ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

The Insufficient Role of Urban Form and Its Uses in Baseline Assessments of Urban Plans in France

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral Track 10 | THEORIES

Speaker

Mr Grégoire Picard (Université Côte d’Azur – CNRS – UAPV – AMU, ESPACE, France)

Description

In the context of global crises, 21st-century cities face numerous challenges. The impacts of climate change and economic tensions at all scales necessitate a more resource-conscious urban development while putting human needs at its centre. At the same time, the complexity of urban systems challenges planning, pointing to inevitable connections among geographic scales and action domains of policies. How can urban development be approached in a way that preserves systemic coherence, operates globally, and considers all scales?

Since the foundational work of Patrick Geddes, urban planning practice has integrated baseline assessments as the knowledge base for urban planning documents. In France, since 1999, the primary urban planning document has been the Plan Local d’Urbanisme (PLU), which defines the overarching development vision for urban areas. This document must be based on a baseline assessment (diagnostic territorial), often informed by the work of urban planning agencies. Unlike the Plan d’Occupation des Sols (POS) it replaced, which had a highly functionalist approach, the PLU addresses a broader set of local challenges: curbing natural and agricultural land consumption, ensuring quality housing, fostering economic growth, combating climate change, enhancing public space usage, and more. The inclusion of Orientation d’Aménagement et de Programmation (OAP) sections within PLUs reflects the ambition of local governments to adopt more qualitative planning strategies, engaging with issues of urban design.

However, while the POS could often neglect considerations of urban form, the baseline assessments underpinning PLUs should include an evaluation of existing urban forms, assessing their strengths, weaknesses, and potential to achieve the plan's objectives. Since the 1960s, an extensive body of academic literature has analyzed the critical role of urban form in city functioning (Conzen 1960, Lynch 1960, Jacobs 1961, Alexander 1965, Rossi 1966, Newman 1972, Hillier & Hanson 1984, Hillier 1996, Salingaros 2005). This literature has evolved to advocate for human-centered urban projects (Alexander 1979, Lynch 1981, Panerai et al. 1997, Gehl 2011, Castex 2014). Recent meta-analyses (Carmona 2019) leverage empirical studies to highlight the essential contribution of urban form to the usage values of space and hence to urban practices. Despite this, urban form remains a frequently neglected or absent aspect of urban baseline assessments in France.

Although municipalities produce studies and charters on urban uses, these are often non-regulatory, inconsistently developed, and not always integrated into PLU frameworks. Furthermore, these studies often focus on public space practices or walkability (Demailly et al. 2021), overlooking the tight relationship between uses and the built environment.

This communication proposes a critical analysis of baseline studies for urban plans in France, supported by a shared analytical framework that acknowledges the polysemic and polymorphic nature of urban form (Allain 2004, Levy 2005). The framework encompasses a broad range of urban themes and elements, including buildings, public spaces, city gateways, and ordinary streets. Urban form is also analyzed in terms of how it is mobilized to address territorial challenges.

The case of Nice offers a paradoxical example. While the mid-1990s Urban Masterplan emphasized urban form in the assessment of the different parts of the city, the current PLU diagnosis limits its consideration to landscape, tourism, and heritage issues. Urban form re-emerges implicitly in discussions of land use and built-up density, while public spaces are only briefly addressed through mobility perspectives. This case is contrasted with other French metropolitan areas, such as Bordeaux, Lille, and Lyon, whose urban planning agencies have increasingly incorporated public space and urban form into planning since the 2010s (A’urba 2015, ADULM 2016, UrbaLyon 2023).

This presentation highlights the need for a more systematic integration of urban form into baseline assessments, fostering better-informed and more coherent urban planning practices.

References

ADULM (2016). Espace(s) Public(s) Métropolitain(s). Lille: Agence de Développement et d’Urbanisme Lille Métropole.

Alexander, C. (1965). ‘A City is Not a Tree’, Architectural Forum, 122(1), pp. 58-62.

Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press.

Allain, R. (2004). Morphologie urbaine. Paris: Armand Colin.

Carmona, M. (2019). ‘Place value: place quality and its impact on health, social, economic and environmental outcomes’, Journal of Urban Design, 24(1), pp. 1-48.

Castex, J. (2014). ‘Saverio Muratori (1910-1973): La Ville comme seul modèle’, Urbanisme, 29, pp. 13-35.

Conzen, M.R.G. (1960). Alnwick, Northumberland: A Study in Town-Plan Analysis. London: George Philip.

Gehl, J. (2011). Cities for People. Washington: Island Press.

Hillier, B. and Hanson, J. (1985). The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge University Press.

Jacobs, J. (1961). The Life and Death of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.

Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. MIT Press.

Newman, O. (1972). Defensible Space: Crime Prevention through Urban Design. New York: Macmillan.

Rossi, A. (1966). L’Architettura della Città. Padova: Marsilio.

Salingaros, N., West, J.B. and Coward, L.A. (2005). Principles of Urban Structure. Techne Press.

UrbaLyon (2023). La Charte des Espaces Publics. Grand Lyon.