Restoring post-industrial landscapes through a civic-centered urbanism.

Marseille is a city defined by its industrial past and has only developed and grown off the back of it. While the city has undergone dramatic change over the last few decades the Northern peripheries that house the working-class population that support it’s major industrial sector have been isolated and neglected. A trend of decline and neglect was identified which sees the urban fabric in a state of disrepair, particularly against the backdrop of the shiny new development. The Northern neighbourhoods serve an important function and provide a space for people and activities that have been excluded from the central working of the city. As the city expands and these peripheral neighbourhoods become more appealing real estate opportunities, a false narrative has been created, one which suggest a total social and physical transformation is the only solution. Stories of crime and decline now leave the neighbourhood in a purgatory between what it once was, what it is now, and what it will be.

The site now sits at the heart of the newest Euroméditerranée project, a scheme started in 1995 which has received over 7 billion Euros of funding, of which 5 billion is from private investment. The scheme proposes a displacement of over 500 working-class residents to make way for 30,000 higher-class dwellers. The projects risks the lives of these active neighbourhoods as well as the disruption of their existing social, economic, and cultural ecosystems. The thesis begins with the recognition of the existing networks as a resource in and of themselves. Positioned at the centre of Les Crottes, a neglected post-industrial neighbourhood which has from it’s isolation created a culture of self-sufficiency and community. The thesis forms an opposition to the destructive development scheme and rejects the standardisation and inaccessibility of its typology in this context. The scale and homogeneity of this 21st-century development ignores the diversity of our urban environments and dehumanises the experience of the city. The city should not attempt to cover the social contradictions nor implement homogeneity where heterogeneity is obvious. It should instead provide space where the plurality of life can meet.

“The City as a Resource” focuses on these neglected areas and proposes a more accessible and sustainable form of development which utilises the city and it’s makeup as a resource for repair and reintegration. This is explored across various scales both physically and conceptually to create an alternative urbanism that focuses on what exists rather than what is desired. This is achieved through a mining and borrowing of architectural ideas and elements from throughout the city context.

These different scales work by;

1) recognising and prioritising the existing social, cultural, and economic ecosystem as a resource for the neighbourhood,

2) rejecting the profit-driven, tabula rasa approach and proposes an alternative approach to development, drawing from ideas in “Collage City” by Colin Rowe, urban forms are mined and collaged to create a rich and diverse urban fabric,

3) mining urban functions from throughout the city to create a civic resource for the neighbourhood,

4) borrowing architectural forms to develop the architectural response within the intervention,

5) lastly, it recognises the material resource available within the context to guide and inform the architectural response, minimising environmental impact and retaining the sites cultural memory.