of the previous years seemed to have brought hope of a more open dialogue and collaborative airport-related planning. As the mayor of Tremblay declared: It is a question of finding solutions with the actors of air transport and the population that go in the direction of sustainable development. This partnership work 246

is beginning to yield results, but there has been a delay for many years, when surrounding communities felt that the airport was extra-territorial.102 The renewed interest in airport regions gave birth to further investigations. A research collaboration initiated by ADP, IAURIF, and Tremblay with CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) led to the creation of the association “Aéroports et dynamiques des territoires” (“Airports and territorial dynamics”). This association’s reflections highlighted the need to improve airport-related knowledge as basis for action, and to challenge the categories of analysis inherited from sectorial and disciplinary approaches.103 Also, the information basis about the Paris airports and their territories was

ation.104 In 2001 – 2002, a large study was carried out by IAURIF on behalf of ADP about the economic impact of the Paris airports at a national, regional and local l­evel.105 It demonstrated the weight of airport-related jobs (2 % of regional employment), their various types (direct air transport-related jobs plus jobs in services and the hotel industry), and their concentration in a relatively small perimeter around the airports; it also made apparent the different extents of local direct airport-related development for CDG and Orly.106 Thanks to this study, the study perimeter for CDG was established, providing a consistent basis for future analyses (Fig. 7.19). Finally, the intellectual mobilization around the topic of airports was epitomized by the publication of a double volume entitled “Aéroports et Territoires” in the IAURIF journal series Cahiers in late 2003. The volume assembled the results of the studies of the preceding period, and complemented them with expert analyses on air transport, urban planning, economic development, noise pollution, transport planning, and governance.107 Meanwhile, the book From Airport to Airport City was published by ARC , illustrating several European airport regions including Paris, and bringing the idea of airport-related development to the foreground.108 The policy and planning interest in the Paris airports had seemingly matured. But if the discourse was there, the appropriate forms of planning action were still far from clear. With those missing, a big question mark hovered above the issue of how to implement the widely held ambition of “managing [air traffic] growth, while meeting the conditions for sustainable development and the legitimate concerns of local residents … without jeopardizing the region’s influence, its competitiveness, and its economic performance.”109

Denial and acceptance: third airport and CDG Express Two debates of the early 2000s were particularly telling about the co-existence of, on the one hand, persisting and deep-rooted disagreements regarding airport operation and its spatial impacts, on the other hand, a changing wind towards the acceptance of allowing CDG to grow. The first debate concerned the possibility of a third airport,

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

greatly enriched. Statistical data was gathered and a directory of plans, projects, institutions and governance structures was assembled. Targeted analyses provided new information; for instance, an examination of property values in the area around CDG showed that noise pollution triggered socioeconomic segregation, followed by depreci-

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that as seen earlier was introduced as a rather abstract prospect for when CDG would reach saturation. Given its abstract disposition, the project was hardly advanced between 1997 and 2000; until, in July 2000, the crashing of a Concorde airplane into a hotel in Gonesse revived mobilization in Val-d’Oise.110 Under intense pressure from local representatives and the departmental council of Val-d’Oise, the government initiate a new largescale debate about the potential localization and characteristics of a third airport, in the form of ad hoc consultation labeled DUCSAI (“Démarche d’Utilité Concertée pour un Site Aéroportuaire International”). Presenting a list of conditions that the site for the third airport should fulfill, the consultation welcomed candidacies from sites across the Parisian Basin. An immense and unprecedented array of actors was invited to participate in a series of debates during 2001.111 These were organized at the most promising sites, as well as in the main cities and towns of the Parisian Basin. The debates revealed the conflictual nature of the topic, as local reactions around the various sites varied from enthusiasm to hostility, depending on how local representatives assessed potential nuisance and economic benefits, and the balance of power. Finally, out of eight examined sites, in late 2001 Prime Minister Jospin announced the choice of the site of Chaulnes, in the Picardie region 125 km north of Paris (Fig. 7.20). However, it quickly appeared that this choice was more political than rational. With the inhabitants of Picardie massively protesting the decision about Chaulnes, the change of government in mid-2002 with a right-wing majority shifted the discourse again. First of all, the government announced new measures, such as the increase of the PGS perimeter of CDG and Orly, giving more residents access to better aid for soundproofing. In parallel, the Direction of Civil Aviation (DGAC) introduced new aircraft approach and queuing routes so as to distribute the noise impact and transfer part of it to less populated areas. Very soon, the prospect of a third Parisian airport was officially rejected, with the new Secretary of Transport Dominique Bussereau declaring that “the third airport exists already. It suffices to develop the existing platforms,” triggering the anger of elected officials in Val-d’Oise.112 But this anger did not last. Partly out of fatigue, partly out of acceptance of the situation, partly appeased by the measures, and partly because, when the prospect of a third airport became real, the loss of the potential economic benefits thanks to CDG became more palpable, demands for a third airport faded and the most militant voices were marginalized.113 A parliamentary report published in mid-2003 on “airport policy for 2020” mentioned neither the third airport, nor any traffic limitation at CDG . The discourse ­shifted towards the improvement of noise management and the activation of specialized peripheral airports, such as Vatry for air freight.114 It appeared that the geopolitical conditions Fig. 7.20  Candidate sites for the localization of the third Paris airport.

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that turned the discontent with the nuisance of CDG into a problem requiring major political and planning action were no longer there.

The second debate of the early 2000s that demonstrated the ambivalence to the airport and its impacts concerns the proposal for a direct rail link to CDG . This idea first emerged during the initial discussions about a third airport in 1995, and was quickly embraced by ADP, who was afraid that the deteriorating

Fig. 7.21  Initial planned trajectory for CDG Express (in red), and modified trajectory proposed by the VSCDGE citizen association (green).

“CDG Express” project, bringing together ADP, SNCF, and RFF (Réseau Ferré de France, the authority responsible for the railway infrastructure).115 The suggested rail link would be an exclusive line linking the airport to Gare de l’Est, where air passengers would be able to check in their luggage, in twenty minutes. Its cost was evaluated at 4 billion francs (610 million euros) and would be self-financed by the sale of tickets. The insistence of the involved actors paid off: in late 2000, Transport Minister Gayssot announced the government’s decision to go forward with the project.116 Immediately after this announcement, however, the project was strongly challenged by the united representatives of several communities of Seine-Saint-Denis. This reaction had little to do with any anticipated negative spatial impacts of CDG Express; in fact, most new rail segments would be built underground. Rather, it was precisely the “extra-territorial” nature of the rail line that protesters took issue with. This impression was amplified by the prevalent perception of the territory that the line would traverse as one consistently neglected by the public hand. The main argument of protesters was simple: how can the State have the financial resources to construct a new rail line exclusively for air passengers, while it has avoided for years upgrading the RER B , invoking lack of funds? The response of the State came in two parts during 2003 – 2004. First, a modernization plan for the RER B was adopted. Second, an inclusive public consultation process was launched, thanks to the recently enacted legislative framework that enabled more participatory planning processes. This allowed the project partners to present a well-documented case for the project;117 and the opponents to make productive counter-suggestions. This consultation resulted in a new, largely agreed upon, project for CDG Express with a modified trajectory, using in large part the right of way of the RER B , as well as a plan of further improvements for the latter.118 This result was beneficial to both sides: the new trajectory was more economical and easier to implement, as it largely reused existing lines (Fig. 7.21). And the transport authorities, particularly ADP, were able to promote the image of an establishment that was civic and open to dialogue.119 In conclusion, the two debates of the early 2000s, on the third airport and the CDG Express, demonstrated that even if the compatibility of airport competitiveness and local integration was not granted, there existed possibilities for dialogue and compro-

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

conditions of public transport to the airport were negatively affecting its attractiveness. The airport authority was eager to emulate London Heathrow, which was at the time building its own dedicated line, the “Heathrow Express.” In 2000, an economic interest grouping (GIE ) was formed for the so-called

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mise. The abatement of fierce local opposition after 2002 – 2003 may reflect, in part, a weariness against the powerfulness of the pro-aviation nexus and a subservience to the economic argument. But it also reflects a tactical choice allowing local representatives to abdicate the accusation of being “two-faced.” Rather than disputing the very existence of the platforms, they increasingly advocated for a more equitable sharing of airport-related economic and tax benefits – including through urban development projects – along with a reduction of negative effects like noise. Moreover, these episodes contributed to making the problematic of the territorial integration of airports part of the mainstream public discourse in France. As affirmed by Halpern, “airport issues moved from the private sphere of the civil aviation sector to the public sphere of polity in the broadest sense of the term.”120

In search of spatial governance The availability of new information on the Paris airports, the rising awareness of their territories as distinct scale of analysis and policy, and the growing visibility of related debates in the public sphere raised the question of the governance of the airport region. At CDG , the view that coordination was needed was widely shared. But the idea of a central administration planning the territory on behalf of – or rather independently from – local governments, was no longer viable nor acceptable. Local actors of the CDG region had become conscious of their right to participate in spatial strategy decision-making as well as to partake in the fruits of airport-related economic growth. Yet despite their strong desire to overcome the top-down state-led planning model that had been prevalent in the CDG airport region since the 1960s, they were not very specific about what would replace it; different political views and priorities loomed in the background.121 The Ile-de-France Region, on the other hand, despite making clear the desire to prioritize the airport territories in the CPER , had few planning powers beyond co-financing transport infrastructure and “soft” measures such as with regard to employment and training. The difficulty in finding appropriate forms of spatial governance was not unique to the CDG airport. The Paris region as a whole had difficulties adjusting to the emerging multi-actor institutional landscape, lacking a coherent governance model that could convincingly replace the powerful State. Institutional overlap appeared more inextricable than elsewhere because most authorities operated in an “urban” field, even if at different scales. By the early 2000s intermunicipal and other forms of cooperation lagged behind in Ile-de-France in relation to other French regions. One roadblock was that the state still retained many powers; if not directly, at least through the technical and economic institutions under its tutelage that played a decisive role in the planning and development of the region, such as AFTRP, R ATP, CCIP, and ADP.122 Against this backdrop, planning action was fragmented rather than comprehensive, and overarching planning instruments like the SDRIF remained merely indicative. That said, some common interests emerged and collective awareness rose, especially with regard to the growing socioeconomic disparities among territories. Public interventions increasingly targeted specific sectors of the metropolis and started addressing the interdependencies between rich and poor areas.123 In parallel, political and e ­ conomic 250

leaders converged towards the key stake of maintaining the rank of Paris as a world city, echoed in the pursuit of policies to attract headquarters of multinational companies and international organizations. Three interrelated realizations paved the way for the emergence of new forms of spatial governance. First, with the lack of one strong planning and development actor, strength lay in collaboration and alliance. Second, it was necessary to consoli-

no longer the overarching framework of public action; rather, specific objectives, resulting from strategic reflection, should guide spatial strategy and policy-making, and sectorial pol- Fig. 7.22  Intercommunal structures in the CDG area in icies should be at their service, rather than the the 2000 s. other way around. In the CDG airport region, the first attempt to channel these realizations into some type of supra-local governance was the creation of inter-municipal authorities (EPCI ). Voluntarily assembled at the instigation of the laws of 1992 and 1999, EPCIs should ideally be geography- and scale-appropriate planning structures. In practice, departmental and community limits seemed to function as barriers to the creation of cooperative governing structures at the scale of the airport region, as they favored instead initiatives based on political “friendships” or opportunistic development.124 Thus, the first EPCIs of the CDG region were ambiguous assemblages. By 2002, there were five of them, in addition to the syndicates established in the previous years (SIEVO , SIEP Marne Nord, SIEP Dammartin, SEAPFA , see also Chapter 6). In Val d’Oise, the Communauté de Communes Roissy Porte de France was assembled around the fiscally rich village of Roissy-en-France, the Communauté de Communes du Pays de France brought together the rural communities north of the airport, and the Communauté du Val de France the urban communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise (Fig. 7.22). In Seine-et-Marne, the Communauté de Communes de la Plaine de France and the Communauté de Communes du Pays de Dammartin-en-Goële were created. These EPCIs reflected, to a large extent at least, an attempt to share the business and property tax benefits of airport proximity and activity zones, rather than any true effort at spatially appropriate governance.125 In parallel, this period saw the formation of partnerships among businesses, and several initiatives from economic actors, especially in the domains of communication and marketing.126 These alliances did not have spatial planning powers, but testified to the formation of an economic identity for the CDG airport region.127 Another attempt to channel public action at the scale of airport territories was the creation of “airport communities” (“communautés aéroportuaires”). Introduced at the initiative of ­Regional Councils and enacted into law in 2004, these bodies were meant to offer a space of ­dialogue between airports and their environments, by “supporting territorial actions and projects that promote the correction of airport-related environmental damage and

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

date the scale of planning action between the region and the single community or territorial object. Third, regional urban development was

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the quality of urban and rural life, access by local residents to jobs and public facilities, and information on the airport’s impacts on its territory and on actions taken to correct their effects.”128 In the case of CDG , however, this assemblage had weak funding and little support from major actors, and could do little to harmonize airport development with the needs of the territory.129 Some other initiatives of the time that included plan-making activity pertained to specific topics. Actions occurred notably in the Fig. 7.23  Jurisdiction of EPA Plaine de France upon its creation in 2003.

domain of transport. In the context of the Plan de Déplacements Urbains of Ile-de-France (PDU -

IdF) agreed upon in 2001, the elaboration of a local PDU for each of the two major airports was agreed. ADP was charged with developing it, targeting their interface with local transport networks and prioritizing actions to improve access by the working population. The PDU project for the “Roissy hub” acknowledged the “atypical” character of airport access, due to the different types of transport users and their different timeframes of transport use. The engaged measures included ameliorations to the public bus network, implementation of biking paths, better navigation and signalization throughout the airport site, as well as a comeback of the driverless metro among the terminals.130 Amidst the various disparate actions, it was eventually the State that took an initiative with the potential to affect the CDG region more profoundly – even if, in the beginning, this did not appear to be the case. The initiative concerned the creation, in early 2002, of the Établissement Public d’Aménagement (EPA ) Plaine de France (henceforth referred to as EPA PdF), which replaced the Mission Plaine de France.131 The ­perimeter of this new structure encompassed thirty communities and 911,000 inhabitants, covering an area of 230 km 2 that stretched from Saint-Denis, at the limit of Paris, to Louvres, northwest of the airport (Fig. 7.23). Its limits comprised two “priority territories”: that of Roissy and that of Plaine-Saint-Denis. EPA PdF would have a limited life span of 15 years (until 2017), and would be co-managed and co-financed in equal parts by the State, the Region and the two concerned departments (Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-d’Oise).132 It was granted responsibility over urban planning, urban renewal and economic development, and was given a double mandate: strategic and o­ perational. Its strategic role consisted in carrying out studies, setting objectives for the ­territory, ­coordinating local projects and contributing expertise to them. Its operational role consisted in planning and implementing urban development projects, ­acquiring land or buildings and exercising pre-emption rights. Importantly, the authority would ­operate under the “principle of subsidiarity,” meaning that its action would be applicable when a plan or project exceeded the competence of the entity directly responsible. This principle was a double-edged sword: while it indicated its overarching role, it also channeled its intervention to projects that the local authorities were unwilling to deal with themselves.133

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The timing, format, and most importantly the delimitation of EPA PdF did not seem to respond to the need for an overarching governance structure for the CDG airport region. No communities of Seine-et-Marne were included it its perimeter, and neither were the northernmost communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise. The officially given reason was the “continuity of urban structure,” but this made little sense as the space included was already very heterogeneous.134 In fact, the State had conceived EPA PdF as an agency focusing on the area between two centralities: the hub of Roissy to the north and the redevelopment center of Plaine Saint-Denis to the south. Some critics actually saw it as an effort to channel the economic development of the “Roissy hub” to the deindustrializing working-class communities of the Seine-Saint-Denis department, who had become belatedly interested in airport-related economic benefits.135 In any case, the delimitation did not seem to consider the airport as the center of a coherent planning perimeter.136 Indeed, for the first three years of its existence, EPA PdF did little for the airport region. The agency was mostly engaged in explorative work, studies, and discussions with local planning and development actors. Its first “action plan,” disseminated in 2003, contained 70 projects, to which the authority would have different degrees of implication.137 Most projects pertained to already existing operations of urban redevelopment of disadvantaged quarters, rehabilitation around train stations, and improvement of local transport; the focus of the action plan lay mostly with the southern and central part of its perimeter (Fig. 7.24).

A roadmap for planning? A middle-of-the-road assessment of the implementation of the CPER was the opportunity to take the discussion about the CDG territory another step further. During 2003, the Economic and Social Council (CESR ) of Ile-de-France prepared a series of reports regarding the “priority territories.” The report on Roissy presented a comprehensive profile of the territory in terms of population, housing, employment, land use,

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

Fig. 7.24  Projects of the EPA PdF action plan of 2003, regarding transport and urban development (left) and green space and urban renewal (right).

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t­ axation, and regulatory restrictions, and an analysis of its assets and difficulties, recognizing their specificity.138 It highlighted the unworkability of some targets set by the SDRIF, in particular regarding housing construction, and the few benefits brought by the large-scale transport infrastructures, due to the lack of rail stops or road interchanges and of east-west connections. In terms of recommended actions, the report of the CESR proposed three big goals: attractivity, quality, and solidarity. To achieve them, recommendations revolved around three strategic objectives. First, cohesion between the territory’s scales of reference – Europe, Paris Basin, IdF Region, Plaine de France – should be encouraged, by consolidating its assets and by expediting the improvement of accessibility. Second, a balanced economic and social environment should be promoted, with a “reasonable” development of CDG and Le Bourget, greater diversity of economic functions, better distribution of tax benefits, differentiated treatment of each sub-sector, and the provision of various kinds of airport-related specialized job training. Third, development should be reconciled with quality of life, by seeking to control noise pollution, rethinking the development of areas exposed to noise, and preserving the balance between rural and urban areas. The report concluded that the territory was not short on either analyses or initiatives; it was a matter of carrying them out in harmony. Still, it provided little guidance of how to do so. In a parallel action, the technical group placed under the Roissy steering committee of the CPER tasked the consulting firm Ernst & Young with drafting a “planning and development framework for the territories under the influence of Roissy”; it was to propose a detailed and well-argued action plan for “implementing corrective measures in the face of territorial imbalances.”139 The resulting study, disseminated in autumn 2003, was not flattering for the CDG region. The report started by warning about the incoherence of existing initiatives, as “each issue or theme has a different field of action and perimeter, which does not overlap with the others: employment ­areas, research perimeters, cantons, and boroughs for spatial planning, housing basin, shopping a ­ reas, etc.”140 In attempting to construct a consensual “diagnosis” of the territory, the study then synthetized the discrepancies and challenges of the Roissy territory – well-known by then, if rarely explicitly admitted. First of all, whereas the airport gave an indisputable economic dynamism and added-value image to the area, this was counteracted by congestion and incoherence in the spatial management of ­economic activities. Moreover, despite the recent expansion of education and training offer, many local populations still had insufficient access to the jobs of the cluster. In terms of the environment and quality of life, important steps had been taken: measures in noise management, stronger implication of the State on environmental issues, and consensus of governing actors on sustainable development. But on the ground, “environmental saturation” persisted on many levels: aircraft noise, degradation of open space, lack of quality spaces and facilities, suburban sprawl, water and soil pollution. It was aggravated by a still palpable top-down attitude and disregard for local opinions. As for the acclaimed “excellent” accessibility of the airport area, although it was generally true when it came to international and national-scale infrastructure, there was a dire lack of suburb-to-suburb transport options, and the presence of “use conflicts” between transport users (air passengers and suburban commuters). Finally, the “population basin” associated with the airport territory was very heterogeneous. 254

Having developed liberally, as a result of the economic attractiveness of the Roissy cluster, it had been insufficiently spatially managed and faced social risks. Based on this diagnosis, the Ernst & Young study proposed operational objectives and an action plan revolving around five strategic domains: accessibility, economic ambition, attractiveness, training, and governance. As presented in Table 7.2, the plan was wide in scope, taking over the projects of the CPER and enriching them with further actions. Among the more specific ideas, and interesting from an urban planning and development perspective, was the suggestion concerning “selectivity” in business

tions and promoting more attractive living conditions in the airport region (ATT  2). More generally, the study advised more appropriate and more “operational” governing structures, on the one hand by making the CPER committees official, on the other hand by extending the perimeter of the EPA PdF to include the territories north and east of the CDG airport (ATT  2). Interesting was also the focus on territorial marketing and promotion – a new element of public action, particularly with regard to airport-­ related planning (GO  2). These suggestions could be seen as a solid starting point, and indeed it was the first time that a comprehensive action plan for the airport region was delivered. Beyond the specific suggestions though, it is pertinent to remark that the plan of Ernst & Young had a character and content very different from the planning approaches of the previous decades. The fact that it was entrusted to a private entity is in itself telling. The “substantial rationality” of previous plans seemed to be replaced by a “procedural rationality,” where more important than an overarching vision was the procedure of bringing the actors around the table, setting objectives, and distributing actions.142 Furthermore, this model of planning action gave a less important position to spatial concepts; urban planning was but one of the actions employed to “territorialize” strategic objectives, along with economic development, community policy, management, communication and marketing. Compared to the rational and/or land-use-based plans of the previous decades, which had difficulty acknowledging the tensions inherent to the CDG region, such approaches recognized the complexity of airport territories. Nevertheless, the recognition of complexity did not automatically lead to a coherent vision. If anything, the list of objectives and projects gave little to go on with regard to an overall vision, much less a spatial vision. The Ernst & Young study was criticized along these lines by IAURIF planners, who commented in a related note: It seems to us that the project passes by the fundamental problem of the Roissy territory, a problem that justified its designation as priority territory in the CPER  …: how to reconcile the efficiency and attractiveness of the international airport with the sustainable development of the surrounding territory. … Work on a project for the territory [should] continue so as to build a shared strategy … and a spatial ­approach compatible with different interests and different territorial levels.143

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

­areas (AE 2), a concept that as seen in Chapter 6 had been the main argument of the State against the vociferous land consumption promoted by local actors in the early 1990s. This suggestion was associated with that of making accessibility needs a criterion for the localization of economic activities, through the means of a dedicated agency (ACC  4).141 Also, there were suggestions of balancing residential and economic func-

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Strategic domains

Operational objectives

ACCESSIBILITY

ACC  1 Maintain the quality of ­transport networks

• Access to economic activities • Access to jobs (incl. shift-based) • International accessibility • Logistics and freight access

Projects — Monitoring and support of the CPER program — Coordination with local actors on infrastructure ­decisions

AAC  2 Organize the access of ­different audiences

— Coordination of planning instruments for the mobility of various users (travelers, residents, freight)

ACC  3 Connect business locations

— Short term: accessibility plan for economic activity centers — Medium term: scheme for activity zones — Long term: creation of a land and economic ­development agency

ACC  4 Make accessibility needs a criterion for locating economic ­activities

— Long term: creation of an agency for development and market research

ACC  5 Improve public transport s­ ervice for employees

— Extension of on-demand transport and shuttle ­services — Creation of a dedicated TCSP service — Long-term: public transport pricing policy providing incentives for employees

ECONOMIC AMBITION

• Balanced development of ­activities • Mixed economic fabric

AE  1 Strengthen the diversity of the economic fabric of the territories

• Selectivity of activity zones

— Control of land reserves — Development of networks and infrastructures to ­attract the desired activities — Marketing of “driving projects” (such as TdG) — Links between these actions and the actions in terms of manpower qualification (FO  1)

• Complementary development of activity zones AE  2 Launch greater selectivity in business areas

— Creation of inventory of existing business parks — Development of a global scheme of activity zones — Pilot project for the conversion of obsolete business parks

AE  3 Plan the complementary development of activity zones

— Application of a quality charter to all business areas — Creation of new business parks or conversion of ­industrial wasteland as part of the overall scheme of activity zones — Opening of a Centre of Resources and Promotion (CRV )

ATTRACTIVENESS • Residential attractiveness • Balance of residential and ­economic functions • Urban renewal • Dialogue for the management and control of nuisances

ATT  1 Upgrade and develop an adapted and coherent housing ­offer

— Rehabilitation and upgrading of old housing units — Cooperation with social housing associations — Support and improvement of new housing supply — Establishment of a housing commission

ATT  2 Establish the conditions for more attractive urban development and living

— Short-term: placement of the CRV at the service of the populations and the local authorities in terms of residential attractiveness — Long term: extension of the perimeter of intervention of EPA Plaine de France

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TRAINING

• Increase in qualifications of ­population • Consultation between stake­ holders and decision-makers in initial and continuing training • Balanced development of training sites on the territory

ATT  3 Manage nuisances in the t­ erritories in a global and ­concerted manner

— Setting up of a transversal structure to coordinate the management of nuisances — Strengthening of coordination between actors

ATT 4 Promote sustainable overall development to preserve attractiveness

— Long-term: establishment of an environmental charter for the Roissy basin

FO  1 Increase the average ­education level of local ­ populations

— Territorial plan for initial and continuing training with the central role of the IdF Region — Expansion and strengthening of information on ­training opportunities and job prospects

