1 Apr 2008

Locating - Defining

France. Region: Ile-de-France. Departments: Seine-et-Marne (77) and Essonne (91).

Melun
is the 'préfecture' of Seine-et-Marne, the largest department of Ile-de-France region and is today a town of 37 thousand inhabitants.


Sénart

is the youngest "ville nouvelle" of France, created in 1973 - basically an administration area of 10 communities, 
of which 8 is in Seine-et-Marne and 2 is in Essonne (Cesson, Combs-La-Ville, Lieusaint, Moissy-Cramayel, Nandy, Réau, Savigny-le-Temple, Vert-Saint-Denis pour la Seine-et-Marne et Saint Pierre du Perray et Tigery pour l'Esonne). Sénart has 108 000 inhabitants today.


Villes Nouvelles
"Delouvrier, mettez-moi de l'ordre dans ce bordel!" 
(Charles de Gaulle)

Villes Nouvelles is a complex agglomeration program, first 
launched by Paul Delouvrier in the 'Greater Paris Master Plan' in 1965. Just a year before creating the "Region de Paris", this 
plan was to define and  somehow coordinate the chaotic growth of Paris, along the axis of Mantes-Melun. The 9 'villes nouvelles' of which 5 is located in Ile-de-France, were to be concentrated points of agglomeration, preventing a continous urban tissue to close up around Paris, ie. it was a plan of  regrouping small towns into principal poles of development and allowing rural areas and forests to remain green. It was also the time of constructing the RER that was to connect the towns in the agglomeration.
In 2001 the program was brought out again and renewed as a financial subsidy program of 4 years, launched by the Prime Minister.

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