TIME EUROPE
June 12, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 23
Vive Les Regions
Key provincial cities are emerging as the new vectors of economic development and cultural expression
Lyons | Toulouse | Strasbourg | Lille
Lyons
By JORDAN BONFANTE Lyons
Every country needs a blue-collar inland second city, a São Paulo, say, or Manchester, that's ready to make the goods while the capital makes money. But don't look to Lyons, France's second city, to fill that bill as a supplicant laborer to a powdered-wig Paris, not any more. The Lyonnais of today has shed his overalls. He prefers to wear a starched lab coat, a three-star chef's toque, perhaps, or, most likely of all, a conservative business suit.
Business is brisk of late, and urban renewal is on an upswing as steep as the staircases of the rose-colored Croix Rousse hill that overlooks the staid and scrubbed riverfront city like a picturesque local Montmartre. In all, 65 new companies have relocated in the city just in the past year. Unemployment is a full point lower than the national average of 10%. An influx of newcomers, drawn by the quality of life offered by a big city within easy reach of both the Alps and the Mediterranean (and only two hours from Paris by the high-speed TGV train) has enlarged the population of the urban area to 1.2 million. "We are on the verge of a big boom," says Lyons' Regional Development Association director Robert Maury. "All the ingredients of the sauce are in the pot."
The vacated old slaughterhouse district of Gerland, on the east bank of the Rhône, now hosts one branch of France's prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, which has transferred from Paris, and another will follow in September. The Vaise and Industrie districts on the west bank of the Saône — long derelict after the textile mill closures of the '70s killed off 20,000 jobs — are humming to the arrival of Aventis' agrochemical headquarters and a half-kilometer-square complex being built by Infogrames, a 1,500-strong, $570 million video game company that claims to be the world's second-largest. Close behind have come nearly 100 smaller high-tech start-ups. "If you take a Barcelona, a Rotterdam, a Frankfurt or a Lyons today, you see there are now major new hubs. They are not world capitals, but European regional capitals," says Serge Sabourin, assistant director of Lyons-based Interpol.
Interpol itself has caught expansion fever. Since moving south from a Paris suburb in 1989 it's been the nucleus of a developing Lyons-based law enforcement community that includes the French national police forensic lab and its police academy, and may one day include a European Union police academy.
Even the famed gastronomy of Lyons is on the move. Not in terms of culinary shifts — as superchef Paul Bocuse points out, the Lyonnais themselves are unadventurous diners — but rather on the business front. Having exported his franchise to Japan and Florida, Bocuse is opening four satellite brasseries around Lyons. Rival chef Jean-Paul Lacombe is opening eight bistro versions of his Léon de Lyons.
Native entrepreneurship — Lyons has been a city of traders dating back to Roman times — is one reason for today's forward motion. Another is the far-seeing leadership of Mayor Raymond Barre. A centrist, economy-minded Prime Minister under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the late '70s, Barre in 1996 "parachuted" into a community demoralized by a three-year municipal corruption scandal. As mayor, he soon made the Lyonnais forget past malfeasance. He used wider investment-borrowing to revitalize the old quarters. He called on his farflung connections to establish new academic centers in order to keep the city abreast of today's "knowledge economy." Most of all, he internationalized the Lyonnais outlook.
Lifting the city's sights, Barre outlined three concentric circles of development for Lyons. First, a Lyons-led "regional circle" comprising other Rhône-Alpes cities like Grenoble, Saint-Etienne, Annecy and Chambéry. Second, an "Alpine diamond" in which Lyons, Geneva and Turin would close ranks behind such mammoth projects as a 50-km, $10 billion transalpine TGV tunnel by 2015. And third, the "south European arc" of a loose alliance between Barcelona, Marseilles, Lyons, Geneva and Turin, which would, by their Mediterranean proximity, enjoy privileged relations with North Africa.
"When I arrived, Lyons was inward-looking and suspicious — suspicious too about Grenoble, suspicious about Marseilles," says Barre, who at 76 says he is too old to run for a second term next year. "My ambition was to change the mentality. Give the Lyonnais a consciousness that we are living in a world of competition among European towns and world towns and that Lyons' main objective was to become a European and international city open to the world. We remain the capital of the provinces, as we've always been called, but that's not enough. We must be more."
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Toulouse
By BRUCE CRUMLEY Toulouse
Given its rich history, architectural beauty, great weather and high-quality lifestyle, it is little wonder the southwest city of Toulouse is the place French people say they'd most like to move to. Now its reputation as a dynamo of business activity and a hotbed of high-tech research and production is prompting more and more people to do just that, making the ville rose — so named for its distinctive pink brick buildings — France's fastest-growing urban area these days. "This city truly does have an embarrassment of riches — whether it's in business, research, or lifestyle terms," says Laurie Farris, who opened the U.S. Consulate in Toulouse six months ago. "It's like a city-sized California of France."
A California, however, with deeper and better-preserved roots. Founded by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago, Toulouse was later shaped by Visigoth and ancient French rulers, as well as waves of immigrants from Italy, Portugal, North Africa and neighboring Spain. Throughout its history, Toulouse has managed to assimilate such influences without discarding what was already in place — an attitude that continues to define the city's response to a fast-changing world. "Our goal has been to modernize and even transform Toulouse and its economy without losing what is most important to us: our identity, and singular dedication to quality of life," comments Dominique Baudis, Toulouse's centrist mayor since 1983. "That's meant change without excess, and modernization respectful of our past and traditions."