FO  2 Become a center of excellence for aviation professions

— Support for the PUMA project (Pôle Universitaire des Métiers de l’Aérien)

FO  3 Develop innovative solutions — Development of the training dimension of the CRV for access to employment by local — Development of training in “savoir être” skills populations — Innovative projects between training and business FO  4 Coordinate territorial actors — Pooling of resources and means with responsibility in employment — Involvement of the economic world and training

GOVERNANCE

• Identification of a lead partner • Organization of the actors • Promotion and visibility of the territory • Solidarity and territorial cohesion

FO  5 Balance and rationalize the location of training offer in the ­territory

— Improvement of information on the territory’s ­qualifications — Coherence in the geographical distribution of new education and training projects

GO  1 Introduce an organizational and institutional system integrating all scales and themes

— Strategic management by the Steering Committee

GO  2 Strengthen the promotion and visibility of the territory

— Implementation of the CRV

— Launching and monitoring of actions by the technical working group — Coordination of trans-territorial projects by lead ­partners

— Dissemination of CPER ’s ambitions

GO  3 Launch a reflection on better — Launch a legal, financial and tax study to examine a solidarity between territories better distribution of fiscal benefits

Table 7.2  Synthesis of domains, strategic stakes, operational objectives and main projects as suggested by the Ernst & Young study

Based on the above, it should come as no surprise that the proposals of the study hardly led to action, nor that the implementation of the measures of the CPER stagnated.144 The first efforts at “airport-related” planning and governance seemed to bear few fruits. Even when consensus was reached and a shared vision was beginning to be ­constructed, the fragmentation of actors and approaches torpedoed its moving from discourse to action. With regard to territorial limits, the fact that the CDG airport was located at the intersection of three departments and eight communities was unhelpful; and the spontaneous assemblages of public action seemed to add more complexity than clarity. 257

Thus, despite the recognition of the airport region as territory with a specific problematic, requiring a specific policy and planning focus, the precariousness and complexity of the institutional context, patchwork of “strategic” approaches, and ­difficulty of true dialogue among the implicated actors condemned efforts at comprehensive planning. As Etienne Berthon observed in “Aéroports et Territoires”: For the urban management of the territory, due to the complexity of the political-­ administrative divisions, the multiplicity of actors, the central presence of the extraterritorial UFO that is the airport, even if many things are happening, we have not yet succeeded in building the framework of a global planning approach, a strategic vision on the whole Roissy hub. This is however necessary.145

1 Original: “si l’objectif d’un pôle de développement à Roissy paraît pertinent, les modalités et les caractéristiques envisagées (en particulier la notion ‘d’aéroville’ et de grand pôle tertiaire) semblent irréalistes.” SEPROREP and SOFTLOFT MANAGEMENT , “Etude de définition des stratégies possibles de développement économique des zones d’activités internationales du pôle de Roissy. Rapport final” (Direction Régionale de l’Equipement d’Ile-deFrance, 1993), p. 4 .  2  Mission Roissy, “Etude prospective des transports sur le pôle de Roissy” (1994).  3 Original: “un pôle qui attire sur le secteur les entreprises qui ont effectivement besoin de Roissy, mais qui écarte celles dont Roissy n’a pas besoin.” SEPROREP and SOFTLOFT MANAGEMENT , “Etude de définition des stratégies possibles de développement économique des zones d’activités internationales du pôle de Roissy. Rapport final,” p. 7. 4  AFTRP , Démarches Urbaines.  5  Mission Roissy, “L’amé­ na­ gement du Triangle de Gonesse” (1993).  6 “Projet d’aménagement du secteur de Roissy” (Direction Ré­ gionale de l’Equipement de l’Ile-de-France, 1995). 7  “Aménagement du Sud de l’aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle. Projet de développement – Document Cadre” (Direction Régionale de l’Equipement de l’Ile-de-France, 1995). 8 Original: “la qualité des aménagements et la mise en valeur du site, en lui donnant une image forte et cohérente, participant à la requalification de la banlieue nord est de Paris, notamment par la mise en oeuvre de la ceinture verte régionale …; la préservation des possibilités d’extension de l’aéroport en lui assurant de bonnes conditions d’accessibilité et de fonctionnement; la nécessité d’instaurer une certaine sélectivité des entreprises (centres directionnels, fonctions commerciales et formation) de façon à-maintenir l’ambition euro­ péenne …; la prise en compte des besoins en logements des actifs du pôle en développant un habitat diversifié et de qualité en dehors des zones de nuisances, relié par les transports en commun au pôle d’emplois; une démarche partenariale et une intervention coordonnée de l’ensemble des parties prenantes dans l’aménage-

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ment.” Ibid., p. 7.  9  The design of the zone was a synthesis between the winning project of the urban design consultation, by the Massimiliano Fuksas team, and the project for the extension of the PEX , also the result of a design consultation organized by the CCIP , where the winners were the Valode et Pistre and Architecture Studio teams.  10  Massimiliano Fuksas, “Etude d’aménagements paysagers du site Sud Charles de Gaulle” (Ville de Tremblay-en-France, 1995).  11  According to Jean Fleury introducing the landscape study. Original: “retrouver à l’intérieur une nouvelle unité [et] associer l’aéroport à son voisinage.” Aéroports de Paris, “Roissy-CDG , porte verte de l’Ile-de-France” (1995).  12  Michel Corajoud, Alain Provost, Michel Desvignes and Christine Dalnoky.  13 Conseil Régional Ile-de-France, “Création d’un perimètre d’acquisition sur la frange sud de la Plaine de France” (1997 ). 14  IAURIF , “Schéma directeur de l’Est du Val d’Oise. Note Technique” (1995).  15  Mission Roissy and Commune de Gonesse, “Etudes d’aménagement du ‘Triangle de Gonesse.’ Cahier des Charges” (Direction Régionale de l’Equipement de l’Ile-de-France, 1996).  16 François Grether and Anne Ledœuff, “Étude d’aménagement du ‘Triangle de Gonesse’” (Mission Roissy, 1997 ).  17  Jacques Grangé, “Plaine de France: un territoire indécidable? Une rétrospective de la planification urbaine dans le secteur de Roissy,” in Aéroports et Territoires, ed. IAURIF (Paris: 2003).  18  “Roissy Cedex. Une adresse que l’on s’arrache,” Le Parisien, 29.11.1989.  19 Orlytech in particular had reached an occupancy rate of almost 100 % by 1990, with ADP itself occupying part of the premises. “Aéroports de Paris ‘développeur’ immobilier.”  20  Cavard, “L’aéroport Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle: une ‘nouvelle donne’ pour ­l’espace régional.”  21 “Aéroports de Paris. Diversification … ralentie des produits immobiliers,” Le Moniteur, 05.03 .1993 .  22  Mouthiez, “‘Continental Square’: le pari d’un promoteur sur Roissypole.”  23  PME-PMI stands for Petite ou Moyenne Enterprise-Petite ou Moyenne Industrie; that is, small or medium-sized company or industry, which in France corresponds to a size of between 10 and

Monde, 27.09.1994 . The represented parties were the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR ), Union pour la démocratie française (UDF ), Parti Socialiste (PS ), and Parti Communiste Français (PCF ).  45  Denis Fainsilber, “Le retour en grâce d’Orly,” Les Echos, 16.06.1994.  46 “L’ouverture à la concurrence de plusieurs lignes aériennes. Les riverains de l’aéroport d’Orly craignent de nouvelles ­nuisances,” Le Monde, 04 .06 .1994 .  47 The ceiling of 250,000 airline slots nominally corresponded to 200,000 airplane movements, given that airlines used approximately 80 % of their slots. Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.”  48  President François Mitterrand, Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, Minister of Transport Bernard Bosson, President of Ile-de-France Michel Giraud, ADP ’s new president Jean Fléry, and SNCF ’s president Jean Bergougnoux.  49  The station itself cost 1.87 billion, the rest of the module 515 million. Funding was provided by SNCF (52 %), ADP (39 %) and the Region Ile-de-France (9 %). Christophe Palièrse, “Nouvelle gare de Roissy: TGV , RER et avions en direct,” La Tribune Desfossés, 02 .11.1994 . 50  At the station’s opening, fourteen trains ran per day. Lille was placed at 50 min, Lyon at 2 hours, and Marseille at 4 hours 23 min from CDG , without the need to stop at central Paris. Martine Laronche, “Le mariage de l’avion et du train à grande vitesse,” Le Monde, 01.11.1994; PierreYves Le Priol, “À Roissy, le TGV se marie avec l’avion,” La Croix, 29.10.1994 .  51 Mission d’étude sur la desserte aéroportuaire du grand bassin parisien, “Rapport au Ministre de l’Equipement, du Logement, des Transports et du Tourisme et au Secrétaire d’Etat aux Transports” (1996). 52 In 1995 , 43 ,000 people were directly employed at CDG , with many more employed in jobs associated from the airport. Alain Echegut, “La CCI de Paris plaide pour une nouvelle piste à Roissy,” Les Echos, 29.06.1995.  53 According to Marie-Pierre Rogers, director of FedEx for France. Original: “Paris est le seul grand aéroport européen qui n’impose pas de contraintes draconiennes en matière de bruit, qui est ouvert 24 heures sur 24 , qui dispose d’espaces disponibles considérables, qui n’est pas du tout saturé, et dont l’autorité aéroportuaire ADP agit en partenaire efficace. … Pour l’avenir, Paris est la seule plate-forme européenne à disposer d’autant de possibilité d’interconnexion intermodale: air, route avec les autoroutes et fer avec le TGV .” B. Rivière, “Federal Express fait de Paris son hub européen,” Aéroports Magazine, 06.1993.  54  Frédéric Lemaitre, “Federal Express installera sa plate-forme européenne à Roissy,” Le Monde, 26.04 .1996.  55  Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.” 56  Frédéric Lombard, “Les opposants à l’extension de l’aéroport de Roissy entre espoir et inquiétude,” Le Monde, 18 .06.1997.  57 Between 1990 and 1997, traffic had risen marginally, and jobs on the platform had actually fallen, from 31,000 to 27,000 jobs. After 1997, Orly started recording traffic losses. Graziella Riou, “La zone aéroportuaire d’Orly a perdu 4 ,000 emplois en sept ans,” Les Echos, 21.10.1999.  58  This double-sided attitude of local representatives was mostly observed in the densely populated communities of Val-de-Marne, located east of the airport: Orly, Villeneuve-le-Roi, Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, Valenton, Limeil-Brévannes, Boissy-Saint-Leger. These communities suffered from worse conditions compared to

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

249 employees.  24  Joël Cossardeaux, “Le nouveau centre d’affaires de Roissy accueille ses premiers clients,” Les Echos, 05.05.1995.  25 Luc Pollet, interview by author, 2013.  26  Eric Lecourt, “Roissy: la piste aux étoiles,” Le Figaro, 15.02.1996.  27  “Trois nouvelles enseignes à Roissy,” Aeroports magazine, 11.1992.  28  Lecourt, “Roissy: la piste aux étoiles.”  29  “Siège en ligne pour Air France,” Le Moniteur, 15.03.1996.  30  Joël Cossardeaux, “Le pôle de Roissy se remet en piste,” Les Echos, 02.10.1997.  31 Pollet, “Responsable des études d’aménagement, ADP .” 32  “Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle: une ville en piste,” Le Nouvel Observateur, 04 .06.1992; Joël Cossardeaux, “L’envol difficile de Roissy,” Les Echos, 19.10.1995.  33 High-order or advanced services activities are customarily defined as those associated with headquarters or knowledge-intensive business services, including management, accounting, legal affairs, finance, and real estate.  34 Original: “Paris a la chance d’avoir à ses portes une plateforme aéro­ portuaire disposant d’importantes réserves de capacité. II ne faut pas gaspiller cette chance, unique en Europe. Même s’il n’est pas forcément souhaitable d’aller jusqu’au maximum de la capacité, il est indispensable … de ménager l’avenir.” Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-deFrance, “Ile de France. Schéma Directeur 2015 ,” p. 39. 35 In 1990, Air France was merged with the smaller semi-public Air Inter and the privately owned UTA , creating the Air France Group. The group however faced financial deficits, growing debt, and internal conflicts. In order to exit the crisis and strengthen its position in the European landscape, Air France underwent a restructuring process between 1993 and 2003, rationalizing its operations and renewing its commercial policy.  36  The events and discourses surrounding the extension plans of CDG between 1993 and 1999 have been analyzed in depth by Philippe Subra and Charlotte Halpern, in their studies of the geopolitics of airport development and of public decision-making against interest conflicts respectively. My documentation here summarizes the main rationales related to planning. Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.”; Halpern, “La décision publique entre intérêt général et intérêts territorialisés.”  37  In total, 97 communities were inquired, of which 47 were in favor of the project, 30 against, and 20 did not reply.  38  “Limiter la gêne des riverains,” Le Monde, 09.09.1994 .  39  These two big associations acted as umbrellas for several smaller ones. ­A DVOCNAR was created in 1984 and APELNA (Association pour la Protection de l’Environnement et la Limitation des Nuisances Aériennes) in 1991.  40  “Roissy en marche vers une troisième piste,” La Croix, 07.04 .1994 . 41  Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.”  42  The mission was entrusted by the Minister of Transport Bernard Bosson to the consultant-engineer Michel Fève, with the explicit instruction to not consider a third airport, on the grounds that it was neither possible nor desirable to have a national airport located away from the capital, and that CDG possessed capacity reserves that should be exploited.  43 Michel Fève, “Avant-Projet de plan de masse ­modificatif de l’aérodrome de Paris-Charles de Gaulle” ­(Ministre de l’Équipements, des Transports et du Tou­ risme, 1994).  44  “La manifestation contre l’extension de Charles-de-Gaulle. ‘A Roissy, on détruit les humains’,” Le

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CDG  – a poor economy along with very high noise annoyance. Their representatives denounced the negative impacts of airport operation, but also lamented any loss of air traffic, inevitably leading to loss of jobs. Gaelle Dupont, “Le bruit ou l’emploi, le dilemme des maires,” Le Monde, 31.07.1998 .  59  A proposal advanced by Gayssot for the specialization of Orly in short- and medium-haul flights was met with widespread opposition. The Minister abandoned the idea but impelled Air France to keep its maintenance services at Orly, along with the 400 jobs that came with them. Christophe de Chenay, “La spécialisation d’Orly, menace pour l’économie du sud de l’Ile-de-France?” ibid., 25 .03 .1999.  60 See the association’s website: https://gipemploiroissy.fr/le-gip-emploi-roissy-cdg-2 . 61 Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.” 62 Ibid. 63  Halpern, “La décision publique entre intérêt général et intérêts territorialisés.” 64 Original: “Le SIEVO demande un développement extrêmement modéré de l’aéroport, objectif d’ailleurs contradictoire avec la volonté de profiter des effets economiques qu il’in­ duit. … ceci n’empêche pas de partager entièrement le souci des élus du SIEVO que ce développement s’effectue sans augmentation des nuisances de bruit subies par les riverains et même en recherchant leur diminution.” IAURIF , “Schéma directeur de l’Est du Val d’Oise. Note Technique.”  65  This last revision was in fact never instituted as the IP was replaced by the Lden, which was even stricter; but it took until 2007 for the new PEB of CDG to come into force.  66  Faburel and Barraqué, “Les impacts territoriaux du bruit des avions. Le cas de l’urbanisation à proximité de Roissy CDG . Ne pas évaluer pour pouvoir dire tout, et son contraire,” p. 30.  67 The TGV station was definitely among the “success stories”: in its first full year of operation (1995), 430,000 people used the TGV , half of whom in connection with the airplane. Olivier Noyer, “Démarrage réussi pour la gare de Roissy,” Les Echos, 15.01.1996.  68  Ibid. “A Roissy, le RER ne fait pas recette,” ibid., 28 .04 .1997.  69 Philippe Subra, “Quelle desserte pour les grandes plates-formes aéroportuaires? L’exemple de Roissy-Charles de Gaulle et du projet du CDG ­Express,” L’Information géographique Vol. 72 (2008). 70  The project was initially expected to cost around 600 million francs, but by 1999 it had already cost more than 1 billion francs (150 million Euros), without its problems being resolved. See also: Martine Robert, “Roissy: dérapage financier pour le système de transport,” Les Echos, 07.02.1996; “Le métro fantôme de Roissy,” Le Canard Enchaîné, 18 .05.1999.  71  Denis Fainsilber, “L’américain Fed­ Ex inaugure aujourd’hui son ‘super-hub’ de Roissy,” Les Echos, 27.09.1999.  72 Original: “Lorsque nous avons conçu Roissy 2 en 1981, nous n’avions pas de problème aigu de correspondance à régler. Il s’agissait alors d’une gare terminale, avec un trafic étalé dans le temps et peu de postes de stationnement pour les appareils au contact direct de l’aérogare. Ce n’est plus le cas aujourd’hui avec la politique de ‘hubs’ d’Air France, qui rassemble de nombreux vols sur quelques tranches horaires, nécessitant un important trafic de bus pour rapatrier les passagers des avions trop éloignés.” Martine Robert and Luc Citrinot, “Les aéroports découvrent la concurrence,” ibid., 10.06.1993.  73  Denis Fainsilber, “Air France trans-

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forme Roissy en plaque tournante,” ibid., 29.03.1996.  74 M. R., “De plus en plus d’avions ‘au contact’ des terminaux,” Le Moniteur, 18 .02 .1994 .  75 Original: “Désormais, Air France conçoit et dessine les infrastructures aéroportuaires qui lui conviennent le mieux, et ADP les paie. Une relation nouvelle, dans la mesure où la compagnie nationale estimait souvent par le passé qu’elle devait s’accommoder de terminaux élaborés par ADP , pas forcément optimaux par rapport à ses besoins.” Denis Fainsilber, “Air France dévoile un projet de trois nouveaux terminaux pour Roissy,” Les Echos, 01.02.2000.  76 Ca­ therine Levi, “Roissy, un nouveau temple de la consommation à la française,” ibid., 06.04 .1999.  77 “ADP : L’ex­ ception européenne,” ibid., 01.01.2000.  78  “Ça bouge à Paris-Nord II ,” benefice.net, juin–juillet–août 1998 . 79 Original: “Le parc du Ring, principal élément structu­ rant du quartier de la gare, est limité à un rôle marginal, loin du cœur du quartier et réduit à un simple rôle de masquage … dans l’incertitude de l’avenir, la définition des vides peut constituer un élément de régulation du système.” Massimiliano Fuksas, “Aménagement du site Sud Charles de Gaulle” (Ville de Tremblay-en-France, 1999).  80  Eric Veillon, “Dossier: Pôle de Roissy, pôle d’attraction,” benefice.net, mai/juin 2002.  81  This refers to the perimeter defined by Mission Roissy, minus the farthest communities of Seine-et-Marne to the east of the airport. This 63 -community perimeter would be used ­systematically by IAURIF from the late 1990 s onwards. 82 Etienne Berthon, “L’importance des échanges d’expériences et de bonnes pratiques: deux partenariats ­européens de l’IAURIF sur les problèmes aéroportuaires,” in Aéroports et Territoires, ed. IAURIF , Les Cahiers de l’IAURIF (Paris: 2004).  83  As seen in data for the period 1982 – 1999. Ludovic Halbert, “The Decentralization of Intrametropolitan Business Services in the Paris Region: Patterns, Interpretation, Consequences,” Economic Geography 80, no. 4 (2004).  84  The Roissy sector (63 communities) had 590,000 residents and 217,000 housing units in 1999, registering an increase of 20 % and 32 % respectively since 1975, compared to 33 % and 47 % respectively in the rest of the grande couronne. Berthon, “L’importance des échanges d’expériences et de bonnes pratiques: deux partenariats européens de l’IAURIF sur les problèmes aéroportuaires.”  85  Mission Roissy, “Etude d’ensemble du devenir des Vieux Pays soumis aux nuisances de l’aéroport CDG . Diagnostic et établissement d’une typologie, Sud-Est du Val-d’Oise” (DREIF , 1999); “Etude d’ensemble du devenir des Vieux Pays soumis aux nuisances de l’aéroport CDG . Propositions d’intervention, Sud-Est du Val-d’Oise” (DREIF , 1999).  86 Etienne Berthon, interview by author, 2014 .  87 Original: “le défaut de la Mission Roissy est qu’elle n’était pas opérationnelle, c’était plutôt une mission de coordination, de mise en cohérence. … Notre point de vue [est que] c’est ça qui faudrait.” Gaëlle Bonnefond, interview by author, 2014 . 88 Jean-Louis Jamet, “Territoires prioritaires du CPER 2000 – 2006: Roissy. Rapport préparé au nom de la commission de l’aménagement du territoire” (Ile-de-France conseil économique et social régional, 2003).  89 Etienne Berthon, “Roissy, le dynamisme du pôle de développement dans un environnement social en difficulté,” in Aéro-

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

ports et Territoires, ed. IAURIF , Les Cahiers de l’IAURIF 2001), p. 13.  98  Ibid., pp. 27 – 30.  99  Berthon, “L’impor(Paris: 2003).  90  Jamet, “Territoires prioritaires du CPER tance des échanges d’expériences et de bonnes pra2000 – 2006: Roissy. Rapport préparé au nom de la com- tiques: deux partenariats européens de l’IAURIF sur les mission de l’aménagement du territoire.”  91 Since 1992, problèmes aéroportuaires.” 100  COFAR and IAURIF , the year when CDG caught up with Orly in terms of pas- “L’airport city et son intégration régionale. Rapport final” senger traffic, the gap between the two airports had kept (2001).  101  Participants included the President of ADP growing. The choice of Air France to make CDG its hub, Yves Cousquer, Minister of Transport Jean-Claude Gayssot, along with the government policy of keeping Orly mostly the President of the CRIF Jean-Paul Huchon, the mayor for short- and medium-haul flights, had crippled the lat- of Tremblay François Asensi, delegates of the departter’s growth perspectives. Orly registered negative growth ments of Val-d’Oise, Seine-Saint-Denis and Seine-etrates in most of the years between 1997 and 2004 . Still, Marne, representatives of Air France, DGAC (Direction the airport together with the Rungis Market and the ad- ­National de l’Aviation Civile), CCIP , AFTRP , the regions in joining activity zones (SENIA , SILIC , SOGARIS , Belle Epine the COFAR project, and the European Commission, as well commercial center) constituted the most important eco- as residents of the CDG area. “Aéroports et territoires, les nomic centrality of the southern periphery of Paris. The nouvelles dynamiques. Premières Rencontres Internatio“Orly-Rungis hub” (“Pôle Orly-Rungis”) hosted 3,000 busi- nales de Roissy-CDG ” (2000).  102 Original: “Il s’agit de nesses and 66,000 jobs, of which 27,000 on the airport trouver avec les acteurs du transport aérien et la popuand 15,400 in the Rungis market. These activities were lation des solutions qui aillent dans le sens d’un déve­ vital especially for the communities of the department of loppement durable. Ce travail en partenariat commence Val-de-Marne along the Seine river, east of the airport, à apporter des résultats, mais on mesure le retard pris which had been strongly affected by the de-industrializa- pendant des années lorsque les collectivités riveraines tion of the 1980 s and featured lower-than-average in- avaient le sentiment que l’aéroport relevait de l’extra-tercomes and higher-than-average unemployment. Lucien ritorialité.” Ibid., p. 7.  103  Caroline Drouet and Michèle Dumont-Fouya, “Territoires prioritaires du CPER Collin, eds., Aéroports et dynamique des territoires 2000 – 2006: Seine Amont. Rapport préparé au nom de (PREDIT  – LTMU  – IFU , 2000). The main research partner la commission de l’aménagement du territoire” (Ile-de- was the Laboratoire Théories des Mutations Urbaines France conseil économique et social régional, 2003). (LTMU ), directed by Alain Bourdin.  104  Proximity to the 92 Original: “par un nouveau processus de partenariat airport per se was found to be neither necessarily nor diouvert avec l’ensemble des acteurs franciliens, à con- rectly associated with depreciation, except for the zones tribuer à une conception renouvelée de l’aménagement very directly exposed to nuisance (i.e., in the high-impact régional par une approche territoriale des politiques zones of noise exposure plans). Rather, the usual process menée.” Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-de-France and Ile- was that aircraft noise led to the fleeing of wealthy housede-France conseil économique et social régional, “Contrat holds, causing a decline in average incomes and the conde Plan Etat-Région 2000 – 2006 Ile-de-France” (2000). centration in the airport area of populations with no 93  These were: Plaine-Saint-Denis, Gennevilliers, Roissy, means of residential mobility. This in turn led to a decline Marne la Vallée, Seine-Amont, Sénart, Saclay, and the in building quality and to a reduced level of maintenance Seine valley. Philippe Estèbe and Patrick Le Galès, “La of the housing stock by the occupants. Eventually, a spiral métropole parisienne: à la recherche du pilote?” [The of devaluation was triggered. COFAR and ADEF , “L’impact ­Parisian Metropolis: Who Will Take the Helm?] Revue des nuisances sonores de Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle sur le française d’administration publique 107, no. 3 (2003). marché foncier et l’immobilier” (2001).  105  IAURIF , 94 Original: “territoire à fort potentiel scientifique et “L’impact socio-économique des aéroports franciliens” économique.” Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-de-France (IAURIF , 2003).  106  CDG , Orly and Le Bourget together and Ile-de-France conseil économique et social régional, offered 103,650 direct jobs in 2001. Overall, airlines pro“Contrat de Plan Etat-Région 2000 – 2006 Ile-de-France,” vided half of all employment – Air France alone 42 % – folArt.20.  95  Together, these airports accounted for 80 % of lowed by ADP (9 %), Servair (catering), FedEx, and govthe intercontinental access of Northwestern Europe and ernment services (police and customs). In Roissy, job 50 % of intra-European air links, and were responsible for growth occurred predominantly in the “hub center” (“cœur 600,000 direct and indirect jobs.  96  COFAR was part of du pôle”), where 63 % of jobs were airport-related; in the the Program INTERREG II C initiated by the European entire “Roissy sector,” 40 % of jobs were airport-related. Commission to encourage Member States to cooperate in Conversely, in Orly this percentage was 23 %, with the a more operational ways in regional and spatial planning. ­airport constituting one economic center among many. It The partners of the COFAR project were: Province of North was further calculated that in CDG , every million air Holland (Netherlands, lead partner); Dutch Ministry of ­passengers corresponded to 1,560 jobs, whereas in Orly Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment; Vlaams-­ only to 1,080. Ibid.  107  IAURIF , Aéroports et Territoires. Brabant Province and Ministère de la Région Wallonne 108  Güller and Güller, From Airport to Airport City.  109 In (Belgium), IAURIF , ADP , and City of Tremblay-en-France the words of Hervé Gay, general manager of IAURIF , in (France); Umlandverband Frankfurt (Germany); Essex the foreword of the publication “Aéroports et Territoires.” County Council, West Sussex County Council, and Thanet IAURIF , Aéroports et Territoires, p. 4 .  110  Subra, “Roissy District Council (United Kingdom); and Fingal County et le troisième aéroport.”  111  In addition to DGAC (DirecCouncil (Ireland).  97  COFAR , “Common Options for Air- tion of Civil Aviation), who coordinated the consultation, port Regions. Final Report” (Province of Noord-Holland, no less than fifty types of actors were invited: seven

