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Communication dans un congrès Année : 2016

Stone quarries in urban landscape: a feature of geoheritage. Case studies from Paris and Nantes

Résumé

Stone quarries are a fundamental element of cities: firstly, because they provide them with building materials; secondly, because their location, at the edge of cities but close enough to limit the transport of stone, marks a stage in urban expansion; lastly, because, once the extraction is abandoned, they become an issue of the reclassification of urban spaces, between a new place to live and a transformation into a recreational area. They contribute to the geoheritage because they are a means of making the inhabitants aware of the relief, especially when the city is situated on a plain or a plateau, at the edge of a river, as is the case in Paris and Nantes. Paris and Nantes have been chosen to illustrate the cases of two cities differing in size, whose provision of building stone quarries has led to distinct urbanization conditions, but where one of the results is the development of abandoned quarries as a prestigious goal of the political authorities. The issue of city quarries thus has a strong cultural component, in the widest sense. Paris, which currently covers an urban area of about 7 million inhabitants, is interesting because it has several generations of quarries, which have gradually become integrated into the urban fabric during its expansion. Here, we will focus on the quarries situated in the municipality of Paris and in the neighboring municipalities of the suburbs, where underground networks (limestone quarries in the south) or surface destabilization (gypsum quarries in the north and north-east) required the regulation and then the abandoning of the extraction between the 18th and 20th centuries, depending on the sector. Nantes, today at the head of an urban area ten times less populated, underwent a later expansion, first in the 18th and 19th centuries based on its industrial and port activity, then in the second half of the 20th century as a major regional hub of Western France. The quarries were abandoned here sometimes later than in Paris, but their number was also limited, notably due to the supply of building stone by means of the Loire river, which enabled a variety of materials to be used. Paris also had an external supply; nevertheless, the need for building materials was such that local quarries were always necessary.

Domaines

Géographie
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Dates et versions

halshs-02272594, version 1 (27-08-2019)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-02272594 , version 1

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Bruno Comentale. Stone quarries in urban landscape: a feature of geoheritage. Case studies from Paris and Nantes. International Workshop on Urban Geomorphological Heritage, Oct 2016, Rome, Università La Sapienza, Italy. ⟨halshs-02272594⟩
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