Since 1970 — when the European consortium Airbus chose the city for its assembly and headquarters site, bringing with it scores of international aerospace companies, research labs, and other businesses — the aviation industry has been Toulouse's economic hub. (Airbus and its French component Aerospatiale alone provide nearly 11,500 jobs for the region's 700,000 residents, while related businesses provide another 43,500 posts.) But the area has also diversified, hosting a growing number of small and medium-sized companies that now provide better economic balance, long-term stability and faster growth.
"Toulouse refused to remain dependent on one industry, or even one company, as some cities have," comments César Roldán, spokesman for Milan Presse — France's second-largest publisher of children's books, magazines, and multi-media material, and the only major French publisher not based in Paris. "Toulouse isn't just aviation. It's produced a lot of companies like ours that have proved you can grow here, and become a national and international player."
In the past, Paris alone offered the financial resources and high-level workforce that growing companies needed. No longer. With its three universities, four specialized engineering graduate schools and 400 research labs, Toulouse has been a skilled-labor gold mine for high-tech companies like Motorola and Siemens, telecommunications giants France Telecom and Cegetel, and a swiftly growing stable of biotech firms. Meanwhile, the city's pool of young entrepreneurs — and a generous regional funding and incubation network — have gelled to make Toulouse France's regional start-up champion.
"Usually, even booming economies encounter some sort of shortage — resources, ideas, funding, or workforce — but we've really got it all here," says Jean-Jacques Rigoni, founder and CEO of Elan Informatique, a pioneering voice recognition and linguistic engineering firm. "When employees have left to start their own companies, I've been able to wish them well without worrying, knowing there are a lot of well-trained people out there to replace them." That seemingly inexhaustible supply of smart people may be the city's greatest asset. "Toulouse never had the raw materials needed for heavy industry," says Mayor Baudis, "but we've got the gray matter essential to the new economy — and that's where the future lies."
Toulouse's universities — whose origins date back to 1229 and rank second in number behind Paris — also attract a perpetually rejuvenating international population of some 115,000 students. That youthful presence helps fuel a hip and creative pop scene that boasts such bands as Zebda and Mano Negra, which have attracted a nationwide following by incorporating ambient Arabic and Spanish influences with modern rock idioms. "Our music blends the same cultural spices that have made Toulouse so distinctive," says Zebda's Mustapha Amokrane. "It's proof to many in France today that diversity can actually enhance cohesion." Like the rich cultural brew that feeds its contemporary music scene, Toulouse today embodies that mix of tradition and innovation, history and change, aesthetics and high-tech, that is pointing the way to the future.
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June 12, 2000
SPECIAL REPORT
French Connected
Despite a legacy of state control, and an archaic political leadership, France is thriving — and modernizing — in the face of global competition
Venture Playground
A new spirit of entrepreneurship has created a thriving culture for Internet start-ups and fueled the country's robust growth. How the new economy is changing the way the French do business — and reshaping the nation itself
French Exodus
Driven out by excessive taxes and red tape, and also by a spirit of adventure, more and more French men and women are taking their talents abroad
Mixing Bowl
The French don't like to admit it, but decades of immigration have produced a multicultural society that is reinvigorating the nation
Vive Les Regions
Key provincial cities are emerging as the new vectors of economic development and cultural expression
From Decline to Renewal
Stanley Hoffman on France's success as a modern, middle-size power
EUROPE
The Victory Lap?
Europe toasts Clinton one more time, but the Atlantic relationship is showing strain
Soft Power Politics
Europe and the U.S. must seek a world beyond winners and losers
Battle of the Basques
Political inertia combines with disunity and distrust among Spain's national and regional security forces to play into the hands of the terrorist group ETA
Expensive Exposure
Hanover hopes Expo 2000 will put it on the map. It surely will, but the price of publicity will be high
Lights, Camera, Shoot!
Police disguised as a TV crew trick a man to free children and teachers held hostage in Luxembourg
AFRICA
Reliving Apartheid Horrors
The trial of a South African cardiologist accused of murder reopens old wounds
BUSINESS
Ad Land Goes Cyber
Virtual agencies are using the Web to create campaigns in record time, and without the bureaucracy
The Game of the Name
The struggle for Web dominance shows that brands matter just as much in the new economy as in the old
The Wide Blue Yonder
Giant airships could become commercially viable again six decades after the Hindenburg disaster
Battle Below the Belt
Designer Calvin Klein goes to court claiming a business partner is destroying his brand's image
SOCIETY
Tangled Webs for Sale
Planning a tryst or a day at the races away from the boss? A Scottish firm can cover your tracks — for a fee
THE ARTS
Recreating a Jewel
Egypt has built an updated version of the fabled Bibliotheca Alexandrina, but its commitment to intellectual freedom remains an open question
Thandie Makes It Possible
Her mission: to help make M:I-2 the hottest movie of the season. But first she tells you about Hollywood stupidity (and Tom's unusual sense of humor)
The Daily Courage
Journalist Benjamin Pogrund let the facts speak for themselves, no easy task in apartheid South Africa
DEPARTMENTS
Essay
To Our Readers
World Watch
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