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­ministries, the DATAR , members of parliament, represen- ­Orly-Rungis (2007 ). For the interested reader, Lisa Lévy tatives of the various local authorities, chambers, and in- provides an engaging analysis of the attempts at goverterest groups, SNCF , RFF , ADP , other transport and plan- nance and planning of the Orly territory during the 2000 s ning authorities, airlines, air transport unions, and various in her doctoral thesis: Lisa Lévy, “L’improvisation en associations from large national to small local ones. aménagement du territoire: d’une réalité augmentée aux 112 Original: “ce troisième aéroport existe déjà. Il suffit fondements d’une discipline pour l’action? Enquête sur de développer les plates-formes existantes.” Quoted in un projet interdépartemental (le Pôle d’Orly)” (Université Dominique Buffier, “M. Bussereau confirme le rejet du de Grenoble, 2014).  130  Aéroports de Paris, “Plan de détroisième aéroport parisien,” Le Monde, 23 .05 .2002 . placements urbains d’Ile-de-France: pôle aéroportuaire 113  Subra, “Roissy et le troisième aéroport.”  114 François de CDG . Projet de pôle 2003 – 2006” (2003).  131 An Bostnavaron, “Un troisième ‘réseau’ plutôt qu’un troisième Établissement Public d’Aménagament is a public planning aéroport,” Le Monde, 29.11.2003 .  115  N. S. , “Aéroports and development agency under the authority of the de Paris, la SNCF et RFF créent CDG Express,” Les Echos, French State, whose purpose is generally operational, i.e., 14 .06.2000.  116 Between 1996 and 2000, the CDG Ex- to carry out land and development operations on behalf press project was debated against another solution for a of the public hand, which can include the state, a local direct airport link, which had been proposed by the CCIP authority, or a public establishment.  132  Décret n° 2002and had the support of RATP and Air France. This was an 477 du 8 avril 2002.  133  Cour des comptes, “Rapport underground highway doubling the A1 between Paris and particulier: Établissement Public d’Aménagement Plaine CDG , named “Roissy Express.” Due to its higher environ- de France (EPA Plaine de France). Exercices 2006 à 2011” mental footprint, this project was rejected.  117 Aéroports (2014).  134 Jamet, “Territoires prioritaires du CPER de Paris, SNCF , and RFF , “CDG Express. Le dossier du 2000 – 2006: Roissy. Rapport préparé au nom de la commaître d’ouvrage” (2003).  118  CPDP CDG Express, Syn- mission de l’aménagement du territoire.”  135  Eric Veillon, thèse du compte rendu du débat public sur le projet CDG “EPA ‘Plaine de France.’ L’Etat met en place un ‘machin’,” Express, 2004 ; Dominique Buffier, “Le débat public Benefice.Net, 01.2002.  136  Grangé, “Plaine de France: conduit à une révision importante du projet Charles-­ un territoire indécidable? Une rétrospective de la planifi­ de-Gaulle Express,” Le Monde, 17.05.2004 .  119 Subra, cation urbaine dans le secteur de Roissy.”  137  EPA Plaine “Quelle desserte pour les grandes plates-formes aéropor- de France, “Programme d’action à moyen terme” (2003). tuaires?”  120 Original: “Les questions aéroportuaires 138  Jamet, “Territoires prioritaires du CPER 2000 – 2006: passent alors de la sphère privée du secteur de l’aviation Roissy. Rapport préparé au nom de la commission de civile à la sphère publique qui est celle de la polity au l’aménagement du territoire.” 139 Original: “schéma sens le plus large du terme.” Halpern, “ Les ressorts poli- d’aménagement et de développement des territoires tiques de la décision publique en matière de planification sous influence de Roissy”; “mettre en œuvre des disposiaéroportuaire: les mobilisations autour de l’aéroport tifs correctifs face aux déséquilibres territoriaux”. Ernst ­Paris-Charles de Gaulle.”  121  Jacques Grangé, interview & Young, “Schéma d’aménagement et de développement: by author, 2015.  122 Subra, Le Grand Paris: Géopoli- territoires sous influence du pôle aéroportuaire de Roissy” tique d’une ville mondiale.  123  Estèbe and Le Galès, “La (2003), p. 7.  140  Original in French: “Chaque problémamétropole parisienne: à la recherche du pilote?” tique ou thématique présente un champ d’action et un 124  Jamet, “Territoires prioritaires du CPER 2000 – 2006: périmètre différents, qui ne se recoupent pas avec les Roissy. Rapport préparé au nom de la commission de autres: bassins d’emplois, logiques d’académie, cantons l’aménagement du territoire.”  125 Grangé, “Plaine de et arrondissements pour l’aménagement du territoire, France: un territoire indécidable? Une rétrospective de la bassins d’habitat, zones de chalandises, etc.” Ibid., planification urbaine dans le secteur de Roissy.”  126 For p. 14 .  141  This idea was most likely inspired by the SADC example, the publication by Eric Veillon of the quarterly agency (Schiphol Area Development Corporation), remagazine “Benefice.net, le magazine des décideurs du sponsible for real estate development around the Amsterpôle de Roissy.”  127  Berthon, “Roissy, le dynamisme du dam Schiphol airport, which had been successfully implepôle de développement dans un environnement social en menting a program of selectivity in the implementation difficulté.”  128 Original: “soutenir des actions territori- of businesses over the previous decade.  142 Grangé, ales et des projets permettant de favoriser la correction “Plaine de France: un territoire indécidable? Une rétrodes atteintes aéroportuaires à l’environnement et à la spective de la planification urbaine dans le secteur de qualité de la vie urbaine et rurale, l’accès des riverains Roissy.”  143 Italics added by author. Original: “Il nous aux emplois et aux équipements collectifs et l’informa- semble que le projet passe à côté du problème fondation relative aux impacts de l’aéroport sur son territoire mental du territoire de Roissy, problème qui a justifié son et aux actions menées pour en corriger les effets.” Loi inscription en site prioritaire du CPER …: comment conno 2004 -172 du 23 février 2004 portant création des cilier l’efficacité et l’attractivité de l’aéroport internationcommunautés aéroportuaires.  129 Let me note here al avec le développement durable du territoire qui l’enthat the territory of Orly was also the subject of a rising toure … [L]e travail sur le projet de territoire [devrait] se awareness of local actors in this period and actually fared poursuivre pour construire une stratégie partagée … et better than CDG in terms of the formation of alliances. At une déclinaison spatiale qui soit compatible avec les difthe impetus of local governments, the association Pôle férents intérêts et les différentes échelles territoriales.” Orly was created (2003) and eventually led to the estab- IAURIF , “Note sur le projet de territoire du pôle aéroporlishment of a public development agency, the EPA tuaire Roissy-en-France” (2003).  144 Fouad Awada,

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port, même si beaucoup de choses se passent, on n’a pas pu réussir encore à construire le cadre d’une approche de planification globale, d’une vision stratégique sur l’ensemble du pôle de Roissy. Elle est pourtant indispensable.” Berthon, “Roissy, le dynamisme du pôle de développement dans un environnement social en difficulté,” p. 87.

CHAPTER 7  Fatigue and renewal (1994 – 2004)

“Gouvernance métropolitaine, gouvernance aéroportuaire: Acteurs et enjeux en Ile-de-France,” in Aéroports et ­Territoires, ed. IAURIF , Les Cahiers de l’IAURIF (Paris: 2003). 145 Original: “Pour la gestion urbaine du territoire, à cause de la complexité des découpages politico-administratifs, de la multiplicité des acteurs, de la présence centrale de l’ovni extraterritorial qu’est l’aéro-

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Fig. 7.25  In the town of Goussainville, at the limit of the noise impact zone, working-class housing stands next to vast agricultural land.

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013) A region and an airport in need of evolution Articulating planning strategies A new governmental impetus A development boom Grand Paris, Grand Roissy, and the “airport corridor” In search of spatial coherence Development as consensus? Converging ideals and the 2013 SDRIF The elusive governance of the airport region

 T

his last chapter of the narrative considers the period between 2004 and 2013. ­A fter the ineffective attempts of the first half of the 2000s in constructing a plan for the CDG airport region and the spatial management of its impacts, things take a turn in the second half of the decade. The interest of the central state in Plaine de France channels new planning endeavors and project-making in the area, supporting a development boom; this development interest, however, lacks explication and collaborative action. Then, the advent of the Grand Paris vision and its focus on the growth of the CDG airport and the role of the “Grand Roissy” as economic cluster provides a new spatial vision for the area. Planning and development activity are reinvigorated. Despite raising objections about almost exclusively economically driven character, this vision acts favorably towards reaching a novel consensus in the CDG airport region. Nevertheless, the precariousness of this consensus is marked by the persistence of under­ lying divergences that prevent the long-wished-for coherence being reached.

A region and an airport in need of evolution A new phase for planning in the Paris region started in 2004, when the Regional Council of Ile-de-France announced its intention to revise the regional plan. It would be the first plan elaborated by the Region rather than the State, which would only need to approve the final document. The revision was announced amidst widespread dissatisfaction with the trajectory of the capital, which seemed to lag behind other large cities in both quality of life and economic dynamism. Between 1992 and 2002, its growth had been slower than French regions on average, and several indicators pointed to a decrease in attractiveness in relation to other European metropolises. The construction of housing units was far below the objectives of the 1994 SDRIF, and the consumption of green spaces 20 % higher.1 The disparities in wealth and amenities, the isolation and poor urban quality of several communities, and the lacking solidarity between territories could no longer be ignored. Tension was foreshadowed from the outset of the announced revision, as the Region and the city of Paris made clear their disagreement with the top-down attitude of the State typified by the 1994 SDRIF.2 The CRIF denounced the standing document’s insufficient treatment of the main challenges, the lacking implementation of its orientations, as well as the discrepancy between its central conception and the decentralized practices of urban and spatial planning. The new regional plan would differ from its predecessors and the rational comprehensive model of planning to which they adhered. A communicative approach was embraced, with a large focus placed on process.3 Sponsored by the vice-president of the CRIF Mireille Ferri, affiliated to the Green Party, the preparations for the new SDRIF involved a large consultation process that brought together associations, inhabitants, and elected officials in dozens of workshops, forums, and conferences. Key goals of the plan as promoted by the Region’s planners included fighting against territorial inequalities and anticipating the effects of the energy crisis and climate change. Naturally, the inclusion of a wide range of actors meant that there were disagreements. Several communities protested the prioritization of densification, and the department of Hauts-de-Seine voiced its refusal to limit the development of La Défense in favor of an east-west rebalancing.4 But also 268

the State was critical of the Region’s approach, ­denouncing the modest growth targets and limited focus on competitiveness. The treatment of the Paris airports, particularly Charles de Gaulle, turned out to be one of the first points of contention between State and Region. The State made clear that it considered CDG and Orly crucial, and the preservation of their capacity necessary. But the Region wanted to control their development, and Fig. 8 .1  Aerial view of Terminal 2E.

in the first project for the new regional plan went as far as proposing a flight ceiling at CDG .

Operations of National Interest (Opérations d’Intérêt National, OIN ): territories where it retained control of planning, and could set up ad hoc public development corporations (EPA ); the CDG area featured among them. The support of the State for the growth of CDG was emboldened by the conjuncture of the commercial aviation landscape. The decrease in global passenger traffic after 9 / 11 had affected CDG , but had also presented an opportunity: by developing its ­facilities, CDG would be able to surpass Frankfurt and become Europe’s second busiest airport once traffic recovered. This prime air connectivity would in turn have positive consequences for regional competitiveness. The terminal 2E, that opened to the public in mid-2003, encapsulated this ambition: put at the service of the newly-formed SkyTeam alliance,6 it was designed to have a capacity of 10 million passengers once fully open to traffic in 2007, and be able to receive the first Airbus A380 wide-bodied aircraft (Fig. 8.1). As Air France CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta declared during the inauguration, “the Paris-Charles de Gaulle hub … will be the most powerful hub in Europe, ahead of Frankfurt and London.”7 The terminal and its associated traffic were also expected to provide 10,000 jobs over time, and indeed, already from 2003 to 2004 the number of people working at CDG passed from 75,000 to 80,000.8 But in May 2004, less than a year after the terminal’s opening and only weeks after the incorporation of KLM by Air France, ADP was forced to close 2E due to the partial collapse of its vaulted roof, killing four people. This closure created an under-capacity problem, which translated to passenger discomfort and the irritation of Air France.9 This toll on the popularity of the airport, which was also struggling with low rankings in domains like the connections among terminals, orientation and passenger services, required increased agility on the part of ADP and a refurbishing of its image in the eyes of the public. Its transformation into a public limited company (société anony­ me) in 2005 and the opening of part of its capital to private investors in 2006 were key milestones; also, the public establishment launched a marketing campaign and initiated new investments for the modernization of passenger facilities at CDG .10 In late 2006, ADP announced an investment program of 2.37 billion euros until 2011, that would be

used to reconstruct 2E, complete the renovation of Terminal 1, and most ­importantly, build two ultra-modern satellites to Terminal 2, the S3 and S4, for Air France and its

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

This suggestion, along with the refusal to finance major highway projects, wanting to prioritize public transport projects instead, triggered discontent on the part of the government.5 In a parallel move, the latter designated in 2005 – 2006 three vast areas as

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partners.11 In these plans, the airport authority had the full support of the government, who saw in CDG a key asset in the competition of Paris with other global cities.

Articulating planning strategies The backdrop of competing planning visions for the Paris region and the role of its airports, in combination with the institutional complexity and difficulty of productive dialogue in the CDG region, as discussed in the previous chapter, made the formulation of spatial strategies appear a still faraway perspective. The strategic planning documents of this time demonstrate the equivocation in terms of spatial directions. In late 2005, EPA Plaine de France produced its “strategic reference document” (“document stratégique de réference”) – the fruit of three years of discussion among its members: State, Region, Val-d’Oise, Seine-Saint-Denis, and the 30 communities.12 In the document, the EPA PdF painted a rather bleak pictured of Plaine de France: fragmentation of the urban structure, discontinuity due to crossing transport infrastructures, juxtaposition of monofunctional clusters, degraded housing stock … With regard to the CDG airport, the document was novel in relation to previous plans, in that it focused extensively on noise impact and the related regulatory limitations of Zone C, which consti-

Fig. 8 .2  Constraints to urban renewal related to aircraft noise impact and other infrastructures according to the EPA PdF strategic document.

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tuted major constraints to housing development, especially as they were augmented by limitations linked to the Bourget airport (Fig. 8.2). The uneven distribution of CDG ’s positive and negative effects was clearly imparted: while economic activity concentrated on the platform and along the A1 highway, noise exposure mostly affected the urban communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise. In terms of spatial strategy, the document put forth several objectives that revolved around urban renewal and improved connectivity.13 These were translated into spatial orientations, with the overall aim being to “strengthen the urban structure around new centralities.”14 Here, some ambitions regarding urban development in the CDG region became apparent. The document maintained that the “zone of influence” of

development should be thought out differently: taking the inherent risks of airport growth into account – such as the volatility of traffic and the constant changes in regulation – development should not be directly airport-related, but revolving around activities favoring this location for the “positive image” it gave them and for the quality of infrastructures. In parallel, the document stipulated that new activity zones should be channeled to Zone C of the PEB , so as to compensate these communities for the incurred costs of airport proximity. These two prescriptions seemed somewhat contradictory: the areas in Zone C were among the most badly connected and most in need of urban renewal, hence a major requalification and structuration work would be necessary before they could offer quality conditions to potential tenants. This conundrum was not directly addressed. Yet a large focus was placed on transport connections, ­especially east-west links: the long-standing yet still unrealized Boulevard Intercommunal du Parisis (BIP), and the Barreau de Gonesse, a rail segment linking the RER B and RER D lines, which had first been proposed in the 1990s by representatives of the Val-d’Oise department. These links were posited to contribute to renewal and facilitate access to the Roissy employment area. The strategic document reiterated the need to use wisely the land reserves of the area, including in the South CDG Zone, Roissy-en-France, Louvres, and the Triangle de Gonesse. It also recognized that the noise-related limitations precluded possibilities of housing development in most of the territory west of the airport, and therefore proposed to concentrate housing to its north (Louvres) and south (Tremblay-Villepinte) (Fig. 8.3). This was in line with previous orientations, like the 1992 Laçaze report and the 1994 SDRIF. Yet given that little had happened on the ground, EPA PdF resolved that these, or for that matter any spatial orientations, would be difficult to implement given the multiplicity of actors and inadequate cooperation among them – especially between the communities of Val-d’Oise and those of Seine-Saint-Denis. Only a significant reinforcement of intercommunal “solidarities” would allow carrying out a “global strategy of coherent development of the airport hub.”15 But here again, the document refrained from making prescriptions. The spatial orientations for the airport area were more specific with relation to the “axis” between Le Bourget and CDG . The document expressed the intention to create in this “hinge” space a new centrality around two sites: Le Bourget, and the Triangle de Gonesse, which was still a vast farmland, save for the small activity zones to its

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

CDG had developed in an inefficient way, and that the “urbanizable spaces” of the 1994 SDRIF did not quite respond to the needs of spatial management, centrality, urbanity and qualitative open space. The impact of the CDG airport on urban ­economic

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Fig. 8 .3  Spatial orientations for the “influence zone” of the Paris CDG airport.

southernmost edge. EPA PdF brought its development back to the agenda, describing the TdG as a “strategic space for a large-scale urban development project of regional interest” and “a principal gateway to the urban area.”16 However, it was recognized that the site, constrained by the noise contours of the two airports, could not support housing or mixed uses. Further, cut off from the east by the A1 highway and with few connections west, its viability very strongly depended on the implementation of the RER B-D link (Fig. 8.4). With these plans, the strategic document articulated certain ambitions for the airport region, yet it fell short when it came to putting orientations and objectives into action. Most projects were “wishes” and not specific projects, and most did not even depend directly on EPA PdF. Accordingly, the strategic document was criticized by several commentators as confining itself to generalities and failing to specify deadlines, priorities, and the resources allocated to studies and development operations.17 In parallel with the strategic document of EPA PdF, the SIEVO was re-developing its statutory strategic plan for the Eastern Val d’Oise area. The SRU law in 2000 had necessitated the revision of the SD , and its remaking into a Schéma de Coherence Territoriale (SCoT), before any of its provisions could be reflected in action. With a new perimeter, consisting of 24 communities, the SIEVO engaged the production of the SCoT in 2001, with the final document approved in 2006.18 As seen in the previous chapters, 272

the communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise had since the 1980s built their development discourse around the idea that the large-scale infrastructures affecting the area –  CDG , Le Bourget, highways (A1, N16, N17), RER D, TGV line – ought to create not only disruptions and limitations, but also benefits. The designation of hundreds of hectares for ZAE along the main road axes reflected their effort to channel economic development

locally. A parallel, though less asserted, discourse concerned the need to protect the natural assets of the territory: hills, forested creeks and old villages, and highly productive farmland – once the territory’s defining features – but increasingly degraded or truncated by urbanization. The new SCoT was in continuity of these discourses, further explicating them, while remaining loyal to the orientations of the 1994 SDRIF. The plan advanced as its main goals the rigorous management of space and a higher quality economic development.19 In terms of spatial development, it prescribed a structuring of the territory around a “spine of controlled urbanization” around the

Fig. 8 .4  Scenario for the urban development of TdG as part of the Roissy-Le Bourget axis.

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

stations of the RER D. To these would be added a new centrality at the Triangle de Gonesse, whose development would be made possible by the two transport projects of

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Fig. 8 .5  Strategic orientations (left) and organization of transport connections (right) in the SCOT of SIEVO .

the BIP and the RER B-D link – in line with the agenda expressed by EPA PdF (Fig. 8.5). For the communities of Eastern Val-d’Oise, these transport links were particularly important to improve access to the CDG hub for their residents. Hence, their argument was two-fold: the rail link would enable the development of TdG and access to jobs; and the other way around, the development of TdG would provide jobs and economically justify the rail link, for which the demand was otherwise insufficient, as studies by STIF and SNCF had shown.20 Besides, the TdG project was presented as a remedy to the logistics-dominated economic development of the area, indeed as a regional “excellence hub” and “genuine business quarter” hosting “added-value activities.”21 But even though the TdG was posited as an “effective way to use the activity and employment potential generated by the airport in favour of the territory of SIEVO ,” its relation to the airport remained fuzzy; unlike earlier versions of the project, as there was not even mention of the airport’s role in attracting the added-value activities envisioned.22 In fact, fuzziness characterized the spatial orientations of the SCoT SIEVO ­altogether, embodying in part the difficulty of articulating a coherent program with regard to the multifaceted impacts of CDG . The lack of explication was noted by the CRIF before its approval of the plan. In the related report, it was remarked that the desired urban structures, their density, mix of uses, relation to major infrastructure, and incorporation of soft modes of transport were insufficiently explicated; and that the number of areas destined to economic activities was again exaggerated in relation to demand and contradictory to the objective of rigorous spatial management.23 Despite its critique, the Region did not advance an explicit proposal for the area either. EPA PdF, however, intensified its activity following the dissemination of the SCoT SIEVO and its own strategic document. Its perimeter was extended towards the north, bringing the number of concerned communities to thirty. Also, its spatial focus started to shift. The plan for the redevelopment of the Bourget area seemed like it would fall through, as the communities of Seine-Saint-Denis not only had internal disagreements, but also saw the work of a state-supported agency like EPA with suspicion.24 274

This, in combination with the strong interest of the Eastern Val-d’Oise communities in development projects, prompted the authority to channel its focus on the northern part of its territory, in particular the Triangle de Gonesse project. In 2007, the agency invited three teams of urban designers to develop proposals for the entire site, concluding with the selection of the proposal of a team led by the architectural and urban design office Güller Güller – the architects that had produced the book From Airport to Airport City a few years earlier. The team suggested integrating the project for TdG in an “airport corridor” with CDG and Le Bourget as its two “polar centrali-

A new governmental impetus The national election of 2007, bringing Nicolas Sarkozy to the presidential office, was a turning point for planning in the Paris region, but also for the CDG airport (see also Chapter 3). On 26 June 2007, hardly a month after the election, CDG became the locus of an emblematic inauguration speech by the new president. The new S3 terminal was the subject of the inauguration, but hardly the reason why the speech was emblematic. Nicolas Sarkozy used the opportunity to exalt the role of major infrastructures in sustainable metropolitan development, and to highlight the role of the CDG airport in the competitiveness of the Paris region. He argued: “In the coming 20 years, do we want Paris to be on the first or the second league of global metropolises? If we aim at the first league, we must develop Roissy.”26 On that day, he introduced for the first time his vision of Grand Paris (Greater Paris), which would become crucial for the region’s 21st century planning history.

