L'Aire Métropolitaine Marseillaise et les territoires de l'industrie

Marseilles industry tends currently to organize at the level of her metropolitan area. But it hasn?t always been the fact. Industry has been organized firstly around the harbour and the activities related to overseas and more particularly to the French colonial empire. There was no hinterland and the city enclosed within her hills line was exclusively turned towards the sea. When this way of working reached its limits this disconnection with her surroundings turned back against the city. Economic and social crisis spread out while new economic development dynamics were experienced in the cities around as a revenge mobilizing a series of rivalries. Today the centre city profits by a clear renewal; her rehabilitated image is not anymore discarded by investors. She draws benefits from her coastal location, her urban culture and her scientific potential to attract and develop modern immaterial and knowledge based industrial activities. It is then a whole metropolitan system that might emerge and spread off, leaning on the rich variety of resources of this urban and periurban structure. But this will probably require a still lacking political will to impose such a metropolitan view against old sectarianisms and reciprocal distrust.