Strasbourg : la frontière à l’œuvre dans la construction du projet urbain des Deux-Rives

The Rhine is of emblematic importance for the city of Strasbourg, symbolising how it belongs to a specific culture and to a history marked by the history of the conflicts between France and Germany, by changes of nationality and, finally, over the past thirty years, by the city’s European vocation. As an untamed frontier river, the Rhine (with the exception of its harbour facilities) was generally neglected in town-planning projects. Today, and since the international Strasbourg-Kehl planning competition held in 1990, it has become a key component in metropolitan projects. This competition can also be seen as the beginning of a proper partnership between Strasbourg and its German neighbour, Kehl. This paper sets out to put four significant town-planning projects into the broader context of the history of the city’s growth. These projects are the key stages in the city’s progressive opening toward the river: the international Strasbourg-Kehl competition in 1990 defined the project area and gave the foundations for transnational cooperation with a territorial perspective; in 2004, the Landesgartenschau (garden festival) was the pretext for Marc Mimram’s footbridge which joins the two banks of the river; since 2008, Strasbourg’s town centre is turning towards the East, on account of the transformation of the Malraux Presqu’île, an old harbour zone dating from the 1880s; in 2017, the tramway was extended towards Kehl, structuring a new part of the city in the port area and on the Rhine