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ties.” The program for TdG was dense and ambitious but limited in surface, concentrating development along the BIP and the edges of the site in conjunction with the surroundings. Also, urbanization was pushed further south in relation to earlier plans for TdG, allowing for the possibility of some housing (Fig. 8.6). But Fig. 8.6  Strategic masterplan of “airport corridor” and in fact, the team professed that it was “too ear- Triangle de Gonesse. ly” to actually develop TdG, and that, at least until 2015, efforts should be channeled toward developing places where “added value” was already possible, i.e., zones in and adjacent to the two airports, and toward densifying Paris Nord 2. Also, they put to question the project of the RER B-D link, an expensive and heavyweight infrastructure inconducive to the “meshing” of the territory, proposing a lighter transport system instead.25 At the aftermath of the presentation of the proposal, EPA PdF asked Güller Güller to develop a reference plan for TdG.

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There followed a period of successive initiatives by the new government. Soon after the speech at CDG , Sarkozy openly challenged the competence of the IdF Region in planning the Paris metropolis, and the adequacy of the SDRIF -under-discussion in addressing its economic competitiveness at a global scale.27 In early 2008, a State Secretariat for the development of the Capital Region under the direction of Christian Blanc28 was created, with the mission to make Paris a “world city.” In parallel, an international consultation was launched to collectively elaborate a “prospective urban and landscape diagnosis of Greater Paris over the next twenty, thirty or forty years.”29 Entitled “Le Grand Pari(s),” the consultation invited ten multidisciplinary teams led by internationally renowned architects to envision the Paris metropolis by 2050.30 When their proposals were presented in early 2009, Sarkozy praised them for their diversity and ingenuity and declaring the intention to follow up on some of the included ideas.31 The CDG airport and its region featured strongly among the new government’s discourses and plans. First of all, in February 2008 Sarkozy asked the Conseil Économique, Social et Environmental national (CESE ) to study the “conditions for the sustainable development of the CDG airport” that would “reconcile the growth of air traffic and the economic and urban development around the airport with the improvement of the quality of life of local residents.” The message was that these objectives were not contradictory, but could both be reached through mutually beneficial strategies, as long as there was commitment from all stakeholders.32 Although the major opposition to the airport of the 1990s had died down, there was still widespread discontent about its negative impacts and particularly noise, and the ratification of the new PEB for CDG in 2007 had been preceded by a long process marked by controversy about the noise level for Zone C (for a presentation of the PEB and the overall framework for aircraft noise, see Annex 2). Under the guidance of the President of the CESE Jacques Dermagne, the task force that was created launched a series of hearings with local representatives of the CDG region, set up thematic commissions with technical experts, and organized visits to airport regions in Europe and the US . In May, Christian Blanc, from his position as director of the State Secretariat for the development of the Capital Region, defined two “priority projects”: the creation a world-class scientific and technological center on the Saclay Plateau, and the development of the Plaine de France. This provided a framework for implementing ambitious projects on the territory of Plaine de France. In the same month, a protocol was signed between EPA PdF, the State, the Region and the Departments of Val-d’Oise and Seine-Saint-Denis as part of the new Contrat de projets Etat-Région 2007 – 2013. It specified significant investments for the area, especially for public transport, and the commitments of the signatories in carrying out projects included in the EPA PdF strategic reference document: economic development, housing construction, new transport connections, and urban development projects, including urban renewal, city extension, urban development around train stations (TOD ), and development of public spaces enhancing the value of territory.33 In the meantime, the SDRIF received a positive view in the public inquiry following its elaboration, and the Regional Council adopted it in September 2008. The plan contained novelties like the structuring of the Paris region into “bundles” (“faisceaux”), and an inclusive implementation strategy.34 There was a strong emphasis on sustainable development, with the promotion of the “compact city” model and priority to 276

Fig. 8 .7  Strategic geography of Ile-de-France according to the 2008 SDRIF .

housing. Other objectives included the structuring of regional employment with better distribution and diversification of job offer, the consolidation of Paris’s international standing, the valorization of natural spaces, and the provision of better services at the metropolitan level. This plan acknowledged the importance of the Paris airports for the attractiveness and international connectivity of the Paris region, and also recognized Plaine de France as priority territory (Fig. 8.7). But when it came to urban development options in the CDG region, it refrained from grand visions, favoring instead compact projects on the airport platform and in the zone close to Le Bourget. That said, the plan did endorse the big projects of the airport surroundings present in the 1994 SDRIF, namely the South CDG zone and the Triangle de Gonesse, but made them conditional upon the implementation of public transport. In general, a large focus was placed on the public transport connections to the airports and the improvement of the quality of life for inhabitants under noise exposure.35 Despite the SDRIF being a largely consensual document, the government e ­ scalated its controversy with the Region by refusing to transmit it to the State Council and therefore grant its approval.36 By that point, it had become clear that there existed two visions for the metropolis, associated with different political ideologies. The first, promoted by the Region and most local governments and largely reflected in the SDRIF, prioritized the alleviation of socioeconomic and environmental inequalities across territories. The second, defended by the State, major economic players like the Chambers of Commerce, and some wealthy localities, invoked the competition that the ­Paris region faced by other “global cities” like London or New York, and called primarily for measures enhancing its image and attractiveness, strategic investment in certain

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

public transport, including a proposal for a new “bypass” (“rocade”) rail line traversing the petite couronne, the Arc Express. The plan also defended an ambitious housing policy, aiming to build 60,000 units per year until 2030, of which 30 % would be social

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­areas, and the development of transport infrastructure of international status like the Charles de Gaulle airport.37 In the meantime, after several months of discussions and debates, the process organized by the CESE led to the “Charter for the Sustainable Development of Roissy-­ Charles de Gaulle,” known as Dermagne Report (Rapport Dermagne). The report presented the future of CDG as “a major challenge for the Nation’s sustainable development” given the competition from other European airports, creating “a collective duty to ensure that Roissy has the means to expand.” To do so in respect of populations incurring the negative externalities of airport operation entailed making “significant progress regarding governance, policy coherence, transparency of collected information, so that partners, residents and elected officials can act now in a climate of restored trust.”38 In that vein, the report presented 12 objectives and 35 associated proposals. These ranged from making information more transparent to improving instruments of assessment and compensation, and from the enhancement of public transport to, ­notably, airport region governance. Against a backdrop of indisputable airport growth, there was a strong undercurrent to the proposals associated with ensuring the acceptability of growth through better administration of the effects of airport operation. Certain aspects of the Dermagne report deserve to be drawn attention to in particular. The first concerns the advice to re-organize policies, associations and plans at the scale of the territory of Roissy, thus recognizing once more its specificity. Second, the urban and economic development of the territory was acknowledged as a key component of airport-related strategies. Third, the report urged for a heightened role of the State to ensure coherence and formulate a “strategic vision.” To that end, it recommended the creation of a “community of territories” (“Communauté de territoires”), a new governance level associating local governance levels under the State’s strategic guidance; along with the formulation of a “territorial planning directive” (“Directive territorial d’aménagement”) at its scale, to which all planning documents and endeavors should conform. In parallel, the report suggested that EPA PdF should evolve in perimeter and mission to become the “operational instrument” of the new arrangement. This was a bold proposal, as it encapsulated a fragile balance between overarching planning controls and the autonomy of local ­authorities. In theory, everybody wanted coherence, but achieving this balance was dependent on local actors trusting that the State would not impose its vision to the detriment of their own interests.

A development boom Against a background of metropolitan planning effervescence and an emerging power struggle between State and IdF Region, the CDG airport area was experiencing a new development boom. Already before EPA PdF and the Sarkozy government had indicated the interest of planning powers in the area, market trends had favored building activity, as real estate prices kept rising throughout the 2000s, as did the demand for goods transport facilities thanks to the boom of e-commerce. Not unlike the boom phase of the late 1980s, it was on the airport itself that these trends manifested themselves first, with the intensification of real estate development. 278

In 2004, the second part of the Continental Square, similar in form to the first one, was finally completed, adding 24,000 m 2 of office space to Roissypole (Fig. 8.8). It was followed by a training center for the Air France flight crew in 2006 (45,000 m 2), the extension of the freight area, and 20,000 new parking s­ paces.39 ADP also continued boosting commercial offer in terms of retail, food and hotels.40 As a result, CDG increasingly acquired characteristics

­Darabiha, ADP ’s real estate director, affirmed: “Our airports are cities … major employment centers, since the Roissy and Orly platforms employ 115,000 employees, as well as airport and complementary activities such as logistics, freight, industries, tertiary, o ­ ffices, 120 service providers and maintenance, 100 restaurants, 10 hotels, and 500 shops.”42 By 2008, there were new projects. ADP planned a new shopping center at the southwest part of the CDG platform, next to Roissytech and close to Paris Nord 2, with the conspicuous name “Aéroville,” that would be financed, built and managed by the investor-developer Unibail-Rodamco. With a projected surface of 100,000 m 2, it was propagated as targeting the 85,000 people working at the airport.43 ADP also ­initiated projects at the Bourget airport: extensions of the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace and the Bourget Exhibition Center. The CDG airport was also the epicenter of several transport projects. In 2007, the long-wished-for automatic metro connecting the terminals was installed in a newer form than the one initially envisioned, the CDGVAL (Fig. 8.10). In parallel, ADP was involved in the planning of Euro CAREX , an intermodal air-rail express freight platform planned in the town of Goussainville just west of the airport. Conceived in 2006 by an association that brought together Air France Cargo, FedEx, the French Post, WFS , UPS , and ADP with the support of local communities, the plan projected a freight terminal reached through a branch of the TGV line.44 Another project was the project of CDG Express, that had been agreed in 2004 but had not moved forward in expectation of the improvement of RER B. In the meantime, it had been decided that the project would be financed and constructed by a private company, and the government had started negotiations with the grouping led by Vinci, which was the only one having deposited an offer; the works were expected to start in 2012.45 In the surroundings of CDG , things were also moving. Next to the studies of EPA PdF for the Triangle de Gonesse, AFTRP with Tremblay-en-France resumed work on the South CDG zone, after the CCIP reaffirmed its interFig. 8 .9  Airport city impression from a promotional ­brochure of ADP real estate service.

est in extending the Villepinte Exhibition Center there. A protocol for the development of the

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

of an urban center, and ADP started r­ eusing Fig. 8.8  View of the new complex of Continental Square. the term “airport city” and related d ­ iscourses and visualizations to market its non-aviation facilities (Fig. 8.9).41 Already in 2004, Jila

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site between all actors (State, Region, AFTRP, ADP, CCIP, departments, communities) was signed in 2007 and a ZAC was created in 2008 (ZAC Sud CDG). These processes were accompanied by studies to identify desirable economic sectors that would be realistically attracted to the site by airport proximity.46 The vision for this site, less publicized than that for TdG, was crystallized around a program involving businesses of the “knowledge economy,” R & D,

Fig. 8 .10  The automatic metro CDGVAL today.

high-precision industry, high added-value logistics dependent on air connectivity, and a Cité des Expositions et de la Communication, posited to generate activity in the organization of exhibitions and events.47 The “inter-

national business park” project would feature 700,000 m 2 of offices and activities, structured roughly around the street grid inherited from the Fuksas project of the 1990s; the Villepinte Exhibition Center extension would bring another 150,000 m 2 (Fig. 8.11).48 Pending the elaboration of the project, smaller commercial surfaces were developed, like the printing house for the journal Le Figaro at the northern entrance of the Vieux Village. In parallel, the intercommunal authority CC Roissy Porte de France actively marketed its ZAE to investors through its economic development agency Roissy Développement. The village of Roissy-en-France in particular saw an orgasm of planning and building activity. Its extensive hotel zone offered more than 3,000 rooms by the end of the 2000s. Along the airport tangent road RD 902, AFTRP developed the 40-hectare business park RoissyParc International, which consisted of 30 % offices; across from it, the 16-ha Parc Mail aimed at providing 70 % offices; and in between, the community of Roissy planned the development of a 90-ha golf park.49 Further, a huge complex of stores, hotels, and leisure facilities dubbed “Planète France” was projected at the southern entrance of the Roissy village; while at its northern end next to the airport fence, Brazilian investors showed interest in developing the “World Trade Center,” a mega-complex of 177,000 m 2 of net built area featuring an immense congress center, three exhibition halls, six hotels, offices and other facilities (Fig. 8.12).50 In most villages around the airport, new activity zones were planned: ZAC de la Chapelle de Guivry in Mesnil-Amelot (70 ha), ZAC du Roncé in Louvres (17 ha), ZAC des Grands Champs in Le Thillay (31 ha). Local stakeholders rejoiced in the investor interest in building development; like twenty years earlier, they saw an opportunity to draw economic benefits from the presence of the airport. By the late 2000s, mobilization for development projects in the CDG region reached 280

Fig. 8 .11  General Masterplan of the South CDG zone.

Fig. 8 .12  Early visualizations of the “Airapolis” or “World Trade Center” project at CDG .

through brochures, business tours, and seminars, putting the terms “Grand Roissy” and “airport area” in the agenda. From the beginning, ADP was among its most active members – not without reason: though not directly profiting from projects outside the platform, ADP was keenly aware that economic development contributes to the ­social acceptability of CDG ’s operation. Other initiatives were Aerotropolis Europe–­ Paris, founded by a group of large companies and real estate investors, and Grand ­Roissy Economique, created by the departmental Chambers of Commerce. Thanks to these initiatives, a shared representation of the CDG airport region started emerging that revolved around its economic role. But things were not idyllic. Even though by 2008 the Grand Roissy represented 10 % of the regional economy and 20 % of the regional job creation, its development continued to insufficiently benefit the local populations. As the representatives of the Chambers of Commerce admitted, the area suffered from “a fragmentation of power, without overview, with every local authority wanting to claim development to extract the business tax. … A collective approach by all interested parties and a single tax system on a regional scale are therefore needed.”51 The Dermagne report confirmed this necessity. In the lack of a collective approach, the abounding projects begat the dangers of incoherence, overbuilding and excessive land consumption. Also, there was a problem with housing, encapsulated in the complaint of newly settled companies who had difficulty recruiting for not being able to provide housing options to prospective employees.52 Housing construction lagged behind, on the one hand because the geographical “leap” imposed by the PEB made land reserves available only at the extremities of the area, on the other hand because local authorities preferred promoting activity zones thanks to the business tax. The few housing projects that were developed could hardly cover demand. It was Fig. 8 .13  Masterplan and data for the “eco-quarter” of Louvres-Puiseux from a promotional brochure by EPA PdF .

not until early 2009 that action was finally taken to implement the long-standing plan of a residential center northwest of the airport,

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

a peak, giving rise to the “Grand Roissy” label that economic development and territorial marketing initiatives converged around. One of the most important was Hubstart Paris Region, an alliance of public and private partners created in 2008 by ADP and the Paris Region Economic Development Agency (ARD ). Hubstart promoted the territory

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in the communities of Louvres and Puiseux-en-France, through the signing of a memorandum of understanding between EPA PdF, the communities, the CC Roissy-Porte de France and the government to create an eco-quarter (éco-quartier).53 The project consisted of deploying, in a horizon of fifteen years, 3,500 housing units on 130 hectares around the Louvres RER D station (Fig. 8.13). The eco-quarter project began to finally materialize the housing long overdue in the area.

Grand Paris, Grand Roissy, and the “airport corridor” Before the proposals of the Dermagne report could be advanced, new actions taken by the government affected the planning of the CDG airport region. In early 2009, Sarkozy endorsed a bold plan elaborated by Christian Blanc’s team: a public transport scheme consisting in two high-speed automatic metro loops encircling the agglomeration (“The Big Eight”), totaling 130 km of new rail lines. The metro would link the main economic “clusters” of the region: international airports, main business districts and key hubs of research and higher education. The transport part was complemented by an urban and economic development project for the clusters, posited to ultimately generate nearly a million jobs. The overall scheme, named “Grand Paris,” became the government’s main venture for the Paris region – deepening the divide with the Region and triggering the disappointment of many, who saw the focus on a single transport ­project as a reduction from the initially declared metropolitan planning a ­ mbitions, and a failure to follow up on the innovative and urbanistically intricate proposals

Fig. 8 .14  The economic “clusters” of the Grand Paris plan.

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produced in the “Grand Pari(s)” consultation.54 For the CDG region, the Grand Paris vision represented an opportunity to position the territory strategically in relation to ­metropolitan space, since Roissy was among the “clusters” to be connected by the new metro (which also included La Défense, Saint-Denis–Pleyel, Le Bour-

Fig. 8 .15  View of Paris Nord 2 looking south, in 2009.

“cluster” would take advantage of the international airport to attract activities for which air connectivity was an essential advantage, and reinforce the area’s role for international congresses and exhibitions. The idea of Roissy as site of localization of added-value airport-related activities, that had prevailed twenty years ago, was therefore back. The attractiveness of airport proximity for certain domains, notably high-value logistics, and to a lesser extent r­ egional offices of multinational companies, had been demonstrated in the growth of Paris Nord 2, PEX , and the activity zones in and around the airport (Fig. 8.15). Nevertheless, economic activities continued to be mainly “support functions” to the regional economy, with “metropolitan jobs” poorly represented.55 Additionally, contrary to the typical “business districts” like Le Défense, they were very spread out in space, even taking into account their concentration in two zones – the airport itself and the “corridor” along the A1 highway. All this begged the question of how the upcoming growth of the Roissy “cluster” would materialize – spatially, quantitatively, and qualitatively. Indeed, the interpretations of the various actors about each of these aspects were not necessarily the same; yet the very idea of economic growth was above their differences. In the face of governmental interest, there was an opportunity to upgrade both the substance and image of the CDG region. Besides, the means to realize the governmental scheme altogether was unresolved, as Grand Paris was at odds not only with the prescriptions of the SDRIF, but also with the statutory urban planning documents in force. To create a framework for its implementation, the government passed a “Law pertaining to Greater Paris,”56 which established the Society of Greater Paris (Société du Grand Paris, SGP), a dedicated public company with the State as major shareholder. It also introduced new planning instruments, the Territorial Development Contracts (Contrats de Développement Territorial, CDT ) intended to enable development projects around future metro stations through agreements between the State and local stakeholders. In parallel, the issue of housing, absent in the initial Grand Paris project, was addressed, with the yearly target set at 70,000 units. These decisions were not received well by the Region and other actors who saw them as an expression of power by the State. Nonetheless, several months of talks allowed some convergence to be found. A first big step was the signing of an agreement between the State and the Region in January 2011, merging the Grand Paris metro with the Arc Express project proclaimed in the SDRIF, resulting in one transport

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

get, Cité Descartes, Orly, and Saclay) (Fig.  8.14). Airport-related projects found a new stimulus. The Roissy

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Fig. 8 .16 The GPE scheme in 2011, after the agreement of the State and the Region.

project henceforth called “Grand Paris Express” (GPE ) (Fig. 8.16).57 IAURIF undertook mapping studies and supported communities in compiling the CDTs. Also, the alienating idea of the “clusters” was eliminated from official discourse. If the Grand Paris vision was a conceptual framework highlighting the strategic importance of the CDG airport region, the new GPE , the creation of SGP, and the introduction of the CDTs with the Grand Paris law in 2010 provided the operational framework for the realization of projects around future metro stations. In the GPE scheme, the CDG area would be served by a new metro line with stops at Triangle de Gonesse, Villepinte Exhibition Center (PEX ), Terminal 2, a future Terminal 4, and Mesnil-Amelot, facilitating large-scale development at these locations. CDTs would be negotiated ­between the State and the communities around these stations. The projects of the Grand Roissy enjoyed the personal support of Christian Blanc, who was convinced about the role of the territory as a metropolitan-scale competitive advantage.58 With the Roissy territory proclaimed as one of the main economic spaces of Grand Roissy, the projects of EPA PdF about the area between CDG and Le Bourget received a boost. An additional favorable conjunction was presented when Immochan, large French retail developer of the Auchan Group, expressed the desire to implement in TdG a scheme for “Europa City,” an enormous commercial, cultural, and leisure center. This evolution played favorably in negotiations to adapt the GPE path so as to include a stop in TdG.59 The reference plan by the Güller Güller team, finalized in late 2010, went beyond the TdG project. The presented “airport corridor” included developed and envisioned projects in the entire southwest periphery of the airport: South CDG zone, extension of PEX , densification of Paris Nord 2, the various business parks 284

Fig. 8 .17  Strategic Masterplan of the Roissy-Le Bourget area.

Fig. 8 .18  The three strategic axes of Roissy-Le Bourget.

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Fig. 8 .19  Visualization of the Cœur du Triangle in the Triangle de Gonesse project, looking from Le Bourget towards the CDG airport.

under development and ADP ’s projects: Roissypole, the FedEx zone, and the shopping center Aéroville.60 Spatially, the project was structured around threes “axes.” First, the main economic axis “airport corridor Roissy-Le Bourget,” from Roissypole in the north to Le Bourget in the south, with the center of TdG in the middle, was articulated around major transport infrastructure, existing and projected. It would host an “economy of knowledge and innovation” bringing together functions with international influence, strong technological focus, tertiary dimension, and high use of air transport, thus constituting “a lever of strategic development for Grand Paris.”61 The second economic axis, “Boulevard of exchanges,” stretched along the southern “belt” of the airport from Goussainville to Mitry. It would be devoted to activities related to trade, communication and exchanges, whether in terms of goods (high-value logistics, just-in-time manufacturing) or people (exhibitions, meeting spaces, hotels, leisure). Finally, a third “axis of cities” would extend from the new center in the middle of TdG towards the town of Gonesse, anchoring the “airport corridor” into the agglomeration (Fig. 8.17 and Fig. 8.18). In this composition, the TdG itself consisted of two projects. The main part (“Cœur du Triangle”), occupying 220 – 230 ha, would be structured around a future train station combining RER B-D and GPE . It would have an “urban typology” distinguishing it from the suburban image of its surroundings, and would reach 1.5 – 1.8 million m 2 at the 2040 horizon (Fig. 8.19). The area “Roissy-Porte du Monde” at the north of the triangle would bring together existing commercial, ZAE and hotel zones, adding further programs to provide a coherent “entrance” to the airport site; its development capacity was estimated at 260,000 m 2 over 20 – 25 years. In the middle, an immense space, the “green 286

square” (“Carré Vert”) would be left for agricultural use, and at the southern edge, the park “Buttes Saint Simon” would be created (Fig. 8.20). With these components, the reference plan proposed a new, consistent spatial vision for the area between the CDG airport and the ­ aris agglomeration. The plan was ambitious, P projecting an “urban” image that was new to the sector and different than the plans of the previous decades that embraced concepts of “offices in the park.” Regardless of the urban design choices though, a prominent element was the airport-centered rhetoric:

Fig. 8 .20  The perimeters of the Triangle de Gonesse project.

The analysis of European metropolises, like Amsterdam, Berlin, London or Madrid, shows that airports are one the most powerful motors of poly-centricity. As a result, the territories situated between those cities and their international airports, ‘the airport corridors,’ become the new vectors of metropolitan economic development.62

The ‘Reference Plan’ leads to consider that the success of the ‘Roissy-Le Bourget Airport Corridor’ implies the promotion of the entire territory … and the coordination of several urban projects whose complementarity must be managed. … The ‘false’ debate on latent competition between local projects does not contribute to the attractiveness or performance of the entire corridor and each of its sites. Worse still, the pursuit of internal competition would hinder the full potential of this new ‘vector of knowledge and innovation’ in the Ile-de-France region and that of i­ ndustrial development in the context of competition between European metropolises.63

In search of spatial coherence By 2010, despite the proclamations of the government about the role of the Grand Roissy and the efforts of EPA PdF at producing specific plans, the long-touted planning and development “coherence” was still far from being granted. Could a consensual vision for the territory, in terms of both spatial development and process, still be found? How

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

In this rhetoric, the urbanization of the area between Paris and the agglomeration was a natural product of economic forces; the role of planning was not to dispute this urbanization, but to ensure consistency across development operations. But for the Roissy-­Le Bourget “airport corridor” to live up to its potential, the plan warned that major progress was still to be made in the domains of accessibility and public transport, quality real estate offer, land management, and overall image of the sector. Not least, local actors should come together in support of an overall plan-vision rather than compete with each other:

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would it be inscribed in the metropolitan planning project? How should the proposals of the Dermagne report be put to action, in particular regarding an overarching authority and a specific planning instrument? What would this mean for existing arrangements and plans? A noteworthy attempt to address these questions was initiated in late 2010 by the planning service of the Prefecture Ile-de-France­ DRIEA (ex-DREIF ), in the midst of contractand project-making activity. Rather than looking for definite answers, the approach was

Fig. 8 .21  The “petals” of the Grand Roissy.

