Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
In cities across Europe, peripheral zones are often treated as the margins of urban life—functionally necessary yet conceptually neglected. In Tours, France, a former military airbase at the city’s northern edge offers more than a redevelopment challenge. It presents a unique chance to redefine how the city meets its limits, to transform the urban periphery into a prototype for sustainable urban planning, inclusive development, and climate-resilient design.
Spanning over 300 hectares, the Tours airbase was established in 1915 and long served as a spatial and infrastructural barrier. It disconnected northern districts from Tours’ historical core, enforced car-dependent urbanism, and reinforced social and physical isolation. Its closure in 2020 opened the door for a bold question: how can the city transform this void into a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable urban fabric?
Understanding the Periphery as a Strategic Urban Threshold
Urban peripheries are often overlooked in strategic planning, viewed as residual landscapes. However, they are rich in potential—acting as buffers, connectors, and latent frameworks for adaptive reuse. The northern edge of Tours, defined by its vast size, embedded infrastructure, and contested identity, offered a critical test bed for developing new paradigms of urbanism that prioritize resilience, circular economies, and ecological integration.
This site is not merely a brownfield to be filled. It is a layered palimpsest of historical use, urban disconnection, and emerging opportunity. Through an interdisciplinary planning workshop at Polytech Tours, we explored how legacy infrastructures might become assets for future cities. The airbase became a lens through which we questioned the future of mobility, urban agriculture, energy systems, and community participation in shaping public space.
Three Scenarios for Future Urban Transformation
Our research proposes three long-term urban strategies, each rooted in different models of development and transformation. These speculative futures are not isolated visions but responses to the complex interplay of spatial justice, economic development, environmental stewardship, and social equity.
1. Growth: Reinforcing Regional Logics
This scenario envisions Tours as a high-capacity regional logistics and transport node. The former airbase becomes a multimodal transport interchange, linking high-speed rail, commercial aviation, and regional freight. Industrial and commercial zones are intensified to attract investment and jobs.
However, the model faces critical trade-offs. Without careful integration of ecological design principles, this trajectory risks deepening environmental degradation and repeating outdated patterns of sprawl and automobile dependency.
2. Diversification: Building Resilience through Mixed-Use Ecologies
This scenario transforms the site into a multifunctional urban district, blending housing, education, light industry, logistics, and community facilities. A mobility hub is introduced to reduce isolation and connect northern Tours to the metropolitan network. Pedestrian zones, bike lanes, and green corridors form the spatial skeleton of this development.
Urban agriculture, makerspaces, and educational institutions coexist, creating a diverse, adaptable, and ecologically embedded neighborhood.
3. Reconversion: A Regenerative Landscape Approach
The most transformative vision involves fully reconverting the site into a new eco-district. Renewable energy systems, rainwater harvesting, and net-zero buildings define the new morphology. Wetlands and forests are reintroduced to manage flood risks and enhance biodiversity.
Soft mobility becomes the dominant logic: walking, cycling, and light electric transit shape human movement. Community gardens, cooperative housing, and participatory governance ensure that this district is not only low-carbon but also socially embedded and democratically managed.
From Division to Connectivity: Reweaving the Urban Fabric
The Tours North project proposes an inversion of outdated planning logic. Green corridors reconnect fragmented landscapes. Ecological zoning bridges habitat gaps. Urban design becomes the practice of repair.
Night-time cultural programs, educational hubs, and new public institutions reintroduce identity and life to the periphery. By reinvesting in the social fabric, the periphery becomes a stage for belonging, not exclusion.
Towards a Regenerative Urban Future
Climate Resilience and Landscape Urbanism
Any 21st-century masterplan must account for climate risk. Urban forests, bioswales, and permeable surfaces mitigate runoff and increase thermal comfort. These interventions are not decorative; they are vital infrastructure for resilient cities.
Governance, Participation, and Spatial Equity
From early visioning workshops to tactical urbanism pilots, community engagement must be authentic and long-term. Projects with strong community backing are more adaptable and resilient. The periphery, too often seen as passive, can lead in new models of governance rooted in trust and collaboration.
A Model for European Secondary Cities
While centered on Tours, the project resonates with many mid-sized European cities. Military base closures, mobility transitions, and green space scarcity are continental challenges. The Tours project shows how underutilized zones can become laboratories for regenerative urbanism.
Urban Design as Strategic Intelligence
At Hasanen Architects, we see planning not as a technocratic task but as design intelligence at the service of society. In the Tours North project, we find a clear message: the edge is not the end of the city—it is where new models of living, producing, and belonging must begin.
Read the full paper here: https://ectp-ceu.eu/ectp-ceu-2019-young-planner-worshop-the-e-book/
“This article is part of RE:VIEW, Hasanen Architects’ platform for research, ideas, and future-facing design.