Professor / architecture school of Paris-Belleville
Abstract
This article presents the subject of urban walkways as a current topic for urban projects and landscape. Indeed, we see today developing in many European countries, France in particular, projects on different scales that organize courses in the town or across larger territories like those of cities. At first, to better understand the issue of urban and peri-urban promenade and the terms in which it arises, the history of the subject is recalled. Then, three projects which are based on the idea of crossing the city are presented. in these examples, the landscape projects at different scales in the urban and metropolitan areas, landscapers have intervened and the values held by the landscape have played decisive roles.
Through these three examples it’s shown how the theme of urban crossing is built today on two principal bases: on the one hand the consciousness of pedestrian of the act of displacing and his experience, that results in the capacity of producing landscape. On the other hand, how the crossing is part of a broader strategy of urban regeneration, and taking advantage of obsolescence of certain infrastructure, industrial equipment or even abandoned areas.
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