Travel, economy, environment … what future for the metropolis of Toulouse?
The AUAT has been working for a year on the effects of the crisis and offers its help and skills to the communities of the Toulouse metropolitan area to prepare for a future that is intended to be happy. A videoconference and meeting will take place this Monday, September 27 in Toulouse with 200 elected officials, decision-makers and specialists to imagine the future of the metropolis.
New world. The expression had marked the last presidential election. On the eve of the March 2022 electoral meeting, it is a new and very different world that must be imagined, coming out of a health crisis that has turned the situation upside down.
“Should we go back to normal when a year ago we said:” never again! », Asks Yann Cabrol, director of AUAT. The urban planning agency of the agglomeration launched, at the start of the crisis, a series of studies on the impact of the Covid on our territories.
A happy future?
“It is often in the ordeal that we give ourselves time to reflect and that we question ourselves”, adds Annette Laigneau, president of the AUAT, highlighting the report, headline “The other Tomorrow ”, taking stock of this year of analysis and foresight. This Monday, the agency is offering a meeting with more than two hundred participants, elected officials, decision-makers, town planners from the Toulouse metropolitan area, to discuss the theme: “What happy future for our territories?” “.
Videoconference and meeting this Monday, September 27
The Toulouse Metropolitan Area (AUAT) town planning and development agency, contacted by Annette Laigneau, vice-president of Toulouse Métropole, will organize this Monday, September 27, from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., a videoconference on the theme “Tomorrow , what happy future for our territories? ”As part of his meetings under the title“ The other tomorrow ”. More than two hundred participants from the entire Toulouse metropolitan area (elected officials, decision-makers, town planners, etc.) are registered, of which around fifty guests will attend the event in person at the premises of the water agency in Toulouse.
“The economic fabric (of the agglomeration) has torn apart, the heavy dependence on the aviation sector for the activity of the large Toulouse basin”, note Annette Laigneau and Yann Cabrol. We must now revamp this fabric, or even change it for a more modern, more diverse and more durable.
The crisis did not have only negative aspects, also note the specialists of the AUAT and the experts consulted. The telework boom calls into question the organization of the company, the housing function and the role of mobility.
The confinements have had beneficial effects on the climate, biodiversity and nature in the city, as well as air quality. The metropolis can therefore take up the challenge, climate and environment, provided it has the political will. Public transport, weighed down by fear of the pandemic, is struggling to regain attendance at the Covid front? The demand must be adapted and reimbursed. The Toulousains have rediscovered, well forced, walking, and further developed the use of the bicycle, with the creation of coronapistes during the deconfinement? We must continue the movement.
Has the crisis contributed to the launch of short circuits in food, the digitalization of small businesses and the boom in deliveries? A chance for agriculture and local commerce. and to develop new, more flexible modes of consumption.
What the experts say
In its report “The other tomorrow” resulting from this work, the agency highlights expert opinions. For the 2014 Nobel Prize for Economics, Toulouse-based Jean Tirole, “Toulouse will remain the capital of aeronautics but it will be necessary to build a different, greener aeronautic”. Gabriel Colletis, from Toulouse University UT1, notes: “the shock could be beneficial by making it possible to anticipate the ecological transition. […] if that happens, Toulouse will be the capital of clean aeronautics at the global level ”, while Michel Grossetti (CNRS, EHESS) assures:“ the economic system of the Toulouse conurbation can be resilient ”.
In terms of quality of life, town planner Jean-Marc Offner believes: “density is a problem of urban quality” calling for “not to confuse density and promiscuity”. Houria Tareb, from Secours Populaire, notes: “the risks of health problems linked to poor housing”. The landscape designer Xavier Marié estimates: “The context revealed a lack of access to nature”, while Boris Presseq, botanist of the Toulouse Museum notes: “The fauna and flora have reconquered Toulouse (during confinement). No new species in town but those already present, more visible ”.
Mélanie Gambino, from UT2 sees the crisis as an opportunity: “Networks and platforms which allow farmers from the southwest to market in Toulouse have appeared”. Luck also for Luc Gwiazdzinski, of Ensa Toulouse, about mobility: “This crisis invites to develop an urbanism of the times around the idea of malleable city”, while Stein Van Oosteren, of the Vélo Ile-de- France underlines the “historic moment for the bicycle” with the rise of coronapistes and that Janette Sadik-Khan, ex-in charge of the transport of the city of New York, imagines “streets well designed for walking, pedaling or for public transport. common”.
The AUAT denies reading the future in the crystal ball but intends to help communities prepare this new world, child of the Covid and the crisis.