Contenu du sommaire

Still in process of completion, the new business centre of La Part-Dieu consists of an administrative centre of 151 000 m2, 200 000 тя of private offices, a shopping centre of 116 000 m2, a variety of social and cultural services and some 1 100 lodgings. Set in the very heart of the largest city after Paris, it is an examplary substructure. This ambitious realization was due to the initiative of the town-council and national government, as much as to the own needs of the town services and the area. However, the economic balance struck at the end of 1975 hasn't answered all of the building contractor's expectations. In spite of the fact that the first office buildings have been easily sold, then let, there still remain large surfaces to allot in the last buildings.

Public and para-public administrations group one third of the tertiary jobs in Lyon urban area. Their inclusion in the urban texture is undergoing quick changes : the district equipments are being integrated within multivalent service units. The logic of the land market tends to specialize the town centre into office units {following the same trend as the concentrating pattern of governement centres) and to reject to the outskirts the occupants of large spaces (hospitals, universities...). The creations of jobs, mostly in the fields of education and postal communications, which were very numerous in the late sixties and early seventies are slowly decreasing under the combined evolution of the demand and of the noticeable improvements in productivity. It becomes clear, as a conclusion, that public administration policy, as regards both equipment and employment, follows more and more closely the market laws.

The urbanization of Saint-Etienne (in the sens of an objective process giving structure to space), while changing the visible aspect of the town without necessarily changing its characteristic view, maintains a social and economic type of development which has its own logic and fetters. It does so, though fifty years of town-planning (in the sens of social relationship) which gives support th the illusion of its own efficiency, by the means of the antagonistic views that it arouses at the level of surveys and schemes.

The urban growth of the Brazilian state of Parana follows an original course : it owes nothing or almost nothing to industrialisation and it is based upon and goes together with the advance of pioneer fronts and the services necessary to the developing agriculture. At the moment, the urban network essentially relies upon two « corridors » of exportation but there seem to be signs of a planned organization. Curitiba, the state capital adds to some original features, the merit of an important effort to improve the regulation of the traffic.