Building a city of innovation? The metropolitan area of Grenoble

In order to valorise the territorial resources of the Grenoble metropolitan area (industrial tradition, entrepreneurship, synergies between research and industry...), the scientific community has progressively formed a technological cluster over the 20th century. This cluster has been at the origin of the area's main transformations at the local level (from magnetism to nuclear, from nuclear to electronic and computer fabrication, from computer fabrication to software and nanotechnologies...). This technological cluster is very often analysed as a local development growth engine although it represents only a third of the area's jobs and generates a quarter of its income. The will to building a city of innovation has led local stakeholders to imagine new relationships between the technological cluster and the urban society and to integrate the technopolitan project in a territorial strategy aimed at enhancing quality of life and habitability.