La Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne : un patrimoine militaire saisi par l’économie créative

This article is an analysis of a project of urban renewal concerning a space inherited from industrial and military activity: the arms factory of Saint-Étienne. The history and the heritage characteristics of the site, in both its tangible and intangible dimensions, have been mobilized in a highly strategic urban project, the City of the Design, at the meeting point of many issues. This new design centre may be understood in a wider framework of metropolitan competition and the competition for the attractiveness of territories. Indeed, in a city marked by the traumatism stemming from the decline of the industry, the existence of a military heritage is seen as an opportunity to specify locally the implementation of the « good urban practices » in circulation in European cities. The persons in charge of the City thus chose a remarkable place of the local industrial and military history to welcome the future symbol of the local modernity, with the aim of benefitting from this patrimonial inscription a historic capital gain necessary for the success of the project in a context of urban marketing. However, the process of patrimonialisation of the arms factory gave birth to a profound conflict setting local associations of protection of the heritage against the town planners. It is important to question what is involved in this enterprise of promoting military heritage: what memory and what legacy is being accentuated by contemporary urban public action, and how might this be an instrument in inter city competition