GRAVATS - Management of architecture recycling in the city: territorialised analysis (2012)

Summary:

The project is based on a geography thesis that aims to enable territorialised analysis of the demolition stream at the level of the Lyon agglomeration.

The paradigm of the sustainable city increasingly calls for the city to rebuild upon itself, and demolition is one modality for urban renewal. In this sense, demolition companies are key players in this renewal, who have had to deal with rapid changes to their profession over the past ten years. Sustainability also means sustainably managing natural, particularly mineral, resources. This is why inert waste from demolition is increasingly used as a substitute for natural aggregates, particularly in public works. Demolition is thus viewed as an action that not only includes the act of tearing down, but also of recycling the waste produced in this process, which references the economic notion of a stream.

The goal of the project is to establish a socio-economic and territory-based study of the demolition stream in Grand Lyon, from the “deconstruction” activity to the production of recycled concrete gravels and the storage of inert waste. The project should make it possible to describe the local demolition stream in its spatial dimension and to understand its issues, in particular distinguishing between issues related to the local context and issues related to the evolution of the profession in general.