Urban Development of Lille
Lille, contrary to much of cities did not develop circularly around a hyper-center. It developed by construction of whole districts and by absorbing neighbouring cities. This process is still of topicality with the integration of Lome in 2000. These district-city, such Wazemmes, keep their heart a little with the image of Belleville to Paris.
An abused medieval heritage
Lille was always relatively prosperous and benefitted from its marketing activity then of its role of metropolis of a strongly industrialized area. Its urban fabric solidified forever and of the additions and the modifications of all times strew it. Moreover, after its conquest by Louis XIV, the imposition of a French identity was partly carried out through architecture. The creation of a new district and public buildings was accompanied by one tendency to the negation of the former heritages. Perhaps this explains propensity, up to one recent time, to neglect its past and the architectural heritages civil oldest (except perhaps for impossible to circumvent the Vieille Stock Exchange).One of the medieval districts (Saint-Saver) is not perceived any more like such, since its destruction and its massive concreting during the years 1960. Only some isolated buildings, sometimes exceptional (the such Gantese Old people's home transformed into hotel) testify to its past.
The district of the Vieux-Lille cheese, during out of left bank of Saint-Saver, a long time miserable and left with the abandonment, failed to undergo the same fate, as recalled by clashing contrast between the Hospice Countess and the law courts. Saved thanks to an associative mobilization, the Vieux-Lille cheese is today restored and became a sector of tourism and luxury trades.
The French conquest and the development towards the west
After the French conquest, Vauban modernizes the fortifications and builds the citadel, in a marshy zone in the west of the city. Between the old city and the citadel, a new district is created on a quadrangular level (with for main axis the street Royale). One finds there some private mansions (of which the building of Banque de France).During the 18th century, the channel connecting the high one and low Deûle are built between the citadel and the city. Allowing an easy inland waterway of upstream downstream via of the locks, it shorts-circuit the small urban channels which lose their raison d'être then and seem, consequently, to undergo problems of silting and healthiness. Filled since the years 1960, these channels of the center town tend today to reappear within the framework of the many projects of town planning aiming at giving again a certain seal in the center town (ex: the quay of Wault).
The 19th century and the urban explosion
Lille does not cease acquiring an economic weight and is with narrow in its fortifications. In 1858, a new enclosure is built and the city increases towards the south, by including the communes of Esquermes, Wazemmes (both out of Right Bank of Deûle) and rural areas in south-east (the future district Moulins). Old fortification southernmost is destroyed (there does not remain that the carries from Paris) and is replaced about it by the boulevard of the Republic (bordered of habitats of report/ratio and houses of Master). At the same time of the bored is carried out through the city medieval (street Faidherbe, street Nationale, leading to the Grand-place).The New zone intramurally is very quickly built. It is served by large rectilinear arteries. Beside the old village cores of Esquermes and Wazemmes are juxtaposed sectors of middle-class habitats (on the main axes and in the old wetlands of Deûle) and of the industrial sectors and a working habitat (Courée S). The old bed of Deûle is embanked and, at the same time, the channels which characterized the medieval city are covered and transformed into sewers. More in the East, the goods station Saint-Saver develops near the door of Paris.
The urban growth and industrialization also benefit in the suburbs and the cities bordering with an industrial and working fabric dense (railway industry, iron and steel industry, mechanics, textile) but also with the residential creation of zone middle-class women (in the west of the Citadel and on the axis of the Grand boulevard connecting Lille to Roubaix-Tourcoing). The suburbs are separated from Lille will intra muros by the fortifications and a band not aedificandus . To facilitate the defense of the city, constructions prohibited or are limited there to dwellings of cobs and wood likely to be quickly shaven (some examples remain). This zone exploited by the communication networks (railroads then highways) form still today a fracture in urban fabric.
The 20th century: a modern metropolis
The fortifications were shaven after the First World War, except for the Citadel and of the barracks in the north of the city. Their traces however remain quite present through the zone not aedificandus which girdled it. Free of dwelling, it allowed the passage of axes of communications (boulevards, highways and peripheral, railway lines), the creation of some great units (the melba toasts ) or of infrastructures corresponding to its role of regional metropolis.The communes of Hellemmes and Lome are integrated into Lille, respectively in 1977 and 2000, officially to instigate them and support their financial balance. It is difficult however not to see electoral thought backs there: the many population of workmen and railwaymen of these two cities anchor Lille indeed durably on the left (while the socio-economic evolution of the central districts tends to reduce the socialist vote to it). This fastening was sometimes badly lived by inhabitants, in particular by of Hellemmois who assert a clean and distinct identity.
The 21e century: a city in social change?
Since the years 1990, a will is posted of redynamiser the urban fabric inhabitant of Lille. Combined to the real pressure and the redécouverte of picturesque of the life of district inhabitant of Lille (in particular of Wazemmes), the carried out actions also contribute to move away towards the periphery the most popular populations.