“pragmatic”: “try to define, in a shared way, the conditions for balancing the development of the Grand Roissy territories, so as to help build a vision and share a collective project.”64 The position of DRIEA was that while the GPE and CDTs would enable the economic development of the t­ erritory, thinking in economic development terms alone was insufficient to establish a c­ oherent vision.65 Instead, the authority initiated an urban planning study, entrusting it to a team of urban designers comprising the offices of Acadie, Christian de Portzamparc, and Güller Güller – who, as seen earlier, had also led the TdG design for the ­account of EPA PdF. DRIEA and the team mounted a year-long process of meetings and workshops with representatives of local authorities that allowed shared goals to be construed. The study was innovative in that instead of the usual representations of the territory – “cluster of exchanges,” territory under constraints, or the latest “airport corridor” concept – it proposed a “360° perspective” of overlapping territories; these were presented as the “petals” of a metaphorical flower, with the airport at its center (Fig. 8.21). In parallel, it defined three domains posing the greatest challenges. First, the territory had a poor metropolitan performance, due to the predominance of transport-oriented “support functions”; the goal was to achieve excellence in these functions, all while attempting a diversification. The second challenge was that of urban quality – sprawl, spatial interruptions, lack of amenities, and lack of housing, problems that together contributed to a lack of urban identity and spatial frame of reference; proposed remedies were a greater mix of uses and valorization of the landscape. Functional efficiency was the third major challenge, expressed in chronic congestion and poor accessibility; addressing it required not only better transport options but also a more efficient ­co-­existence of different functions. On the basis of these shared challenges, various options were studied, deducing a “feasible scenario” and providing spatial orientations. These revolved around four objectives: 1) break with the car-oriented transport mode by promoting public transport and multi-modality; 2) organize spatial coherence and selectivity of economic development through a spatially “meshed” urban development model and the creation of multi-modal platforms for logistics in specific locations; 3) re-balance housing and business functions by prioritizing housing construction outside noise zones in combination with well-accessible public amenities; 4) stop sprawling spatial development and sustainably manage land and natural resources by valorizing open spaces and ­promoting the transformation of enclave-like economic zones towards more open 288

models.66 For each objective, planning principles, an overall scheme, as well as potential implementation apparatuses were presented; these integrated the TdG reference plan as well as the CDT-in-progress (Fig. 8.22, Fig. 8.23, and Fig. 8.24). The study of DRIEA , informally known as “study of the petals” (“étude des pétales”) was a rare attempt at an integrated spatial plan for the “Grand Roissy.” Although it had little legal or political clout, its orientations informed planning action, in the CDT s and later the regional plan. It contributed to the reinforcement of a territorial identity, an interest in urban quality, and the promotion of a “sustainable” urban development paradigm based on mixed use, compact design, promotion of public transport, and the preservation of green spaces. At the same time though, a discrepancy was being sketched. Certainly, territories like that of Plaine de France and Roissy were emblematic of a wasteful and inefficient urbanization mode that needed a counter-paradigm. But the focus on the features of new development left aside the more fundamental

Fig. 8 .22  Economic coherence and habitability of Grand Roissy.

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

question of whether urban development in the airport region was altogether desirable, especially when centered around large-scale economic activities. This question was particularly prominent with regard to the TdG project, for which objections were raised soon after its dissemination. The announcement of the ­Europa City project in particular triggered the reaction of citizen associations who were ­assembled in the “Collective for the Triangle de Gonesse” (“Collectif pour le Triangle de Gonesse”) in early 2011. The collective denounced the project as “a misguided urbanism

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Fig. 8 .23  Structuring transport network of Grand Roissy.

that ignores the needs of the population” (“un urbanisme dévoyé qui fait abstraction des besoins de la population”).67 Their objections started with the fact that the project required the urbanization of an exceptionally fertile piece of agricultural land, threatening the food sovereignty of Ile-de-France. Worse yet, it would do so “for the benefit of a gigantic luxury and leisure shopping center and an office cluster completely in discrepancy with the qualifications and living standards of the inhabitants, who could neither work there in large numbers, nor do their own shopping or relax.”68 The collective also feared that Europa City would take the life out of local commerce, and that the jobs it was supposed to bring – at least 10,000, as advertised by EPA PdF  – were unrealistic. They saw the project as a “sprawling airport city” that overlooked the real challenges: densification of existing urban tissues, economic reinvigoration, and equitable distribution of the wealth generated by the Roissy hub. Besides, the collective was not the only stakeholder skeptical about the TdG project. Planners from the services of the Region and the State also expressed reservations about various aspects of the project: the capacity of the market to absorb its retail and office components, its monofunctionality due to noise-related limited possibilities for housing, its real attractiveness in comparison to more established business and tourism hubs of the Paris region, its land consuming character, as well as the disproportionate investment of public energy and resources put to it in relation to other projects that would more directly address local needs. As our interlocutor from IAU -IdF professed: “I am not saying that nothing 290

should be done, but this is a very land-consuming development, and there was enough ‘grain to grind’ in the periphery near the airport, so it was not worth ‘filling’ the Triangle de Gonesse, especially with a project for a tertiary hub that is totally unrealistic.”69 Concerned voices were also raised for the viability of airport area projects more generally. Land accessibility was still a problem, as most road axes of the area (A1, A3, A86, N2, Francilienne) continued to suffer bottlenecks and further congestion was imminent.70 Also, the assumed attraction of air connectivity was not certain to warrant enduring market demand; for instance, a study commissioned by EPA PdF and Hubstart in 2010 regarding the localization of businesses in proximity of air cargo hubs found that apart from the main “integrators” (FedEx in CDG ), few companies relying on air cargo opted for direct airport proximity; and that models like the American-­ style “aerotropolis” had limited application in the Paris region. Major marketing efforts would need to be undertaken to capitalize on air cargo traffic growth in terms of business localization.71 These reservations, on TdG and airport area development, sketched an emerging divide between the political and the technocratic factions of public administration. Local politicians, supported by the central state administration, emphasized economic potential and the need to attract investment; while planners, especially from the Region but also from State services like the DRIEA , questioned the viability of too many projects and the suitability of the airport surroundings for ­offices and retail centres. Also, the reliance of planned developments on heavy

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

Fig. 8 .24  Site framework of Grand Roissy.

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t­ ransport ­infrastructure and large-scale real estate investment made them prone to speculation, especially as the implementation of GPE was planned too far in the f­ uture to allow safe projections.

Development as consensus? Despite reservations, the politically supported economic development vision seemed to largely prevail by 2011 – 2012. As conceded by planners involved in the process, it was extremely difficult to question it, as it had the strong support of the central government.72 The DRIEA study, for example, even if encouraging a sensible urbanism, was careful not to explicitly dispute projects such as the TdG. Reservations were largely downplayed in most official documents. Moreover, for local actors, the strong central support for airport area development was a new situation; and after years of neglect and unrealized promises, many local governments felt they were “owed” the State’s attention and funds. This led to a convergence around the very economic vision of the Sarkozy government.73 New alliances were created. For instance, in late 2011, EPCI s and communities came together to create the Association des Collectivités du Grand Roissy (ACGR ) – twenty years after the first Association du Grand Roissy (Fig. 8.25). This body, aspiring to represent the interests of the local governments of Grand Roissy, declared itself ready to come into an overarching EPCI or syndicate and create a SCoT for the Grand Roissy.74 EPA PdF, wanting to act as a strategic partner between the State and local governments, also adopted the economically driven vision, while also helping to foster a sense of shared identity; for example by co-organizing a series of “Grand Roissy conferences.” The convergence around economic development projects was reflected in the CDT s for the airport region, CDT Cœur Economique Roissy Terres de France (CERTF ), concerning the communities of Villepinte, Tremblay-en-France, Roissy-en-France, Goussaiville, and Le Thillay, and the CDT Val de France-Gonesse, concerning the communities of Bonneuil-en-France, Arnouville, Garges-lès-Gonesse, Sarcelles, and Villiers-le-Bel. The main goal of the first one was described as “an economic development based on the performance of the airport platform and the international exchange cluster.”75 The plan stressed the competitive position of the airport and its associated facilities, and the potential of the area for an economy of ­exchanges: conferences, congresses, exhibitions, and international tourism. The territory covered by the contract, corresponding to the “Boulevard of exchanges” of the EPA PdF reference plan, featured a series of projects for ZAE , hotels, facilities for congress, culture and sport, as well as many infrastructure projects: the completion of the Francilienne, a new RER station at the Fig. 8 .25  The Association des Collectivités du Grand Roissy (ACGR ) in 2012.

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airport freight zone, and a dedicated transport route, the Comet, to connect the various zones to each other (Fig. 8.26).76 The second CDT,

whose communities were among the most affected by airport operation in terms of noise, had the future station of Triangle de Gonesse as its main anchor point. It included various projects of urban renewal, a big sports v ­ enue in Sarcelles (Forum de Sarcelles), and the BIP project complete with mixed-use develop-

ment. The TdG urban development was clearly its most ambitious component. Here again, the idea of benefiting from the airport’s presence Fig. 8 .26  Visualization of the projects of the CDT CERTF .

These two CDTs demonstrated the impetus given by the new planning instruments, seen in the targets in urbanization, job creation, but also housing, that were very ambitious in comparison to ongoing trends.78 The final CDT s, approved in early 2013, ­included more than a hundred actions (some in both), with many “hard” p ­ rojects – the GPE stations, new bus lines, new urban boulevards, and large-scale development operations – alongside “soft” measures, like training programs and the promotion of cultural and natural heritage. They largely embodied the “airport-related” rhetoric, which became common to the promotion of economic zones in the area. The South CDG zone, for instance, was re-marketed as Aérolians, suggesting a clear link to air transport ­activity, and described as “an international exchange and innovation hub in the heart of Grand Roissy.”79 The discourse for the zone focused on the high-tech material flows transiting through Paris-CDG and creating territories of the knowledge economy.80 In the TdG project, this discourse was mixed with that of “urbanity” and compact development. The project was described as an “innovative international business district … designed for international companies in search of greater flexibility in office organization and immediate proximity with the two international airports … [and] an international tourist destination.”81 It appeared, therefore, that under the impetus of the Grand Paris vision and the discourses of airport-relatedness and strategic planning, economic development projects were put forth as an “answer” to the question of the early 2000s of “how to reconcile the efficiency and attractiveness of the international airport with the sustainable development of the surrounding territory.” The prospect of investment overshadowed the concerns about the impacts of airport operation that had dominated the public debates of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The results of a study commissioned by EPA  PdF to evaluate the jobs generated by the “25 structuring projects of Grand R ­ oissy,”

projecting 132,000 jobs within 15 – 20 years, reinforced this prospect.82 In reality, many deemed these job projections unrealistic in terms of size, and poorly matching local population skills.83 But the broad consensus that the expectation of development seemed to have established was too precious to challenge, along with the apparent – if fragile – political unity that it brought.

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

was prominent, with the ambition to attract aviation-related businesses and international tourism stated.77

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Converging ideals and the 2013 SDRIF After the turbulent planning processes and intense debate of the late 2000s and ­early 2010s, a period of negotiation and compromise ensued.84 In late 2011, a new round of consultations, deliberations and public hearings was initiated to revise the SDRIF ­according to the political compromise between the State and the Region and in compliance with the new laws on Grand Paris. The return of the PS party to power in 2012 under the Presidency of François Hollande put an end to the assertive “return of the State” in the planning of Ile-de-France. Besides, the new government’s closer political alignment with the administrations of the Region and the city of Paris enabled their collaboration. In early 2013, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced “The new Grand Paris,” a revisiting of Grand Paris Express that aimed to better tune it to regional planning goals. In addition to specifying GPE ’s technical characteristics, implementation timeframe (2017 – 2030), and expected cost (26.5 billion euros), it inserted the project into a broader mobilization plan that included the modernization of the existing network and prioritized the least well-served areas. The stops of the CDG airport region would be served by the future Metro Line 17, which would be implemented gradually between 2025 and 2030 (Fig. 8.27). The discourse of “The new Grand Paris” focused on solidarity as much as on development, marking a reorientation in relation to the previous administration’s focus on

Fig. 8 .27  “The new Grand Paris,” including the GPE project and revamped existing lines, in 2013.

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competitiveness.85 But some saw this reorientation as merely nominal, since the main lines of the project – development around GPE stations, specialized “clusters” – were not challenged. As Daniel Béhar noted: It is very difficult to take a step back from the proclamations of the Sarkozy government, which limit the political room for maneuver of the current government: these statements were powerful; they produced a representation [of the region] that speaks directly to the public and that has put together a system of geopolitical alliances among socioeconomic actors, local elected officials, etc.86

Regional Council in October 2013 and approved by the State Council immediately after, the new document put forth “a shared vision that allows the implementation of a collective territorial strategy, seeking to achieve a complementarity of scales.”87 The SDRIF laid a wide range of challenges: greater solidarity, by fighting the territorial divides resulting in unequal access to housing, employment, services, mobility and green spaces; anticipation of the energy transition and preservation of the region’s natural resources; strengthening and diversification of the economy to maintain the capital’s global standing while also serving the needs of the regional population.88 To address these challenges, the SDRIF ’s proposed spatial strategy revolved around three pillars (Fig. 8.28). The first, called “linking-structuring” (“relier-­structurer”), concerned the promotion of multimodality and the enhancement of the public transport network: at the national scale by improving access to the airports, adding high-speed rail connections, and strengthening the role of the Seine river for goods transport; at the regional scale with the development of the Grand Paris Express metro, but also additional tangential light rail links; and at the local scale by promoting “soft” modes of transport like biking and walking. The second pillar, under the heading “differentiating-­ balancing” (“polariser-équilibrer”), introduced the notion of “living basins” (“bassins de vie”): areas with a balanced mix of housing and workplaces and a diversity of living types and economic opportunities. The plan prescribed the reinforcement of centrality around existing and future metro/RER stations and the densification of the urban fabric, and upheld the target of 70,000 new housing units annually. Finally, the third pillar, called “preserving-valuing” (“preserver-valoriser”), asked to limit the consumption of natural areas and to preserve ecological continuity. The SDRIF accordingly identified areas where connectivity, densification, economic diversification, or preservation was to be prioritized. But contrary to previous regional plans, the plan was careful not to overly prioritize territories or strategies. The “re-equilibration” of north-east and west co-existed with the strengthening of competitive hubs like La Défense, and the densification of the inner periphery with the development of peripheral centers around train stations. This attitude also typified the approach to Paris airports that the SDRIF saw as being both regional assets and economic development motors for their surroundings, highlighting the compromises needed to achieve both roles, and promoting a

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

The new-found consensus was hence not based on a replacement of the Grand Paris vision with a new one, but on its assimilation into a framework integrating and making different metropolitan planning ideals converge. The revised Schéma directeur de la R ­ égion Ile-de-France / Ile-de-France 2030 reflected this convergence. Adopted by the

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Fig. 8 .28  Regional spatial project of the 2013 SDRIF.

t­ erritorial approach with regard to their effects.89 Major stakes were the improvement and diversification of accessibility at different scales, and the need to find a balance between reducing the environmental impact and enhancing the economic impact of airport operation. Priority was given to air-rail multimodality, which would enable ­selectivity in air traffic and facilitate connections to the entire Parisian basin. In parallel, better accessibility would “offer better opportunities for economic diversification through the establishment of companies and research units, requiring a European or global connection in neighboring territories with productive functions sometimes weakened by the crisis.”90 Delimited as one of the metropolitan territories of Ile-de-France, Grand Roissy was described as “one of the main drivers of urban and economic development” of the 296

­region and “a major hub, where international attractiveness, reduction of nuisances and agricultural development must be reconciled.”91 The plan’s conciliatory and comprehensive vision for the territory included: 1) better accessibility at all scales – to the Parisian Basin via a new Roissy-Picardie line, to the city of Paris via the CDG Express, to the other regional hubs via the GPE , to the surrounding territory via an improved RER line (RER B+) and new bus and tram lines (BHNS and TCSP); 2) balanced urban development – economic functions in the areas under PEB , housing outside constrained zones, complementarity of functions, densification instead of expansion where possible; 3) reinforcement of the role of the territory as “exchange crossroads,” and diversification of economic activities – through prioritization of airport-related functions, business tourism, hotels, freight and logistics, with office and retail development concentrated in a few nodes – but also, facilitation of local access to employment by better training; and 4) preservation of agricultural land.

Fig. 8 .29  Excerpt from the general map of the 2013 SDRIF .

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

The spatial vision to which this exhaustive list of orientations corresponded adhered to the plan of the DRIEA “study of the petals,” which was abstracted into the SDRIF ’s general map. This one, contrary to the land use maps of previous regional plans but similarly to the 2008 version, used “dots” (“pastilles”), small circles corresponding to 25 hectares, to signify new spaces of urbanization. In the Grand ­Roissy,

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new urbanization spaces were designated to the south and north of the platform, corresponding to the promoted projects; the TdG project, as well as the “multimodal freight platforms” in Tremblay and Goussainville, were made conditional upon the implementation of transport links (Fig. 8.29). Overall, the plan conceded that, notwithstanding its assets, the Grand Roissy was a difficult territory where “proactive action” was needed to ­concurrently promote all orientations. It recognized the socioeconomic difficulties of especially the communities of Val-d’Oise and the difficulty of conciliating densification and development with airport-related nuisance. Though reflecting a moderate economic development discourse, the 2013 SDRIF did not, however, question the role of Grand Roissy as one of the main development territories of Grand Paris. If anything, the sheer volume of streamlined projects made it a de facto planning priority. With the contribution of the planning studies of DRIEA , EPA PdF, the Region, and IAU -IdF (ex-IAURIF ), the discourse on the area was partly

refocused from its predominant economic focus to a broader preoccupation with spatial and urban qualities. This refocusing did not dispute the projects per se, but rather reorder their prioritization. A more widespread preoccupation with solidarity and the alleviation of inequalities also ensued, at least nominally, as these topics were among the top priorities of the Region for metropolitan planning generally. Thus, the momentum of the Grand Roissy and promise of win-win development were not lost, but rather mitigated by the introduction of additional themes.

The elusive governance of the airport region The 2013 SDRIF was probably the most consensual regional plan in the history of the Paris region, but also, the one most appearing as an exhaustive “wish list”; hard for anyone to disagree with. The plan’s strategic approach left many specifics of the ­“regional project” still to be determined. The public discussion that followed its publication largely focused on the modes of governance and decision-making through which the projects embodying the spatial vision of the GPE and the SDRIF can be prioritized, specified and implemented. There was a proliferation of governance arrangements (various EPCIs and Syndicats), planning authorities (SGP and several EPAs) and planning instruments – traditional ones like the SCoTs and the PLUs and new ad hoc ones like the CDTs that determined territorial urban development projects through contractual relationships. In the CDG airport region, the question of governance was more prominent than ever. The SDRIF acknowledged: These reckonings [about the particularities of the airport region] confirm the necessity of putting in place a coordinated and coherent governance mode, necessary to the balanced development of Grand Roissy, associating all the actors of the territory and allowing the risks of saturation to be reduced and the current competition and fragmentation resulting from existing dynamics to be overcome.92 The regional plan thus set the overall tone, without nonetheless defining the actual governance mode. After the brief “return of the State,” the lack of a strong planning a ­ ctor, 298

able to formulate and implement an blatantly apoverall strategy, was ­ parent. If top-down planning was not, and could not be, a sustainable option in the pluralistic, democratic context of planning action in the 21st c­entury, there was nonetheless no clear alter­native. In the absence of a mega-­ v ision, the appropriate governance mode could thus only be one thing: the common denominator reconciling the micro-visions of the variBut even this proved difficult to achieve. EPA PdF played the role of an Fig. 8.30  Perimeter of EPA PdF and associated communities in overarching, coordinating planning 2014. authority to a certain extent, especially after associating a number of communities of Seine-et-Marne, even though they were never incorporated in its perimeter (Fig. 8.30). The communities of the airport area, through the larger EPCIs they formed, were able to engage in more determined planning and development action, even if, with regard to the overall t­ erritory, their delimitations remained mostly inappropriate (Fig. 8.31). Under the superficial convergence of interests, underlying different visions and priorities prevented a movement from consensual discourse to consensual action. As a result, the main problems of the airport region – unequal distribution of benefits and drawbacks, poor urban quality, problematic accessibility – remained ­mostly untackled. That said, several projects of the CDG airport region did move forward, and in several ways, the integration of the airport in its environment was improved by the mid-2010s. Also, many of the institutions and alliances created in the period 2008 – 2012 – intermunicipal authorities but also informal groupings and marketing initiatives like Hubstart – proved enduring, and significantly contributed to the communication of the various actors and to a sense of shared identity. ADP made questions of governance and sustainability more prominent, and introduced more communication mechanisms with local actors. These actions contributed to the Grand Roissy gradually becoming aware of its identity as a territory.93 In the following years, ­ Paris Charles de Gaulle continued to grow, Fig. 8 .31  Intercommunal structures and CDT in the Grand Roissy in 2014 .

its passenger traffic reaching 62 million in 2013 and 76 million in 2019. New topics and new challenges

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

ous territorial actors in a coherent way.

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Fig. 8 .32  Collage of projects in the Grand Roissy territory, reconceptualized as “Porte Nord du Grand Paris,” in 2015.

­appeared in the airport region, new plans were made and other plans were canceled (Fig. 8.32). Metropolitan discourses changed, and along with them also the perception of the airport region, its role, and the appropriate spatial strategies and forms of urban development. These evolutions are beyond the scope of this study. Suffice it to say, however, that the difficulty of the collaborative planning endeavors of the first decadeand-a-half of the 21st century to efficiently tackle the problems of the airport region substantiated their wickedness. At the time of writing, furthermore, there ­remains neither a strong planning actor nor a planning governance structure at the scale of the airport area.

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Fig. 8 .33  Hotel cluster in the village of Roissy-en-France.

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Fig. 8 .34  Office building in the Paris Nord 2 business park.

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d’Aménagement Plaine de France (EPA Plaine de France). Exercices 2006 à 2011.”  18  SIEVO and PROSCOT , “Schéma de Cohérence Territoriale de l’Est du Val d’Oise. Rapport de présentation: Diagnostic” (2006).  19  These goals responded to the need to upgrade a territory that was described as un-urban, lacking centralities; heterogeneous, from very urban to very rural; compartmentalized due to infrastructures; constrained due to noise-related restrictions; and unattractive, as evidenced by the continuing out-migration of population. “Schéma de ­ Cohérence Territoriale de l’Est du Val d’Oise. Plan d’aménagement et de développement durable (PADD )” (2006).  20 As recounted in Camille Gardesse, “Case Study Paris Europa City, France: Implementation of a Large Private Project within the Trinagle De Gonesse,” in CONTEXT Report 3 . (Amsterdam: NWO , Urban Regions in the Delta. AISSR programme group Urban Planning, 2013). 21  SIEVO and PROSCOT , “Schéma de Cohérence Territoriale de l’Est du Val d’Oise. Document d’orientations générales” (2006), p. 22.  22 Ibid. 23  Jean-Paul Huchon, “Avis sur le Schéma de Cohérence Territoriale de l’Est du Val d’Oise. Rapport pour la commission permanente du CRIF ” (2006).  24 Berthon, “Chargé urbanisme et aménagement des territoires IAU -Idf (until 2013).” 25  Güller Güller et al., “Triangle De Gonesse – Paris. Plan stratégique d’ensemble” (2007 ).  26 Original: “Veut-on que Paris joue dans les 20 ans qui viennent en première ou en deuxième division des métropoles mondiales? Si on vise la première division, il faut développer Roissy.” Nicolas Sarkozy, “Déclaration sur les projets en matière de politique d’aménagement durable” (2007 ).  27  Kantor et al., Struggling Giants.  28  The selection of Christian Blanc was telling, as Blanc was not only an accomplished politician but also a businessman. In addition to his various government positions in different regions with UDF , he had served as head of RATP , Air France, and Merill Lynch France among others.  29 Original: “diagnostic prospectif, urbanistique et paysager, sur le Grand Paris à l’horizon de vingt, trente voire quarante ans.” Quoted in JeanFrançois Drevon, ed. Le Grand Pari(s): Consultation internationale sur l’avenir de la métropole parisienne (amc Le Moniteur, 2009).  30  Grand Pari(s) is a wordplay between “Great Bet” (“Grand Pari”) and “Greater Paris” (“Grand Paris”). The architects included Richard Rogers, MVRDV , Christian de Portzamparc and Roland Castro. For a full list of teams and projects, see: https://www.ateliergrandparis. fr/aigp/conseil/consultation2008 .php.  31  The proposals were published in Drevon, Le Grand Pari(S). Following the consultation, a public institution was created, the Greater Paris International Workshop (Atelier International du Grand Paris, AIGP ), that continued to develop the produced reflections with the involved architects, urban planners and researchers, organize workshops and conferences, and publish studies on the planning of the metropolis. http://www.ateliergrandparis.fr  32 Jacques Dermagne, “Pour un développement durable de l’aéroport Paris-Charles de Gaulle,” Report to the President of the Republic, November (2008).  33  EPA Plaine de France, “Rapport d’activités 2008 ” (2009).  34 Conseil Régional Ile-de-France, “Schéma directeur de la région Ile-de-France. Projet adopté par délibération du Conseil

