21st Century (2000–present)

Lyon Part-Dieu Masterplan

2010s · France · Western & Central Europe · Transit-oriented urbanism and corridor planning · Planned by AUC; l’AUC; City of Lyon
Masterplan axonometric of the Lyon Part-Dieu urban project: new and transformed buildings coloured against the existing fabric, the reworked public-space spine and the station district's green links.
Masterplan axonometric of the Lyon Part-Dieu urban project: new and transformed buildings coloured against the existing fabric, the reworked public-space spine and the station district's green links. · © Métropole de Lyon / SPL Lyon Part-Dieu — used with credit · SPL Lyon Part-Dieu / Métropole de Lyon, urban project by l'AUC — press dossier 'Transformer la Part-Dieu', 1 June 2021

Core idea

Station-district intensification

Why it matters

French model for rail-based CBDs

Description

The Lyon Part-Dieu masterplan of the 2010s, prepared by the office l'AUC for the City of Lyon and the Part-Dieu development agency, intensifies the 1970s business district around Part-Dieu station, one of Europe's busiest rail interchanges. Key moves include rebuilding and enlarging the station, replacing slab-era podiums and decks with street-level public space, adding office towers and housing, and repositioning the district as a mixed, transit-based central business district.

Significance

Part-Dieu has become the French reference for retrofitting a modernist CBD around high-speed and regional rail, demonstrating how station districts can anchor metropolitan economies outside Paris. It figures in wider European debates on transit-oriented intensification of existing centres, and on how to humanise the inherited urbanism of 1970s dalle (deck) planning.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.