INNOVATIVE CITY

Travel, social balance, sustainable development… Nantes has fully embraced the urban objectives of the future and is inventing innovative solutions. Jules Verne's city is becoming a laboratory for many projects… Its innovative solutions are now internationally renown : The City won in 2006 a European mobility Award, and the Ribbon for sustainable development.

Transportation has become a local specialty.The city has fallen in love with public transport, and encourages alternatives to the automobile such as trams, ecofriendly buses and river shuttles.
Nantes now has France’s longest tramway network. You can ride a water bus from the railway station to the trade show at the International Exhibition Center, or home from work at night. In 2007, Nantes is the first city in Europe to develop the busway, a new own site transport concept. Move around quickly, comfortably and without polluting : one of the objectives for cities in the XXIst century.

Ile de Nantes : the largest inner-city project in Europe
Once upon a time, Nantes was the city of shipbuilders. But the shipyards closed on the town’s huge island, Ile-de-Nantes, in 1986. On the site of the old shipyards, in the heart of Europe’s largest inner-city industrial development site, Nantes is reinventing itself. Architectural audacity, new cultural projects, high-quality housing and a center of economic excellence for creative industries: the Ile de Nantes project is all that - and more…