“La Métropole du Nord”: a frontier case-study in urban socio-economic restructuring

Lille is the capital of the region Nord-Pas de Calais, located on the extreme eastern border of France with Belgium. It is the main municipality of the agglomeration that is often designated as the “Métropole du Nord”. Since the end of the 1960s, the Nord-Pas de Calais region has been badly affected by the structural crisis of traditional manufacturing industries: coal-mining, steel, metals and textiles. As a consequence of its sectoral specialization, LilleRoubaix-Tourcoing lost tens of thousands of jobs in textiles and infrastructure industries. More than half of this loss was counterbalanced by the creation of service jobs. But unemployment continued to increase and the abandoned manufacturing sites and deteriorating neighbourhoods became gloomy spots on the urban redevelopment scene.