Le sol comme socle de la renaissance paysagère en vallée de l’Orge

Abstract

The Syndicat de l’Orge is a river and sanitation agency in charge of an area south of the Parisian agglomeration which stretches between the Hurepoix, Beauce and Brie plateaus. This area includes 300 km of watercourses and is located between a first dense encircling urban area and a second one in which housing becomes sparser in favour of cropland and wooded hillsides. The agency is in charge of managing the watercourses in the valleys of the River Orge and its tributaries as well as improving the living environment of the residents. This agency carries out the renaturing of the watercourses, the opening up of floodplains, and the creation and extension of a promenade along the banks of the Orge. But how does it reclaim open stretches of land and urban and peri-urban spaces ? The article reviews the agency’s actions to evaluate how the landscape has benefited from the renaturing of the land on the riverbanks. After defining the terminology used by the Agency and the issues it addresses, its planning and operational actions are presented to show the relationship between water, land and the resulting landscape. Finally, the agency’s work to restore areas of open land is a means of restoring water to the Orge plain.

Keywords

• Orge Valley
• land regeneration
• open land
• water
• (peri-)urban landscapes
• river agency