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1  Cottour, “Une brève histoire de l’aménagement de ­Paris et sa région.”  2  A parallel initiative by the Parisian mayor Bertrand Delanoë was the launching a metropolitan conference focusing on the “dense zone” of the agglomeration, a move that put pressure on the Region to acknowledge the specificity of the core. The conference led to the creation of Paris-Métropole, an institution that became a vital voice in urban matters albeit with no real planning powers.  3  Xavier Desjardins, Nicolas Douay, and Vincent Gagnière, “Évolution des schémas, permanence des tracés: la planification de la région parisienne au prisme des réseaux ferroviaires,” Géocarrefour, no. Vol. 87/2 (2012).  4 Subra, Le Grand Paris. 25 questions décisives. 5  Dominique Chapuis, “L’Etat veut accroître le rôle de locomotive de l’Ile-de-France,” Les Echos, 15.09.2005; “Les projets autoroutiers pris pour cible,” Les Echos, 29.11.2006. 6 At the time, the alliance comprised six airlines: Air France, Aeromexico, Alitalia, CSA Czech Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Korean Air. After expanding its members on two occasions, between 2004 and 2007 and between 2011 and 2014 , it consisted of 19 carriers.  7 Original: “Le hub de Roissy … le plus puissant d’Europe, en avance sur Francfort et Londres.” Quoted in Dominique Buffier, “Grâce Au Nouveau Terminal, La Capacité d’accueil Passera De 48 ,3 Millions À 63 Millions De Passagers,” Le Monde, 16.06.2003.  8  This gave CDG the highest rate of jobs to million passengers among Europe’s large airports. London Heathrow, with 64 million passengers against CDG ’s 48 million, was also home to 80,000 jobs, and Frankfurt ­airport, with 49 million passengers, offered 73,000 jobs. Patrice Drouin, “Roissy: Le nouveau terminal va générer 10,000 emplois,” Les Echos, 16.06.2003; Guy Schwarz, “Développement mondial des aérorégions,” ibid., 29.04 . 2004 .  9 Fabrice Gliszczynski, “1974 – 2 014 : L’histoire ­passionnante de Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle,” La Tribune, 13.03.2014 .  10  B. T., “Les aéroports parisiens cherchent à redorer leur image,” Les Echos, 31.03.2005.  11 Bruno Trédivic, “ADP va investir plus de 2 milliards sur cinq ans,” ibid., 26.12.2006.  12  EPA Plaine de France, “Document stratégique de référence. Orientations pour un développement durable et solidaire de la Plaine de France” (2005).  13  Specifically, six objectives were put forth: 1) restoration of positive in-migration rates by increasing and diversifying housing supply; 2) promotion of diversified and R & D-oriented economic development; 3) better access to regional jobs for residents through better mobility options and better training; 4) priority to urban renewal and the affirmation of new centralities; 5) preservation of agricultural activity and enhancement of open spaces, valleys and waterways; 6) reinforcement of cooperation among the involved authorities.  14 Original: “renforcer l’armature urbaine autour de nouvelles centralités.” EPA Plaine de France, “Document stratégique de référence. Orientations pour un développement durable et solidaire de la Plaine de France,” p. 69.  15  Ibid., p. 77. 16 Original: “espace stratégique pour un grand projet d’aménagement d’intérêt régional”; “porte ­d’entrée principale dans l’agglomération.” Ibid., p. 91.  17 Dominique Chapuis, “La Plaine de France arrête les grands axes de son développement,” Les Echos, 17.02 .2006; Cour des comptes, “Rapport particulier: Établissement Public

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­Régional le 25 Seprembre 2008 ” (2008).  35  Ibid., p. 108 . for example, the critique of architect Jean Nouvel, who 36  Desjardins, “La bataille du Grand Paris.”  37  Kantor et had participated in the consultation: “Mais enfin Monsieur …, Par Jean Nouvel,” Le Monde, 19.05 .2010. al., Struggling Giants.  38 Original: “enjeu majeur pour le Blanc!  développement durable de la Nation”; “un devoir collec- 55  Gaëlle Bonnefond, “Enjeux et perspectives d’aménagetif d’assurer à Roissy les moyens de son expansion”; “des ment du Grand Roissy,” in Séminaire international susprogrès significatifs doivent être obtenus concernant la tainable airport area (2011).  56  Loi no  2010 -597 du 3 gouvernance, la cohérence des orientations, la transpar- juin 2010 relative au Grand Paris.  57  The logics of the ence des informations recueillies, de telle sorte que two transport projects were quite different: the former partenaires, riverains et élus puissent agir désormais prioritized long-distance commutes among hubs in the dans un climat de confiance rétabli”. Dermagne, “Pour un outer periphery, while the latter aimed to finely mesh the développement durable de l’aéroport Paris-Charles de territory, focusing on the more densely urbanized inner Gaulle,” p. 3 .  39  Guy Schwarz, “Envol difficile des aéro- periphery. The agreement was based on adjusting the villes,” Les Echos, 29.04 .2004 .  40 In 2004 , ADP gener- route so that it would serve Clichy-sous-Bois, Chelles and ated 53.1 % of its turnover (1.82 billion euros) through the the Cité-Descartes in Champs-sur-Marne to the east – as management of its commercial activities (concession of preferred by the State – and would be primarily located boutiques, royalties on hotel activities, parking fees, etc.). in the petite couronne in the south, west and north – as François Bostnavaron and Dominique Buffier, “Com- preferred by the Region. Desjardins, Douay, and Gagnière, merces, bureaux, parking … La nouvelle économie des “Évolution des schémas, permanence des tracés.”  58 Bonaéroports,” Le Monde, 02 .06 .2005 .  41 Aéroports de nefond, “Chargée de Mission des territoires stratégiques ­Paris, “Créateur de lieux de vie et de pôles d’échanges DRIEA (until 2016).”  59  Gardesse, “Case Study Paris Euouverts sur le monde” (ADP Direction de l’Immobilier, ropa City, France: Implementation of a Large Private Proj2005).  42 Original: “Nos aéroports sont des villes … des ect within the Trinagle De Gonesse.”  60  EPA Plaine de pôles d’emplois majeurs, puisque les plates-formes de France et al., “Nord est francilien, corridor aéroportuaire Roissy et d’Orly emploient 115 .000 salariés, ainsi que des Roissy-Le Bourget. Plan de Référence Triangle de Gopôles d’activités aéroportuaires et complémentaires tels nesse,” ed. EPA Plaine de France (2010).  61 Original: que la logistique, le fret, les industries, le tertiaire, les “économie de la connaissance et de l’innovation”; “levier bureaux, 120 prestataires de services et de maintenance, de développement stratégique pour Grand Paris.” Ibid., 100 restaurants, 10 hôtels et 500 commerces.” Quoted p 37.  62 Original: “L’analyse de métropoles européennes, in Schwarz, “Envol difficile des aérovilles.” 43  D. Ma., comme Amsterdam, Berlin, Londres ou Madrid, démon“Aéroville pourrait créer 2.600 emplois à Roissy-Charles- tre que les aéroports sont l’un des puissants moteurs de de-Gaulle,” ibid., 02 .01.2008 .  44  R. Ho., “Le fret ferro­ poly-centralisation. Conséquence, les territoires situés viaire à grande vitesse veut compléter le transport aérien,” entre ces villes et leurs aéroports internationaux – ‘les ibid., 24 .11.2008 .  45 D. Ma., “Le gouvernement remet corridors aéroportuaires’ – deviennent les nouveaux vecla liaison CDG Express sur les rails,” ibid., 02 .07. teurs de développement économique métropolitain.” 2008; Mission CDG Express, “CDG Express. Paris en direct. Ibid., p. 13.  63 Original: “Le ‘Plan de référence’ conduit La liaison ferroviaire directe entre Paris et l’aéroport à considérer que le succès du ‘Corridor aéroportuaire Charles-de-Gaulle,” ed. Ministère des Transports, de l’Equi- Roissy-Le Bourget’ implique la promotion de l’ensemble pement, du Tourisme et de la Mer (2010).  46  GEISTEL , du territoire … et l’aménagement coordonne de plusieurs “Étude de prospective sur la vocation économique du projets urbains dont il conviendra de maitriser la com­secteur Sud Charles-de-Gaulle de Tremblay-en-France. plémentarité … Le ‘faux’ débat d’une concurrence larvée Document de synthèse” (AFTRP , 2008).  47 “Préfigura- entre projets locaux ne contribue ni à l’attractivité, ni à tion de la ZAC Sud CDG à Tremblay-en-France” (AFTRP , la performance de l’ensemble du Corridor et de chacun 2009).  48  AFTRP and CATF , “Aérolians Paris. Terre de ses sites. Pire, la poursuite d’une concurrence interne d’échanges – Business Hub” (2011).  49  “Roissyparc Inter- entraverait tout le potentiel de ce nouveau ‘vecteur de national: Une réussite rapide, au cœur d’une future ‘con- la connaissance et de l’innovation’ de l’Ile-de-France et urbation’ d’affaires, le long de la RD 902.,” benefice.net, celui du développement industriel dans le contexte de août–septembre–octobre 2009.  50 “Roissy Porte de compétition entre les métropoles Européennes.” Ibid., France: toujours en avant, toujours en avance,” Roissymail, p. 19.  64 Original: “essayer de définir, de façon partagée, novembre/decembre 2010.  51 In the words of Jean- les conditions d’équilibre du développement des terriFrançois Bernardin, President of the Yvelines-Val-d’Oise toires du Grand Roissy, pour contribuer à fabriquer une Chamber of Commerce. Original: “un pouvoir trop éclaté, vision et partager un projet collectif”. DRIEA et al., “Etude sans vue d’ensemble, or chaque collectivité a voulu s’ad- d’orientations et schéma d’aménagement durable du juger les implantations pour en retirer la taxe profession- grand territoire de Roissy” (Direction Régionale et Internelle … Il faut donc une approche collective de toutes les départementale de l’Equipement et de l’Aménagement, parties intéressées et une fiscalité unique à l’échelle 2012), pp. 5 – 6.  65  Bonnefond, “Chargée de Mission des ­régionale.” Quoted in Dominique Malécot, “Les CCI prô- territoires stratégiques DRIEA (until 2016).”  66  DRIEA et nent une autorité unique pour dle développement de la al., “Etude d’orientations et schéma d’aménagement Plaine de France,” Les Echos, 06 .10.2008 .  52 Marie-­ ­durable du grand territoire de Roissy.”  67  Collectif pour Laure Hardy, “Roissy: la mutation stratégique,” ibid., le Triangle de Gonesse, “Synthèse des positions du 09.03.2006.  53  EPA Plaine de France, “Un éco-quartier ­Collectif” (2012).  68 Original: “au bénéfice d’un giganaux portes de l’aéroport,” news release, 2009.  54 See tesque centre de shopping de luxe et de loisirs et d’un

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Grand Paris: Premier conflit né de la décentralisation (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 2011); Christian Lefèvre, Nathalie Roseau, and Tommaso Vitale, eds., Paris, Métropoles. Le défi de la gouvernance. Séminaire International, les 1er et 2 décembre 2011 (La Gazette des Communes, des Départements, des Régions, 2012); Atelier International du Grand Paris, “Systèmes Métropolitains” (AIGP , 2013).  85  Renaud Epstein, “Un ‘nouveau’ Grand Paris? Table ronde avec Daniel Béhar, Patrick Braouezec, Emmanuelle Cosse,” Mouvements 74 , no. 2 (2013).  86 Original: “Il est très difficile de faire un pas de côté par rapport aux énoncés produits par le gouvernement Sarkozy, qui limitent les marges de manœuvre politique du gouvernement actuel: ces énoncés ont été puissants ; ils ont fabriqué une représentation qui parle directement à l’opinion publique et qui a organisé un système d’allian­ ces géopolitiques entre acteurs socio-économiques, élus locaux, etc.” Béhar in ibid., p. 64 .  87 Original: “une vision partagée qui permet la mise en place d’une stratégie territoriale collective, recherchant la complémentarité des échelles.” Conseil Régional Ile-de-France, “Ile-de-France 2030. Schéma directeur de la Région Ilede-France. Vision régionale / Préambule” (2013), p. 50. 88 “Ile-de-France 2030. Schéma directeur de la région Ile-de-France.” (2013).  89  Unlike in the 1994 SDRIF , the Orly airport was also given an important role in the 2013 plan. By that time fully recovered from the crisis of the first part of the 2000 s, Orly was considered as a development motor and centrality, notably with the projection of a new TGV station on the platform.  90 Original: “offrira par ailleurs de meilleures opportunités de diversification économique par l’implantation d’entreprises et d’unités de recherche, nécessitant une connexion européenne ou mondiale, dans des territoires limitrophes aux fonctions productives parfois fragilisées par la crise.” Conseil Régional Ile-de-France, “Ile-de-France 2030. Schéma directeur de la Région Ile-de-France. Défis, projet spatial régional et objectifs” (2013).  91 Original: “un des principaux moteurs de développement urbain et économique d’Ilede-France”; “un pôle de développement majeur, où concilier attractivité international, réduction des nuisances et valorisation agricole”. “Ile-de-France 2030. Schéma directeur de la Région Ile-de-France. Propositions pour la mise en œuvre” (2013), p. 94 .  92 Original: “Ces constats confirment la nécessité de mettre en place un mode de gouvernance coordonné et cohérent, indispensable au développement équilibré du Grand Roissy, associant l’ensemble des acteurs du territoire et permettant de réduire les risques de saturation et de dépasser les ­concurrences et le morcellement actuel dans le prolongement des dynamiques en cours.” Ibid., p. 95.  93  Élisabeth Le Masson, interview by author, 2017.

CHAPTER 8  The airport region of the global city (2004 – 2013)

pôle de bureaux en décalage complet avec la qualification et le niveau de vie des habitants, qui ne pourraient ni y travailler en grand nombre, ni y faire leurs achats ou s’y détendre”. Ibid., p. 1.  69 Original: “Je ne dis pas qu’il ne faut rien faire, mais c’est un développement très consommateur de foncier, et il y avait suffisamment de ‘grain à moudre’ dans la périphérie proche de l’aéroport et ce n’est pas la peine d’aller ‘tartiner’ le Triangle de Gonesse, surtout avec un projet de pôle tertiaire qui était totalement irréaliste.” Berthon, “Chargé urbanisme et aménagement des territoires IAU -Idf (until 2013).”  70  IAURIF , “L’accessibilité terrestre aux grands aéroports européens” (2011).  71  DHV , “Market Study. Companies That Want to Be Located Close to an Air Cargo Express Hub” (Hubstart Paris and Établissement Public d’Aménagement Plaine de France, 2010).  72  Bonnefond, “Chargée de Mission des territoires stratégiques DRIEA (until 2016).”  73 Grangé, “Direction de l’Aménagement, Tremblay-en-France (until 2014).”  74  “Conférence Territoriale du Grand Roissy,” in Actions à l’échelle du Grand Roissy: bilan et perspectives (2013).  75 Original: “un développement économique basé sur la performance de la plateforme aéroportuaire et le cluster des échanges internationaux” “Convention Cadre. Contrat de développement territorial ‘Cœur économique Roissy Terres de France’” (2012).  76 Algoé Consultants, “Contrat de développement territorial ‘Cœur économique Roissy Terres de France’” (2013).  77 “Contrat de développement territorial Val de France  /  Gonesse / Bonneuil-en-France” (2013).  78  IAU -IdF, “Présentation Des Projets De CDT ” (2012).  79  AFTRP and CATF , “Aérolians Paris. Terre d’échanges  –  Business Hub.” 80  Jacques Grangé, “Les nouveaux territories de l’innovation et de l’économie de la connaissance: Le cas de l’aéroport Paris-Charles de Gaulle,” in L’innovation. Analyser, Anticiper, Agir., ed. Faridah Djellal Sophie Boutillier, Dimitri Uzunidis, Business & Innovation (2013). 81 “Le Triangle de Gonesse. Nouveau quartier international au cœur de l’économie des échanges et du Grand Paris,” ed. EPA Plaine de France (2013).  82  EPA Plaine de France and ECODEV -Conseil, “Estimation quantitative et qualitative des nouveaux emplois sur le territoire du Grand Roissy” (2012).  83  Solène Le Coz, interview by author, 2015.  84  The large-scale public debate prompted by the initiatives of the State, Region, and city of Paris, and the consultations preceding and public inquiries following each new plan, peaked between 2009 and 2012. The two axes of the debate were the renewal of the institutions governing Ile-de-France and its spatial development model. For related analyses and discussions, see also: Frédéric Gilli and Jean-Marc Offner, Paris, Métropole hors le murs: aménager et gouverner un Grand Paris (Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po, 2009); Marc Wiel, Le

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CHAPTER 9  Planning the impossible: evolving strategies and tactics The Paris CDG airport region over time: a synopsis of spatial change Evolving planning approaches in the context of Paris Diachronic airport-related wicked dilemmas The rational, the strategic, and the spatial Planning the impossible?

The Paris CDG airport region over time: a synopsis of spatial change The previous five chapters provided a long-term narrative of planning rationales, spatial strategies, and urban development trends regarding the Paris CDG airport. This concluding chapter starts with an overview of spatial change in the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport region over time. This serves as a basis for the evaluation of evolving planning approaches, illustrating the convergence and divergence of discourse and reality through time. Given the broad perspective of the inquiry and the need for reliable data through time, I employ land use data as a proxy to spatial change – with the caveat that land use alone certainly does not capture the full range and dynamic of spatial transformations. It does, however, provide an illustration of the degree and type of change. The illustration of spatial change is based on the database MOS (Mode d’Occupation des Sols), produced by IAU-IdF (ex-IAURIF ) every 3 to 5 years since 1982. The database classifies land uses into categories; for this illustration, the categorization that features 11 classes is used.1 These are: single-family housing (habitat individuel); multi-family housing (habitat collectif); industry / offices / commerce (activités); public functions / amenities (équipements); transport (transports); forest (forêts); semi-natural environment (milieux semi-naturels); artificial open space (espaces ouverts artificialisés); agriculture (espaces agricoles); water (eau); and quarries / construction sites (carrières, décharges et chantiers). These classes constitute the “new land use” of each period (Fig. 9.1). To ­illustrate change through time, land uses that remain unchanged from one period to the next are grouped into categories (“urbanized area,” “transport,” “green area,” and ­“agriculture  / intermediate”) that are depicted with greyscale colors as “existing land use.” For the period before 1982, due to the lack of a digitalized georeferenced database, a study of land use change made by Mission Roissy in 1996 was employed.2 The maps in this study utilized approximately the same land use categories as the ones ­presented above. They were digitalized, and their land use categories adjusted and consolidated. For all maps, the selected extent was that of the “Roissy sector” study perimeter, as established by IAU-IdF in 2003 (see Chapter 7), corresponding to 63 communities and 49,000 ha of surface area. Let me start with the first map, where land use change in the period 1950 – 1975 is presented (Fig. 9.2). This period, longer than the following ones due to lack of denser data, provides a rough illustration of urbanization in the “pre-CDG ” period. During these 25 years, the area undergoes big transformations, as discussed in Chapter 4. Three main trends are observable. First, the airport appears as a new perimeter

Fig. 9.1  Legend for land use change, existing and new, according to IAU -IdF, MOS database (used for all following maps).

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Fig. 9.3  Land use change in the Roissy sector between 1975 and 1982.

CHAPTER 9  Planning the impossible: evolving strategies and tactics

Fig. 9.2  Land use change in the Roissy between 1950 and 1975 (source: Mission Roissy; digitized and ­ olor-edited by author; same for the following map). c

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Fig. 9.4  Land use change in the Roissy sector between 1982 and 1987 (source: IAU -IdF, MOS database; mapped and color-edited by author; same for all following maps).

Fig. 9.5  Land use change in the Roissy sector 1987 – 1990.

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­ iolently i­nterrupting the spatial continuity of the area; the new road axes also crev ate new borders. Second, beyond the continuous agglomeration to the south, in 1950 most of the Roissy sector consists of very small urban cores. Many of those, ­especially to the east of the new airport, remain practically unchanged by 1975. This speaks to

la-­­Ville (north) (in yellow). In parallel, some of the largest activity zones of the area are established in this period: Paris Nord I, Mitry-Compans, Sarcelles (in light purple). In the next map, corresponding to the period 1975 – 1982, the expansion of transport infrastructure in the airport region can be observed (Fig. 9.3). This includes both airport facilities – runways, taxiways, cargo zone – as well as surrounding land access ways, such as the “thickening” of the A1 highway, the development of the RN2 highway, and that of Roissy Rail (future RER B) – a curving line passing through the rural fields south of CDG . The “greening” of the airfields of CDG and Le Bourget and the initiation of the Parc du Sausset testify to the interest in increasing green surfaces, but in relation to the announced “forest belt,” these efforts appear piecemeal. Urban development is more piecemeal than before, testifying to the effect of restrictive regulation (see Chapter 5), with mostly low-density suburban development around existing settlements. At the same time, the (delayed) implementation of the projects initiated in the previous decade is seen in the concerted expansion of the activity zone Paris Nord I and II . Suburbanization trends remains strong in the following illustrated period, 1982 – 1987, as captured in Fig. 9.4. By 1987, several small towns crown CDG at a radius of 10 – 20 km, a substantial change in relation to 30 years earlier; some are under noise exposure. In parallel, the development of Paris Nord II and the Villepinte Exhibition Center take off. These projects, in combination with regulatory shifts and the expectation of the European Common Market, boost speculative development. This is clearly seen in the map of the following period, 1987 – 1990, where surfaces devoted to economic ­activities appear to multiply, in CDG itself and along the major road axes (Fig. 9.5). This proliferation partly responds to a real increase in demand, reflected in the job growth in the communities bordering the airport, as discussed in Chapter 6. But economic as well as housing development hardly follow the overarching directions set by the 1965 and 1976 regional plans. It is thus no surprise that there is no concomitant increase in public amenities, at least on a scale reflected in land use. This urbanization pattern is largely continued in the next period (1990 – 1994), where nonetheless one project by the public hand clearly comes forth: the development of the high-speed rail (TGV ) line (in dark blue) (Fig. 9.6). The next two maps correspond to the periods 1994 – 1999 and 1999 – 2003 (Fig. 9.7 and Fig. 9.8 respectively). These follow the publication of the 1994 SDRIF, which brought

CHAPTER 9  Planning the impossible: evolving strategies and tactics

the slow socioeconomic evolution of this rural part of Ile-de-France, but also to the determination of the public hand, which, having decided the construction of the airport since 1963, “freezes” urban development in much of this sector. Third, in parallel, there is a significant expansion of the urban fabric through big monofunctional clusters, developed independently of the new airport, partly directly by the public hand. Multi-family housing developments, largely social housing (grands ensembles), dominate the southern half of the sector – in Servan, Villepinte, and Tremblay (south of the new airport), and Sarcelles, Garges-lès-Gonesse, and Arnouville-lès-Gonesse (west) (in red). The northern half features important expansions of village cores with single-family housing (pavillonnaire), such as in Dammartin-en-Goële (east), Louvres, and Marly-

311

Fig. 9.6  Land use change in the Roissy sector 1990 – 1994 .

Fig. 9.7  Land use change in the Roissy sector 1994 – 1999.

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Fig. 9.9  Land use change in the Roissy sector 2003 – 2008 .

CHAPTER 9  Planning the impossible: evolving strategies and tactics

Fig. 9.8  Land use change in the Roissy sector 1999 – 2003.

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Fig. 9.10  Land use change in the Roissy sector 2008 – 2012.

with it a halt to local aspirations of large-scale, publicly steered urban development projects in the airport periphery (see Chapter 7). The types of spatial development that materialize are of three sorts. First, the expansion of the airport itself stands out, with the construction of the third (1999) and then fourth runway (2000); along with the related access infrastructure, the Terminal 2F, the FedEx and maintenance facilities, and the green buffer zones. Second, there are some “corrective” actions by the public hand, reflected in the development of transport infrastructure and public amenities: the long-awaited part of the Francilienne northwest of the airport, enhancement of the vegetation along roads, parks and new public functions, especially in the neglected densely urbanized zones. Third, ad hoc, expansive development of both economic and residential surfaces continues. Even if reduced in terms of surfaces, housing construction does not come to a halt; we see several instances of new single- and multi-family housing, even in noise-affected localities like Goussainville, Gonesse and Sarcelles west of the airport. In the following period, 2003 – 2008, big public works seem to be over. The airport receives expansions, such as Terminal 2E, but most “motion” occurs to its south, with additions to Paris Nord II and the emergence of new smaller business zones (Fig. 9.9). As the big plans for Greater Paris ensue at the end of this period, new aspirations for the role of CDG and its surrounding area emerge (see Chapter 8). But spatial change in the last illustrated period (Fig. 9.10) testifies to the continuation of “business-as-­usual” patterns: incremental and diffuse urbanization, proliferation of economic ­activity zones, and a lack of major projects steered by the public hand – whether urban development, large green surfaces, or public transport infrastructure. At the same time, the e ­ conomic 314

role of the airport area is consolidated, as most land use change concerns new business activities. In conclusion, the illustration of spatial change in CDG region shows a dynamic image of quasi-continuous urbanization. In fact, compared to the Ile-de-France region, the rate of land use change here is clearly faster (Fig. 9.11). This urbanization is the re-

Fig. 9.11  Land use change in the Roissy sector compared with the Ile-de-France Region for the period 1982 – 2012 (period for which consistent data is available).

sult of two trends. On the one hand, very large projects, including the core airport facilities, land access infrastructure (highways, RER , TGV ), and not least the large economic surfaces Paris Nord I and II and Villepinte, are planned and steered by

the public hand; they largely follow the regional plans, though often with delay. On the other hand, incremental urbanization, either as residential expansions of existing cores, or as activity zones along the road network, is consistently observable. This ­urbanization only partially conforms to overarching planning directions; and thus, further testifies to the mismatch between discourse and action in the airport area.

