Entre urbanité et ruralité. La médiation paysagiste

Abstract

Depuis quelques années en France, les pratiques paysagistes contribuent à refonder un art urbain. Il s'agit autant d'inventer de nouvelles formes matérielles que d'orienter le regard du citadin en faisant appel à l'imaginaire et à la mémoire. Parcs publics, coulées vertes, reprise de grands ensembles ou chartes périurbaines dans leur diversité traduisent la multiplication des fragments de paysage qui actualisent l'idée de ville.

The Promenade Plantée

“…Designers Vergely and Matthieu conceptualized the overall plan of the Promenade within the French landscape practice of préverdissement —a term borrowed from horticulture that means to encourage a particular botanical scheme through initial plantation. In this practice, according to landscape architect Pierre Donadieu (1999, 14), designers aspire to “anticipate the city” through nimble, dynamic, and flexible tactics. Rather than overdetermining the urban landscape through close-ended constructions, designers organize reclamation and revitalization projects within a framework that connects current conditions to future growth, and that provides platforms for human drama and experimentation.…”

“…Thus, the Promenade Plantée emerged as just one part of a vast remaking of Northern and Eastern Paris over the 1980s and 1990s, with the primarily goal of the Chirac administration being the revaluation of private property values through targeted public investments (Donadieu 1999, 12; Nelson 2001, 492–98; Savitch and Kantor 2004, 145–47). Evidence suggests that the strategy has paid off, if unevenly, in many quarters of the city such as Montmartre, Porte Saint-Martin, Belleville, and the Marais, though less so in Pigalle and the Goute d’Or (Bacqué and Fijalkow 2006, 63–83; Pattaroni, Kaufmann, and Thomas 2012).…”