Euroméditerranée
Euroméditerranée
Case Studies in Euroméditerranée
The one administrative structure tying this extended territory of study together is Euromediterranée, the starting of Marseille’s contemporary, city-led regeneration. It is focused on redeveloping Marseille’s vast port but has also stretched inland to encompass the train station of Saint-Charles and the north of the city centre, ignoring the urban configurations that segregate these various parts.
Despite successive urban planning projects, Saint-Charles retains its identity as a working-class and immigrant area. It hosted waves of immigrants over the centuries — Italians, Jews, Armenians, Northern Africans. It's an iconic Marseille neighbourhood with a centuries-long history.
Its urban fabric inherited from the 1666 city extension is full with shops and restaurants. In the 1980s it was a market place known all around the Mediterranean sea, with traders travelling from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco to buy goods here and sell them back home. A commerce known as "trabendo".
For centuries the neighbourhood hosted small workshops and manufacture — such activity has by and large disappeared since the 1970s.