In recounting the urbanization trends of the Paris CDG airport region between 1950 and 2012, it becomes obvious that planning intentions did not always match spatial reality. This indicates the difficulty in sufficiently and efficiently tackling the infrastructural demands and push-and-pull effects of the airport through spatial strategies. Why then has planning seemingly failed to successfully manage the growth of Paris Charles de Gaulle and its impacts on its region? In the next paragraphs, I propose some explanations for these observed inconsistencies, disconnects, and “failures” of planning. This explanatory grid consists of three interpretative components, illustrated in Fig. 9.12: one contextual, one substantial, and one systemic. Let me start with the contextual component, which concerns the specific context of Paris and France and the ways that it affected the treatment of the airport region. Here, the presence of a powerful central state and its permutations through time have been decisive: when State interest in the airport region lacked, there was no strong ­political or administrative local actor to sufficiently replace it, especially in the territorial context of the Parisian metropolitan periphery. Also, long-standing socioeconomic divisions of metropolitan space deeply affected the politics of planning in the Paris CDG airport region. Thus, we saw how Paris CDG emerged as a nationally important transport infrastructure in the 1960s, creating a new field of public action that enjoyed great technical legitimacy. Airport planning was endowed with great autonomy, reflected in a de-­ territorialization of the platform, both spatially and with regard to the management

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Evolving planning approaches in the context of Paris

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of its impacts. Land transport infrastructures like roads and railways were planned to enable the role of CDG as national gateway. In parallel, the realization of the incompatibility of airport operation with urbanization reinforced its disassociation from spatial development axes. But its concomitant recognition as structuring facility, with a potential attractiveness for specific functions, also led to planning economic activity zones in its vicinities. As long as the public hand enjoyed unity and was able to impose a comprehensive vision on the territory, these two aspects were not in opposition – or rather, potential difficulties in achieving both were considered resolvable through ­better modeling and planning. However, already in the 1970s the fragmentation of the state machinery responsible for the planning of the Paris region, along with the erosion of the rational comprehensive model of planning, led to competing logics of spatial management in the airport region. This was reinforced in the context of decentralization of the 1980s, when state-led urban planning was partially replaced by local planning; by definition more fragmented. The situation was complicated by the fact that the State was unwilling to let go of the control of the capital’s spatial development, yet was also unable to impose an overarching vision. No easy replacement was available, either, as local ­governments were too small to deal with the larger airport area condition, while the Ile-de-France Region was conceived as a weak institution with little authority to promote a vision in place of the State. Hence, the period between the all-powerful State of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the new collaborative governance starting in the late 1990s, can be characterized as one of little planning altogether, which in the case of the CDG airport led to all sorts of problems. For one, hardly any public works were initiated and the local land transport infrastructure was not updated to reflect growing and changing needs. But the most dramatic problem was the urbanization of airport surroundings, often in an ­incoherent way, sometimes even with housing and other uses inappropriate for noise-affected

Fig. 9.12  The narrative approach, its explanatory components with key observations, and the feedback loop of specification and generalization.

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zones, lacking social infrastructure and public amenities. The regulatory planning instruments put in place during the 1980s partly alleviated this phenomenon, without, however, substituting the overall spatial project of the previous decades. In parallel, this period was crucial for the consolidation of the CDG airport as competitive asset for the Paris metropolis, in a context of liberalization both for transport and for urban affairs. The competitiveness of the Paris airport base, particularly CDG , became the primary consideration of airport planning, which at first further disassociated it from regional planning. In the late 1980s though, the idea of the airport as exchange node led to the emergence of concepts of urban and economic development that would function synergistically with airport-provided international c­ onnectivity. The de facto urbanization of the airport surroundings and the success of Paris Nord 2 and the Villepinte Exhibition Center were seen as providing evidence of this ­relation. ments followed, seeing in the emerging discourse about the attractiveness of the ­“Roissy airport sector” an opportunity to get State support for economic development projects on their territory. Their demands initially found a favorable ground in the State plan to “rebalance” the Paris region by prioritizing its northeastern sector, and led to the first overall plans for the CDG airport area. Yet as the different motivations of the involved actors, along with the problems of the urbanization of the airport region, became obvious in the early 1990s, the initial enthusiasm and widespread support waned. By that time, the bigger problem was obvious: if development was not a necessity stemming from the demands of airport-­ related economic activities, it was nonetheless a persistent wish of the localities who saw few benefits from CDG . The realization of the need to compensate the “losers” of airport operation prompted the first attempts to “territorialize” airport-related public action through a better distribution of its economic benefits, fiscally and by enabling the access of local population to jobs. By the early 2000s, there was further institutionalization of airport-related, multi-actor collaborative action, in the context of greater accountability of the airport authority and more participative and inclusive policy and planning processes. Nonetheless, severe problems persisted with regard to the uneven distribution of positive and negative effects in the environs of CDG . This led first to the realization that airport territories should be treated as a specific scale of planning action; followed by the search of appropriate governance arrangements that could operate at this scale. In parallel, the discourse about the contribution of the airport to the metropolitan and local economy was stronger than ever. The “return of the State” period of the late 2000s and early 2010s and the introduction of the Grand Paris vision was formative in unifying the two discourses about the airport, as metropolitan asset and as the anchor of a territory sustaining contrasting impacts. It did so through a strategic vision for the CDG region that relied heavily on the translation of the airport economic role into development projects. This vision prompted consensus at a first level because of the widely shared perception that “dealing with” the airport area was long overdue. The promotion of economic development projects as its vehicle had several advantages: it provided a response to the long-standing demands of local mayors, gave the area a “metropolitan” role and an “urban” identity, and allowed ADP to present itself as an ally of territories rather than continuously fighting for the acceptability of airport operation.

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ADP set the example with the initiation of the “airport city” concept. L ­ ocal govern-

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Certainly, the translation of airport economic effects into development projects corresponded to a “natural” attractiveness of the airport area as place for the localization of several types of businesses. This idea informed planning documents that ­readily employed terms such as “airport corridor,” “aerotropolis,” and “cluster of exchanges” in the period 2008 – 2012, indicating a belief in the airport potential to attract high-­ value functions. However, with its unqualified workforce, few local transport connections, and poor urban quality, the CDG region proved less attractive for high-value businesses than the established centers of central Paris or La Défense. ­Rather, it drew lower-value businesses favoring its road connections. Thus, upon closer scrutiny, attractiveness was not enough to support a large number of development projects, least those on the high end. Also, the motivations of actors differed. The State wanted primarily to boost the competitiveness of the capital by making its top airport more attractive with high-­ level infrastructure and the image of an international gateway to Paris. It also ­wanted to support ADP in managing the acceptability of the airport’s growth among locals. Local governments wanted primarily to benefit from tax income and employment opportunities through the settlement of activities. This led them to include existing “pet projects” in the allure of airport-related development – even if those were only ­remotely associated with the aviation economy. Finally, airport-related companies wanted to profit through the synergetic effects of business concentration, but only ­insofar as their other priorities were fulfilled. Despite the reservations of planners, the vision of “Grand Roissy” as an airport-­ related economic cluster promised a win-win for all, thus prompting political consensus. Once State control was loosened again, this momentum was not lost, but ­rather became part of the larger consensual framework of planning for the Paris region, in which previously incompatible planning ideals converged: the competitive capital-­ world city (proposed by the State), the sustainable region (imagined by the IdF Region), and the diverse, decentralized and locally planned metropolis (supported in initiatives like Paris Métropole).3 Nonetheless, the tensions of airport area planning keep coming to the foreground, asking for an overarching authority. But such an authority has been, so far, difficult to create in the pluralistic, democratic context of planning action in the Paris of the 21st century, even if this very context has been fundamental in exposing the problems of top-down airport planning.

Diachronic airport-related wicked dilemmas The second set of reasons that explain the difficulties of planning the airport region is substantial, regarding the complex nature and contrasting impacts of the airport as technical and spatial object, and the inherent wickedness of related problems. Not only in Paris but around the world there persists a chronic difficulty in sufficiently grasping, agreeing upon, and consequently managing airport-related issues. This difficulty is embodied in tensions often associated with the contrasting nature of airport impacts, the chief contrast being that between positive economic effects and negative environmental externalities. Such contrasts have been diachronically influential in the formulation of public discourses, but insufficiently dealt with in spatial management 318

practice. This inadequacy and mismatch seems to be at the source of the permanence of problems such as poor urban quality, spatial and social segregation, and conflicting uses of space. The tensions identified on the basis of the case of the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport region are framed here more generally as dualities or dilemmas. The ­answers sought hardly correspond to the one end or the other of the dilemma; thus, the dualities are illustrative rather than absolute, and attempt to capture essential challenges framing the relationship of airports with space. These usually revolve, explicitly or implicitly, around questions of impacts and their control or distribution. Airport site versus airport city The morphogenesis of airports from infrastructural facilities to urban-like entities has been declared as an exemplary transformation associated with commercialization and an early 21st century affair, yet the assignment of urban functions and characteristics on airports is quite old, as evidenced by the widely visited commercial facilities in Orly in the 1960s and the attempt to emulate these as well as create a business hub in CDG already in the early 1970s. While many of the Orly facilities were eventually ­relinquished because of their obsolescence in relation to evolving technical needs, the problems in CDG were broader and thus recurrent. With “urban” facilities stemming mainly from the desire of the airport authority to create additional sources of revenue, such endeavors chronically suffered from a lack of contextualization and realistic ­assessment of their use. Airport-specific urban development projects are thus routinely underscored by the conundrum of whether the airport should be treated like a site, that is, a location for a specific activity placed on a delimited space, or like a city, that is, a place inhabited and experienced in urban terms. This is in turn associated with the tension between the urban centrality of the airport, that emerges through its high connectivity; and its inhabitability, as aircraft noise and pollution de facto excludes long-term dwelling conditions. In the case of Paris CDG , it was seen that, rather than a desire to produce a “city,” real estate development on the airport platform was associated with the financial stability of the airport operator as well as with the competitiveness of the platforms. The use of the terms “aéroville” and “airport city” in the late 1980s constituted a marketing and legitimizing concept more than pointing to a desire for urbanity, which would also imply an association of the airport with its surroundings. In the 21st century, efforts appear to be more successful as ADP and local authorities in the Paris region have begun to adhere to what Güller and Güller have documented as a growing desire to endow airport-site real estate development with “city” features, such as density and access quality,5 seen in the more recent plans for Roissypole and the improvement of public transport accessibility. This is accompanied by the declared desire of the airport authority to move away from technocratic, sectorial approaches, which should theoretically be reflected in more diverse spatial concepts, coming into being through more collaboration. In reality, though, this desire is mostly nominal, as the produced spaces, such as the new commercial space of “Aéroville,” even if having urban features, do not produce urbanity. Rather, they correspond to what Robert Freestone has termed as a (re)making of airports into “privatized enclaves of commercial entrepreneurialism” and conceptualized as a symptom of “actually existing neoliberalism.”6

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the functional embedment of airports in metropolitan areas.4 It is often presented as

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Node versus territory The second chronic and wicked problem of airport-related planning concerns the positioning of the airport in metropolitan space. The inherent tension is between the airport’s international vocation, as node in a system of places connected by air; and its role as metropolitan facility embedded in a specific territory. A perception of the airport as a node tends to focus on its infrastructural function as point of entry and exit of flows of people and goods, and the importance of this function for the economy and status of the respective city. Enhancing this function is thus a key driving force for spatial planning. Its prioritization is associated with planning priorities such as the delimitation of the node as a dedicated enclave, and its efficient ground connection with other nodes of similar stature. In the case of Paris CDG , it was seen how this perception tended to favor ultra-competitive terminal infrastructure on the airport site, selectivity in development, and fast exclusive links, with the aérotrain in the 1960s, the TGV station in CDG in the late 1980s and its associated development, and the CDG Express in the 2000s. This perception does not combine easily with that of the airport as a territory. In pursuing the line of thought that recognizes the urbanization of airport regions as an expression of the late 20th century Zwischenstadt,7 the airport is seen here as part of a spatially embedded system of interactions and connections. Its impacts at d ­ ifferent spatial scales and spaces, physical or metaphorical, are recognized. With regard to transport, this perception favors the meshing of the airport with its surroundings. The designation of CDG as a sector of strategic importance in the early 1990s, the recognition of “airport territories” in the early 2000s, and the constitution of deliberative bodies for Grand Roissy between 2009 and 2013 are indications of attempting to plan at the scale of the territory. The difficulty of these governance endeavors in producing specific results is at least partly associated with the lack of explication of the above conundrum. The tension between the two perceptions of the airport is expressed in the d ­ ifficulty of achieving the goals of both. This has been particularly the case with transport, as seen with the futile attempts to provide both good local and regional connections since the projects of the 1970s. The growing economic competition among cities and regions has set a new context for this debate. The efficient ground connection of airports with the city center or other centralities is seen as a priority of competitiveness-­ oriented metropolitan planning action. Aspired ground transport links tend to be single-­purpose, fixed route, high-speed rail links, providing specialized services to the privileged clientele of air passengers; the prime example in the case of Paris CDG is the CDG Express. In an alternative view, however, forms of “transit-oriented development” (TOD ) around the airport-rail hub and the surrounding public transport stops could also serve urban competitiveness by making the territory more attractive and stimulating local economic development. This has been the case with the proposed transport connections in the airport southern periphery in the late 2000s, like the GPE , TCSP, and BHNS systems. This example indicates that in the service of over­ arching goals such as competitiveness, seemingly different priorities can become part of the same framework.

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Exploit versus protect versus defer Finally, probably the most emblematic tension with regard to the planning of the airport region constitutes what was identified in Chapter 2 as the “exploit versus protect versus defer” conundrum. The protection of airport operation has long dictated the disassociation of airports from agglomerated areas, so that they can expand freely, both in technical terms and in terms of social acceptability. This logic dominated the ini-

tivity to generate economic benefits, predominantly through development projects, ­either on the airport site or in its surroundings. This logic was also repeatedly, indeed almost continuously exemplified in the case of Paris CDG , whether it was officially declared as such or tolerated: from the designation of economic activity zones in the 1960s through the proliferation of projects in the late 1980s to the economic development project of the late 2000s. The coexistence of these logics, in particular protection and exploitation, creates various tensions. The protective rationale produces a disassociation of the airport with its surroundings, which, in the case of pre-existing urbanization, is experienced as top-down and alienating. On the other hand, urban development in noise-affected zones increases the number of people subjected to noise, as has been the case in CDG , despite the airport being theoretically planned to avoid precisely this conflict. Economic development in the surroundings of airports more generally clogs access routes and produces congestion, with negative implications for airport operation. Over the history of planning rationales for the CDG airport region, the balance among these logics has been a matter of conflict-ridden policy deliberation. Though the protective rationale dominated planning discourse and action in the first post-war decades, the transition from a managerial approach to space to a development-oriented planning discourse starting in the 1980s precipitated the move towards exploitation rationales in the periphery of the CDG airport, with the impetus of local governments. The difficult co-existence of these rationales with the protection of airport operation stalled their progression. But in the 2000s, logics of exploitation made a come-back, this time promising to alleviate the tension with the protective rationale through winwin solutions based on better planning and collaboration. The recent embracement of airport-centered urban development models in the periphery of CDG indicated a ­ reater openness to the role of urbanism in spatial management and conflict resolug tion, yet it is unclear what the real contribution of these models to spatial coherence is. In fact, it is the promised possibility of win-win outcomes, through the localization of the airport-related positive economic impacts, that proved most fruitful in alleviating conflicts and forging consensus, regardless of the actual delivery of this promise.

CHAPTER 9  Planning the impossible: evolving strategies and tactics

tial planning of the Paris CDG airport, and is expressed in governmental publications over time, such as the 1970 report of the working group Paris-Nord, the 1991 Lacaze report, the 1996 Douffiagues report, or the 2008 Dermagne report. In parallel, the airport’s negative environmental impacts, noise in particular, sometimes lead to its complete rejection, or a logic of deferral, as seen with the opposition to the CDG expansion and the discussion about the third Paris airport of the late 1990s. At the other end of the spectrum, logics of exploitation generally seek to exploit airport-provided connec-

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The rational, the strategic, and the spatial Finally, it is pertinent to ask whether changes in planning itself, from the unitary centralized action of the 1960s to the multi-actor, multi-process practices of the 21 st century, have affected its ability and relevance in managing airport regions. Overall, Paris CDG specifically, and large airports constructed until the 1980s more generally, can be

seen as products of a rational comprehensive planning model that endowed them with great autonomy. Its demise, necessary as it may have been, was not replaced by an operative model, but by a fragmented field of discourse and practice. In this field, the imperatives of economic development and competitiveness became dominant, seemingly causing a greater detachment of airports from their environments, and the preponderance of speculative rationales in the latter. Airport-related planning of the post-war decades was not only infused with rationality, but also directly reflected the priorities of the dominant actor – main planning authority or airport operator. Therefore, even when the inherent limitations of rational planning regarding the flawed assumption of optimal solutions to a given problem and the possibility of accurate predictions of the future were exposed, it was still possible to maintain a relative coherence of spatial development through unity of public action. As this unity was eroded, while proactive planning was replaced by regulatory approaches, the mismatch between he operational and the spatial function of the airport was highlighted. With local actors acquiring a greater responsibility in planning and raising their voice with regard to the airport’s negative impacts, it became clear that the perceived objectiveness of airport-related problems that lay at the basis of spatial strategies was fundamentally flawed. Airports were not the only spatial “objects” associated with growing tensions in the 1980s and 1990s. Against the backdrop of increasing complexity in metropolitan space, it was a time of fragmentation of planning approaches, persistent problems of governmental coordination and lack of overarching ideologies or visions, throughout the Western world. The advent of more strategic approaches in the 1990s, along with more collaborative planning processes and project-based urbanism, attempted to bring planning out of its gridlock. There emerged a will to accommodate different interests and priorities, reflected in setting a wider array of goals in large-scale plans. In evaluating airport-related planning rationales, it is worth considering whether these approaches have improved the responsiveness of planning to the problematic of the airport region. Based on the case of Paris CDG , it can be said that the results of the new modus ­operandi have generally been mediocre. Theoretically, the purpose of strategic and collaborative planning approaches should be to enable reconciling the different imperatives and impacts associated with airports, since by the late 1990s airport development was “rapidly changing from a relatively simple product-oriented situation with only a few stakeholders via market orientation by private and public actors towards a comprehensive society-oriented development with many stakeholders and great complexity.”8 The inclusion of a greater number of stakeholders in decision-making processes should help achieve this reconciliation through consensual arrangements. In this case, the “win-win” discourses typical to the post-political landscape have been transcribed 322

to the airport-related planning arena, denoting that deliberation can make it possible to reconcile such different aspirations of involved parties as urban competitiveness, environmental sustainability or social inclusion. Yet even when arenas for negotiating airport-related decision-making have been put in place, it has been difficult to mobilize consensus on conflicting goals of economic growth and environmental protection. And even when consensus was mobilized – as was the case, for instance, with the plans of the early 2000s for Grand Roissy – getting beyond superficial agreements to actions actually benefiting all stakeholders proved to be close to impossible. The greatest contributions of strategic approaches can be seen in the consideration of airports as territories and the gradual construction of shared representations with regard to these territories. The notion of “large territory” (“grand territoire”) as a sphere of public action put forth by David Mangin and Ariella Masboungi encapsulates this evolution in planning discourse that also concerns the Paris CDG airport.9 It concerns the recognition of complex territorial identities, rather than measurable spatial characteristics, as basis for strategic and project-based planning action. As the authors proclaim:

In the case of the CDG airport, the instances of value creation that have emerged have lamentably been geared towards discourses about sharing economic benefits rather than true territorial shared vision. Therefore, the translation of consensual discourses to qualitative outcomes has been difficult. The strategic discourse seems not to have yet found its spatial expression. In that sense, the Paris airport areas have sadly confirmed the observation of Allmendinger and Haughton that “the reality of spatial planning is that it is producing better quality paper plans whilst still delivering poor quality physical development on the ground.”11

Planning the impossible? In the end, can we actually plan airport regions, or is it an impossible task? If I cannot claim to be able to fully answer this question, I trust that the study of the Paris Charles de Gaulle region presented in this book has demonstrated some of the most important, inherent, and diachronic difficulties of airport-related planning that is increasingly confronted with wicked problems in the context of our pluralistic Western societies. The case of Paris CDG certainly has strong specificities, spatial and i­nstitutional. The airport is located in a historically disadvantaged part of the metropolitan area, strategically placed in the Parisian Basin but in a locally incongruous context characterized by diffuse urbanization; and it operates together with another big airport in the same metropolitan area, Orly, located at the other side of the metropolitan area. Institutionally, Paris can be considered emblematic of the spatially transformative French

CHAPTER 9  Planning the impossible: evolving strategies and tactics

Large territories do not exist a priori, but through a vision, a policy that establishes them as project site. The urban planning of large territories consists, first of all, in making them exist by naming them and designating them as project territories. Then, in creating value, by deeply changing the relationship that the inhabitants and the actors maintain to their territory.10

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planning culture of grands plans and grands projets, but also of its profound mutations in recent decades. It exemplifies a long-lasting influence of the central state in the planning of metropolitan space but also an almost extreme institutional complexity with multiple layers of actors and planning agencies. The entanglement of the airport ­authority with the central state has also traditionally been more intense than with other European airports. Despite these specificities, the general findings from the study of Paris CDG about the effectiveness of planning echo observations from other European airport regions. For instance, in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, where local actors have pioneered the creation of deliberative bodies concerned with airport area planning, it has been found that these democratic mechanisms create more consensual, but not necessarily better, planning outcomes. The quest to balance the policy goals of economic growth and ecological sustainability seems to be often hampered by the different interpretations, norms and values of the involved actors.12 Other case studies have shown that the emerging recognition of airport regions as a focus of urban planning and spatial policy has inconsistent institutional and regulatory support. Although the unclear and conflicting nature of airport-related conditions suggests a need for coordinated planning, in practice the implementation of planning policies in airport areas often falls short of strategic direction, expertise, administrative capacity, or political will.13 Planning strategies often oscillate between higher-level goals and deep-rooted path dependencies, as well as between promoting the global function of airports and their local embedment. The related deadlock is reflected in an excessive number of overlapping plans; regional planning instruments with no executive power or comprehensiveness; sectoral treatment of spatial conflicts by the involved institutions; exclusion of certain actors; a cautionary stance between airport operators and local actors; and lack of long-term strategies and agreements.14 These observations seem to indicate a fundamental difficulty in the planning of the late 20th and early 21st centuries to deal with the complexity of airport regions. This complexity is in many ways typical of contemporary urbanized landscapes at the metropolitan periphery, epitomized by diffusion, territorial enclaves, multiplication of ­infrastructures, and juxtaposition of scales, to which are added the contrasting impacts of airport operation.15 To date, the most prominent proposals for action have been so-called airport-centered development models, which are not only unable to deal with this complexity, but also prone to Freestone and Baker’s critique regarding contextual appropriateness and outlook about economic benefits.16 As seen in the case of Paris CDG , the formalized and often depoliticized treatment of underlying conflicts in simple consensus-forging ideas about development has implied the persistence of underlying disagreements that are expressed in polarized spatial outcomes. Therefore, we observe an ambiguous and ineffective relation between planning structures, discourses and practices on the one hand, and physical spatial outcomes on the other. This observation points to the issue of agency. It appears that where implementation of strategies in airport regions succeeds, it is less because of a real ­reconciliation of interests but rather due to the domination of a specific actor in the respective power constellation. This exposes the diachronic dominance of power over r­ ationality, despite the attempts of our contemporary societies and systems to make planning process more participatory and inclusive.17 But let me not leave this 324

­conclusion with a bleak note. If spatial planning is failing to deliver with regard to airport regions, liberal social democracies may still prevent the ad hoc urbanization that could end up having uncontrollable consequences for long-term livability.18 For this, they should mobilize the range of statutory “braking factors” and planning frameworks that they possess, all while beginning to recognize that present-day challenges ask us to profoundly rethink both our concepts and modus operandi at the intersection

1  There are another three categorizations featuring 24 , des grands territoires consisterait d’abord à les faire ex47, and 81 categories. IAU -IdF, “Nomenclature du mode ister en les nommant et les désignant comme des terrid'occupation des sols – Mos” (IAU -IdF, 2012).  2 ­Mission toires de projet. Puis à y créer de la valeur, en changeant Roissy, “L’evolution de l’occupation du sol quart nord profondément les rapports qu’entretiennent les habi­ est de la région parisienne” (1996).  3  Frédéric Gilli, “Le tants et les acteurs à leur territoire par eux-mêmes.” Ibid., Grand Paris, une métropole en marche” ­(Métropolitiques, p. 13.  11  Haughton et al., The New Spatial Planning: Ter2013).  4  See for example: Sven Conventz, “New ­Office ritorial Management with Soft Spaces and Fuzzy BoundSpace at International Hub Airports. Evolving Urban aries, p. i.  12  de Jong, “The Airport Assembled. RethinkPatterns at Amsterdam and Frankfurt / M.,” in Airports ing Planning and Policy Making of Amsterdam Airport in Cities and Regions. Research and Practise, ed. Ute Schiphol by Using the Actor-Network Theory.”  13 FreeKnippenberger and Alex Wall (Karlsruhe: KIT Scientific stone and Baker, “Spatial Planning ­Models of Airport-­ Publishing, 2010).  5  Güller and Güller, From Airport to Driven Urban Development.”  14  B. De Jong, P. Suau-SanAirport City.  6  Robert Freestone, “Managing Neoliberal chez, and M. Droß, “The Underestimated Airport Region: Urban Spaces: Commercial Property Development at Aus- Reflecting on Planning Policies in the Airport Regions of tralian Airports,” Geographical Research 49, no. 2 (2011): Amsterdam, Barcelona and Munich,” Aerlines, epzine edip. 115.  7 Sieverts, Zwischenstadt. Zwischen Ort und Welt, tion 451 (2008).  15  Graham and Marvin, Splintering UrRaum und Zeit, Stadt und Land.  8  COFAR , “Common Op- banism: Networked Infrastructures, T ­ echnological Mobiltions for Airport Regions. Final Report.”  9  David Mangin ities and the Urban Condition.  16  Freestone and Baker, and Ariella Masboungi, Agir sur les grands territoires (Par- “Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Develis: Le Moniteur, 2009).  10 Original: “Les grands territoires opment.”  17 Flyvbjerg, Rationality and P ­ ower.  18 Chrisn’existent pas a priori, mais à travers une vision, une poli- tiaanse, “Porous or Porridge City?” tique qui les constitue comme lieu de projet. L’urbanisme

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of air mobility with metropolitan space.

