High Island

15km east from Paris' Center: An educative program about the relation between humans and nature

Name	High Island
Place	Neuilly-sur-Marne
Country	France
Topic	Urban ecology
Author(s)	Lolita Voisin
Completion	Please enter the date of completion
Client	Please enter the client
Project costs	Please enter the costs (if known)
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Rationale: Why is this case study interesting?

• The High Island project in Neuilly-sur-Marne, next to Paris, is interesting as basis of reflexion around the debate of integration of nature in urban sectors. The answers found by the technical teams are very interesting. However, we can continue to debate about the future of a natural site forgotten from the humans for a long time.

• It explains the debate unstable that interests all the people who are debating of the urban form including part of nature in the future.

Author's perspective

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Landscape and/or urban context

Hihg Island is a part of the natural site of the Marne river. It's an alluvionnary site, which has been forgotten from humans for 200 years. Before that, it was a cultivated part of an old property called "Ville Evrard". The construction of a canal cut this part of land from the other and tranforms it into an "Island". Therefore, this site took back is natural evolution, as a humid forest, part of the process of inondation with which the Marne river is familiar. During all this time of coming back ti nature, the rest of the land was very quickly urbanised as the extension in housing of Paris.

Everybody will admit that the parisian suburb is most of the time hardly urbanised, with large roads, hard traffic, high buildings and lack of activities of proximity. Neuilly-sur-Marne, the town nearby High Island, is typically one of these hard programms of quick urbanisation in the suburb of Paris. Then, the contrast between the salvage High Island and the town of Neuilly-sur-Marne is apparent: nature and human beings as they are capable to over react in a process.

The question of discovering a new time the High Isalnd, as suggested by the departemental programm of Green Spaces (93), raises to me the very actual and important debate of the relation that humans and nature had, have today, and will maybe try to have in the future. That's what I try to lead during my one year of Diploma in Blois, France (ENSNP)

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Cultural/social/political context

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History

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Spatial analysis of area/project/plan

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Core Questions Working Group Nature Conservation / Water

What is the evolution of the urban relation between humans and nature?

2000 from Department of Seine-Saint-Denis (93)

The High Island project in Neuilly-sur-Marne, next to Paris, is interesting as basis of reflexion around the debate of integration of nature in urban sectors. Hihg Island is a part of the natural site of the Marne river. It's an alluvionnary site, which has been forgotten from humans for 200 years. Before that, it was a cultivated part of an old property called "Ville Evrard". The construction of a canal cut this part of land from the other and tranforms it into an "Island". Therefore, this site took back is natural evolution, as a humid forest, part of the process of inondation with which the Marne river is familiar. During all this time of coming back ti nature, the rest of the land was very quickly urbanised as the extension of housing of Paris. High Islan is between two cities which have since the biginning of the operations of housing around Paris, turn back from the river and its natural sites. As part of the territoy, High Island is a way to meet again these cities and the river and its functions. However, the project that the Seine Saint Denis départment has chosen, using a lot the recreation potentiel of the site, may have long term issues that are not very interesting about the river wild life. Its evolution is to loo at, and maybe be an example of debate around what contact we want between Nature and Human!

Analysis of program/function

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Analysis of design/planning process

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Analysis of use/users

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• Is the use changing? Are there any issues?

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Future development directions

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Peer reviews or critique

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Points of success and limitations

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References

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