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Annexes 1. Common Options For Airport Regions (COFAR ) 2. Current regulatory framework for aircraft noise in Paris

1. Common Options For Airport Regions (COFAR) COMMON OPTIONS FOR NORTHWEST EUROPEAN AIRPORT REGIONS (2001) EUROPEAN  /   N WMA LEVEL

Safeguard and improve the accessibility of the NWMA by air  – introduce European air transport forecasting  – e  ncourage the optimization of the use of existing airport infrastructure in order to gain capacity and to protect the citizens in the surrounding areas from noise and accidents  – establish common standards for aircraft noise, particularly during night-time hours, and for third-party risks around airports  – harmonize methods of monitoring and control of environmental effects of airports  – encourage internalization of environmental costs by all actors in the aviation industry  – m  obilize alternative airport capacities (e.g., at secondary airports) where this is possible without ­causing new environmental problems  – improve decision-making by establishing appropriate levels for responsibilities Improve integrated air-rail transport  – promote an integrated air-rail network with HST as a European access backbone by:   –p  romoting an integrated ticketing and information network and a remote check-in network for the air-rail high speed transport for passengers   – supporting the feeding of the air-rail high-speed network by frequent intercity connections  – promoting an integrated rapid cargo transport network by rail in the FLAP area  – promote common surface access and sustainable transport planning guidelines for users of ­high-speed air-rail terminals  – promote a common monitoring system for sustainable accessibility INTER-REGIONAL LEVEL

Management and institutional organization  – c  onsider European Airport Designation, i.e., designate a small number of major airports for specific ­accessibility functions in North West Europe  – install common environmental monitoring systems for such airports  – a  rrange common standards for these airports in relation to aircraft noise, particularly during night hours, for third party risks and for the other environmental effects  – introduce common environmental airport policies by national and regional authorities  – a  rrange financial compensation schemes for citizens suffering from excessive environmental nuisance by airport activities  – encourage effective control of urban development around airports in order to prevent future nuisance problems  – designate specific airport zones with common planning guidelines and functions focused on ­integrated development of airport and non-airport activities  – develop an integrated ticketing and information network and a remote check-in network for the air-rail high speed transport for passengers  – develop a rapid cargo transport network by rail in the FLAP area  – develop and implement common surface access and sustainable transport planning guidelines for ­users of high-speed air-rail terminals  – develop and implement a common monitoring system for sustainable access  – s et up a high-quality communication network between the major regional growth centers in order to improve the ICT links between them

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INTRA-REGIONAL LEVEL Support the development of Integrated Airport City concepts  – control effectively the urban development around airports  – o  ptimize the quality of urban development by safeguarding the quality of individual projects, ­improving the value of public spaces and assuring the integration with the enclosed and surrounding rural areas  – optimize the use of public transport in relation to the airport Enhance the acceptance of airports and airport activities by the local communities  – increase the economic benefits generated by the airport (e.g., by establishing real estate partnership organizations of airports and local and regional authorities)  – applying tax measures to compensate for nuisance caused by airport activities  – improve access to airport related jobs  – improve training and education of manpower in relation to airport-generated employment  – introduce “development contracts” between the airport and the local community to identify the ­positive and negative effects of airport activities on the surroundings Improve surface access to airports  – give priority to public transport (e.g., by integrating bus and tram stations into the airport)  – p  rovide high quality public transport equipment, establishing remote access from parking areas nearby the airport  – provide alternative access to the airport site by public transport and bicycle  – organize shuttle services to remote working areas on the airport site Develop and promote techniques for intermodal cargo transport  – provide land for rail connection and rail terminals at or near major airports  – provide rollerbed equipment for intermodal transfers in airfreight zones  – promote intermodal transport pilot projects on regional level Optimize communication strategies  – introduce permanent structures where representatives of the aviation industry and the local ­communities can negotiate the balance of interests  – set up independent expert committees to overlook the implementation of agreed actions both on ­environmental aspects and on urban development  – improve the information to the general public about airport activities in the broadest sense

Nowadays, the management and regulation of noise originating from the Paris airports is the object of a series of documents, legal instruments and procedures, harmonized to conform to the European directive 2002/49/EC . Following the “balanced approach” recommended by ICAO and EU , the state agency for civil aviation (DGAC) regularly measures noise and transcribes it into noise maps, while working on the ­improvement of operational schemes to minimize noise exposure (i.e., flight paths, approach procedures), and supervising the implementation of sound-insulation in collaboration with ADP. ACNUSA oversees all the measures taken to combat nuisance

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2. Current regulatory framework for aircraft noise in Paris

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caused by air transport, consults administrations, and disseminates information to residents.1 The two main planning documents that map noise-affected space around the airport are the PEB and the PGS . The PEB is a long-term document, referring to a ­15-year horizon, synthesized according to projected development of air traffic, extension of infrastructures, and evolution of flying procedures. Its implementation is a matter of spatial policy and negotiation. Conversely, the PGS corresponds to the traffic of the coming year, and its implementation is immediate and concerns individuals. The goal of the PEB is to delimit the number of people affected by air traffic noise. It is included in the French Urban Planning Code (Code de l’Urbanisme, L.147-1 to L.147-8 and R.147.1 to R.147-11), which means it must be transcribed to all local plans.2 The PEB regulates land use in the airport vicinity in four zones, A, B, C, and D, that correspond to aircraft noise levels since 2006, calculated according to the L den index. Housing is generally prohibited in zones A, B, and C, with exceptions made for already urbanized zones and for regeneration projects on condition that the population exposed to noise as a whole does not grow. Zone D has no limitations to urbanization but obliges the installation of acoustic isolation.3 One particularity of the system is that while noise levels for zones A and D are fixed at L den 70 (very strong exposure) and Lden 50 (weak exposure) respectively, this is not the case for zones B and C. For these, noise values are chosen during the public consultation from a fixed range: between L den 62 and 65 for zone B (strong exposure), and between L den 55 and 57 for zone C (medium exposure).4 The PGS is included in the French Environment Code (L.571-15 to L.571-16 and R.57166 to R.571-69). It defines areas in which residents are entitled to a subsidy for soundproofing their homes. This subsidy is financed by the TNSA tax (Taxe sur les nuisanes sonores aériennes), which is based on the polluter-payer principle: every take-off is taxed depending on the noise level of the aircraft. The adoption of L den values substantially increased the areas covered by the PGS in most airports. The plan defines zones I, II , and III , whose noise values basically correspond to zones A, B, and C of the PEB (L den 70, L den 62 / 65, and L den 55 respectively); the higher the noise value, the bigger the subsidy.5 Next to the PEB and PGS , a third document, entitled Plan de servitutes aéronautiques (PSA , plan of aeronautic servitudes), completes the spatial regulatory framework for French airports. The PSA regulates protection from obstacles in aviation. Based on

Fig. A  Aérodrome Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Plan d’Exposition au Bruit, 2007.

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Fig. B  Aérodrome Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Plan de Gêne Sonore, 2013.

1  ACNUSA Website, http://www.acnusa.fr, Section “Qui “PGS  – Plan de Gêne Sonore”  6  DGAC -STAC, Élaboration sommes-nous?”  2 The 1985 law about urban develop- des plans de servitudes aéronautiques. Guide technique ment in airport vicinities was followed by amendments, (2011)  7  DGAC -STAC, Les servitudes aéronautiques. Note notably the decree 2006 -361. The part of the Urban d’information technique (2015)  8  “Aérodrome de Paris-­ Planning Code concerning airport noise is periodically Charles de Gaulle. Rapport de présentation du plan d’exupdated to incorporate new urban development regu- position au bruit” (Arrêté interpréfectoral n°07-044 du lations.  3  ACNUSA , Zones des actuels plans d’exposition 3 avril 2007 ).  9  “Aérodrome de Paris-Charles de Gaulle. au bruit (undated)  4  ACNUSA Website, Section “PEB  – Rapport de présentation du plan de gêne sonore” (ArPlan d’Exposition au Bruit”  5  ACNUSA Website, Section rêté interpréfectoral n°2013 -11667 du 11 décembre 2013).

Annexes

guidelines from the technical services of the DGAC , in turn based on ICAO standards, the PSA includes limitations on building heights that are annexed to local urbanism plans.6 These servitudes or limitations are spatially defined as a combination of a conical surface of rising height around the runways, and triangular “wedges” along the take-off and approach paths in extension of the runways.7 In the case of CDG , the current PEB , in force since 2007, was the first to use the L den indicator. Its elaboration was a long process marked by controversy about the noise level chosen for zone C, eventually settled at a compromising 56 dB value; that of zone B was set at 65 dB. The PEB defined the zones A, B, C, and D on the basis of projections for passenger traffic growth of 3 % annually and for aircraft movement growth of 0.8 % to 1.2  % annually, both of which proved overstated, with aircraft movements having in fact decreased thanks to bigger airplanes. The impacted surfaces are 22,340 hectares for Zones A, B, and C together, and another 31,313 hectares for Zone D (Fig. A).8 The PGS of Paris CDG , established in 2013, concerns a surface of 24,783 hectares and a population of 256,180 people, impacting predominantly the communities of the department of Val-d’Oise (Fig. B).9 Finally, the PSA curiously takes onto account the once projected north-south runway, although it has been long abandoned.

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About the author Eirini Kasioumi is an architect, urban planner, and post-doctoral research fellow at the Technical University of Munich. She is currently based in Zurich, Switzer­land, and her work revolves around the design and planning of urban development projects and strategies. After studying at the Technical University of Athens and the Massachusetts ­Institute of Technology, she spent eight years as a research assistant and lecturer at the

About the author

Chair of Architecture and Urban Design of Prof. Kees Christiaanse at ETH Zurich. Her interests range from how to achieve sustainable quality in everyday spaces, to the design and politics of large-scale urban projects, the implications of global (air) mobility for the fabric of cities, and the responsiveness of spatial planning towards emerging environmental and social challenges.

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Illustration credits and data sources Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to find the ­ opyright holders for historical photos. In the few cases c where this has not been possible, the source from which the photo was retrieved is listed instead.

Chapter 3

Cover photo: author, 2017.

Fig. 3.5. Illustration by author, 2018. Base maps IAU -IdF, 2013, base data INSEE , 1990/2008 census.

Chapter 1

Fig. 3.6. Illustration by author, 2018. Base maps IAU -IdF, 2013, base data INSEE , 2006 census / Paris Chamber of Notaries 2006 / D GFIP 2006 / O LAP 2011. Fig. 3.7. Illustration by author, 2019.

Fig. 1.1 right. André Lurçat, 1932. Centre d’archives ­d’architecture du XXeme siècle, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.

Table 3.1. Data from INSEE .

Fig. 1.2. Illustration by author, 2018, based on data from IAU -IdF, 2013.

Chapter 4

Fig. 1.3. Illustration by author, 2020.

Fig. 4.1. Gallica/BnF. Retrieved from www.aeroportparis-orly.com.

Chapter 2

Fig. 4.2. Author, 2012.

Fig. 2.1. Illustration by author, 2018, based on data from IATA , 2015.

Fig. 4.3. Aéroport de Paris, 1958. Archives ADP .

Fig. 2.2. Illustration by author, 2020.

Fig. 4.4. Comité de l’Aménagement de la Région ­Parisienne, 1960.

Fig. 2.3. Groupe ADP .

Fig. 4.5. Pierre Cot, 1963. Archives ADP .

Fig. 2.4 left. Author, 2014.

Fig. 4.6. ADP , ca. 1970. Archives ADP .

Fig. 2.4 right. Author, 2017.

Fig. 4.7, 4.8. Direction Générale du District de la Région de Paris, 1965. Collage, color-editing, and highlighting of airport noise zones by author.

Fig. 2.5 left. Patrick Kenel (Pakeha), 2017. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.5 right. Author, 2014. Fig. 2.6. Illustration by author, 2020. Fig. 2.7. Illustration by author, 2018, based on Heineberg, 2006.

Fig. 4.9. Aéroport de Paris, 1970. Archives ADP . Fig. 4.10. IAURP , 1970. Archives IAU -IdF. Fig. 4.11. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from Corvisier, 2005.

Fig. 2.9 left. Bernd Gross, 2011. Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 4.12, 4.13. Direction Générale du District de la Région de Paris, 1965. Legend translated by author.

Fig. 2.9 right. Franklin Heijnen, 2009. Wikimedia ­Commons.

Fig. 4.14, 4.15, 4.16. Groupe de Travail Paris-Nord, 1970. Archives IAU -IdF.

Fig. 2.10. Güller and Güller, 2003. Fig. 2.11 left. Joris Jehle, 2015.

Fig. 4.17, 4.18, 4.20. Aéroport de Paris, 1972. Archives ADP .

Fig. 2.11 right. Author, 2017.

Fig. 4.19. Author, 2012.

Fig. 2.12. Illustration by author, 2020, based on ACI Europe, 2015.

Fig. 4.21. Paris Match n°951, July 1967.

Fig. 2.8. Joris Jehle, 2015.

Fig. 4.22. IAURP , 1974. Archives IAU -IdF.

Fig. 2.13. BigBear_in_IN, 2008. Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 4.23. Aéroport de Paris, 1974. Archives ADP .

Fig. 2.14. USAF /Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 4.24. Author, 2017.

Fig. 2.15. European Environment Agency, 2016. Fig. 2.16. SADC , 2013. Fig. 2.17. Evolve Media and Dr. John Kasarda, 2013. Table 2.1. Data from IATA , individual airport websites, Wikipedia.

Table 4.1. Based on data from working group Paris-Nord. Table 4.2. Adapted from IAURP , 1974. Additional data from archives IAU -IdF.

Illustration credits and data sources

Fig. 1.1 left. Nicholas DeSantis, Popular Science, ­November 1939.

Fig. 3.1. Paris Match n°951, July 1967. Fig. 3.2, 3.3, 3.4. Illustrations by author, 2018, based on data from IAU -IdF, 2013.

349

Chapter 5

Fig. 6.16. Retrieved from Quotidien de Paris, 10.01.1991.

Fig. 5.1. SRERP and IAURIF , 1976.

Fig. 6.17. Hugh Ardoin, 1990. Archives IAU -IdF.

Fig. 5.2. SRERP and IAURIF , 1976. Legend translated by author.

Fig. 6.19. Illustration by author, 2019.

Fig. 5.3, 5.4. IAURP , 1975. Archives IAU -IdF.

Fig. 6.20. IAURIF , 1990. Legend added by author.

Fig. 5.5. Le Figaro, 13.05.1976.

Fig. 6.21. IAURIF , 1991. Legend added by author.

Fig. 5.6. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from ­Aéroport de Paris 1976. Archives ADP .

Fig. 6.22, 6.23. Association du Grand Roissy, 1991. ­Archives IAU -IdF.

Fig. 5.7 left. La Croix, 23.04.1972.

Fig. 6.24. DREIF , 1991. Archives of Préfecture Ile-de-France.

Fig. 5.7 right. L’Aurore, 04.05.1976. Fig. 5.8. Techniville/DREIF , 1981. Archives of Préfecture Ile-de-France. Fig. 5.9. Pilote Privé, May 1984. Achives IAU -IdF. Fig. 5.10. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from ­Corvisier, 2005. Fig. 5.11. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from ­Aéroports de Paris, 1984. Archives ADP .

Fig. 6.25. Aéroports de Paris, 1991. Archives ADP . Fig. 6.26. Aéroports de Paris, 1991. Retrieved from Le Moniteur, 07.06.1991. Fig. 6.27. Aéroports de Paris, 1995. Archives ADP . Fig. 6.28 ADP and Paul Maurer, 1991. Retrieved from Le Moniteur, 07.06.1991. Fig. 6.29, 6.30. Aéroports de Paris, 1992. Archives ADP .

Fig. 5.12. Aéroport de Paris, 1978. Archives ADP .

Fig. 6.31. Author, 2017.

Fig. 5.13. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from ­Aéroport de Paris 1978. Archives ADP .

Fig. 6.32. Valode et Pistre, 1993. Retrieved from Le Moniteur, 15.03.1996.

Fig. 5.14. Aéroport de Paris, 1974. Actual growth and ­English legends added by author.

Fig. 6.33, 6.34. Aéroports de Paris, 1992. Promotional brochures, archives ADP .

Fig. 5.15. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from ­Aéroports de Paris, 1984. Archives ADP .

Fig. 6.35. Bohigas/Kollhoff/Rogers/Macary, 1992. Retrieved from Le Moniteur Architecture, Sept. 1992.

Fig. 5.16. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from www.circuit-carole.com. Fig. 5.17. Le Moniteur des travaux publics et du ­bâtiment, supplement to No 48, 30.11.1981. Fig. 5.18. Author, 2013. Chapter 6

Fig. 6.36, 6.37. Tremblay-en-France & AFTRP , 1992. ­Archives IAU -IdF. Fig. 6.38. Fuksas & AFTRP , 1992. Archives IAU -IdF. Fig. 6.39, 6.40, 6.41, 6.42. Mission Roissy, 1992. Legends translated by author. Archives IAU -IdF.

Fig. 6.1. Décideurs, 23.05.1988. Color-edited by author.

Fig. 6.43, 6.44. Préfecture de la Région d’Ile-de-France/ Direction Régionale de l’Equipement, 1994.

Fig. 6.2. Le Quotidien de Paris, 20.01.1990.

Fig. 6.45. Author, 2013.

Fig. 6.3, 6.4. Illustrations by author, 2019. Base map I­AU -IdF and IGN , 2013, base data INSEE .

Table 6.1. Adapted from DREIF , 1989.

Fig. 6.5. IAURIF , 1987.

Table 6.2. Adapted from IAURIF , 1991.

Fig. 6.6. Archives of Préfecture Ile-de-France.

Table 6.3. Based on data from SIEVO , 1991.

Fig. 6.7. IAURIF , 1987.

Table 6.4. Based on data from Mission Roissy, 1992.

Fig. 6.8. Aéroports de Paris, 1994. Fig. 6.9. Paul Maurer, 1994. Archives ADP . Fig. 6.10. Paul Maurer, 1991. Archives ADP . Fig. 6.11. Aéroports de Paris, 1989. Fig. 6.12. Brochure, 31.05.1989. Archives ADP . Fig. 6.13. AEREVO , 1989. Legend translated by author. Fig. 6.14. Direction Régionale de l’Equipement d’Ile-de-France, 1989. Map color-edited and legend translated by author. Fig. 6.15. Tenten Architects and Jicko Stojkovitch, 1989. Archives IAU -IdF.

350

Fig. 6.18. IAURIF , 1989. Legend translated by author.

Chapter 7 Fig. 7.1. Mission Roissy, 1995. Archives IAU -IdF. Fig. 7.2. Aéroports de Paris, 1995. Archives ADP . Fig. 7.3. AFTRP /IAURIF /DREIF /Mission Roissy, 1993. ­Legend translated by author. Archives IAU -IdF. Fig. 7.4. François Grether and Anne Ledœuff, 1996. ­Archives IAU -IdF. Fig. 7.5. ADP , 1993. Archives ADP . Fig. 7.6. Photographer unknown. Retrieved from www.destination360.com.

Fig. 8.10. Author, 2013.

Fig. 7.7. Georges Sessy, 1996. Retrieved from Le ­Moniteur, 15.03.1996.

Fig. 8.11. AFTRP , 2011.

Fig. 7.8. Le Monde, 09.09.1994

Fig. 8.12. Axel Schoenert Architectes Associés, 2008.

Fig. 7.9 left. Aéroports de Paris, 1995. Archives ADP .

Fig. 8.13. EPA Plaine de France, 2013.

Fig. 7.9 center. La Croix, 29.10.1994.

Fig. 8.14. République Française, 2009.

Fig. 7.9 right. Libération, 11/1994.

Fig. 8.15. Aurélie Bracquart, 2009. Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 7.10. Les Echos, 24.09.1997.

Fig. 8.16. Société du Grand Paris, 2011.

Fig. 7.11. ADP , 1994. Archives ADP .

Fig. 8.17, 8.18, 8.19, 8.20. EPA Plaine de France / Güller Güller – DHV  – EBP  – PvB, 2010.

Fig. 7.13. Pymouss, 2017. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 7.14. Air France, 1999, reprinted in Les Echos, 01.02.2000. Fig. 7.15. Paris Nord II Gestion, 1998. Retrieved from ­benefice.net, No 1, juin–juillet–août 1998.

Fig. 8.21, 8.22, 8.23, 8.24. Direction régionale et interdépartementale de l’équipement et de l’aménagement Ile-de-France / Groupement Acadie, Atelier Christian de Portzamparc, Agence Güller Güller, 2012. Fig. 8.25. EPA Plaine de France/ACGR , 2012.

Fig. 7.16. Mission Roissy, 1998. Archives IAU -IdF.

Fig. 8.26. Algoé Consultants, 2013.

Fig. 7.17. COFAR -IAURIF, 2001. Legend translated by ­author.

Fig. 8.27. Société du Grand Paris, 2013.

Fig. 7.18. Guiho/DREIF , 2002. Retrieved from IAURIF , 2003. Fig. 7.19. IAURIF , 2003. Fig. 7.20. Les Echos, 28.07.2000. Fig. 7.21. CPDP CDG Express, 13.02.2004. Fig. 7.22, 7.23. Illustrations by author, 2020. Based on EPA PdF, 2005. Fig. 7.24. EPA PdF, 2003. Legends translated by author. Fig. 7.25. Author, 2013. Table 7.1. Based on data from ADP , 1992, and archives ADP . Table 7.2. Adapted from Ernst & Young, 2003. Chapter 8 Fig. 8.1. Google/GeoBasis-DE /BKG /Landsat/Copernicus, 2020.

Fig. 8.28, 8.29. Région Ile-de-France / Rampazzo  & ­Associés, 2013. Legend translated by author. Fig. 8.30, 8.31. EPA Plaine de France, 2014. Fig. 8.32. Direction régionale et interdépartementale de l’équipement et de l’aménagement Ile-de-France, 2015 / E PA Plaine de France, AFTRP , ADP , Ville d’Aulnay, CDT Le pôle métropolitain du Bourget, Synthèse Architecture / S AS Les Grands Champs Développement, Derbesse Delplanque architectes & associés, Aflalo & Gasperini / Roissy Eurocentre SARL , Groupement Güller Güller – RoyalHasconingDHV – EBP /RR  & A  –  PaulvanBeek. Fig. 8.33, 8.34. Author, 2017. Chapter 9 Fig. 9.1. Illustration by author, 2017. Based on MOS and Evolumos nomenclatures by IAU -IdF, translated by author. Fig. 9.2 – 9.11. Illustrations by author, 2017. Based on MOS and Evolumos data by IAU -IdF, 1982 – 2012.

Fig. 8.2, 8.3, 8.4. EPA Plaine de France, 2005. Legends translated by author.

Fig. 9.12. Illustration by author, 2020.

Fig 8.5. SIEVO -PROSCOT, 2006.

Annex

Fig. 8.6. Güller Güller, 2007. Fig. 8.7. IAU IdF, 2008.

Fig. A. Annexe à l’arrêté interpréfectoral no 2007-044 du 3 avril 2007.

Fig. 8.8, 8.9. Aéroports de Paris Direction de l’Immobilier, 2005.

Fig. B. Annexe à l’arrêté interpréfectoral no 2013 -11667 du 11 décembre 2013.

Illustration credits and data sources

Fig. 7.12. Google/GeoBasis-DE /BKG /Landsat/Copernicus, 2020.

351

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