Designing with Uncertainty : A Collaborative Approach to Coastal Change in Vias

In the past few years, numerous authors formulated the hypothesis that the informal city offers several original amenities: lightness, adaptability and social cohesion for example. The acknowledgement of these assets risks to hide, on the one hand, the limits of informality, and on the other hand, the first vocations of the city. Collectivising basic services and regulating their use, providing accessibility and ensuring the permeability of the ground, guaranteeing safety for inhabitants and goods: these are some of the purposes territorial planning and design usually intend to fulfil. On the Mediterranean coast, in the south-east of France, the municipality of Vias has seen an informal residential fabric develop since the 1960s. Mainly used for leisure, the plots are now exposed to coastal risks. In the trail of the Xynthia storm, the awareness of these risks leads the French Government to launch in 2015 a national experimental approach to strengthen the knowledge of the affected territories. The ambition is to set up local strategies aimed at adapting territories to coastal change and reducing their vulnerability. Among the experimental sites, Vias has the peculiarity to combine both risk-related themes and the specific issues of informality. In Vias, the cooperation between the Government, the local authorities and the inhabitants quickly takes an exceptional direction. The dimension of the site is particularly significant: 2,500 leisure plots in part occupied by illegal constructions. The means employed are equally impressive: for three years, a dedicated team led by an architect has been organising a series of workshops to develop an adaptive masterplan. The latter should allow a more sustainable transition of the coast. The approach is exemplary, but numerous doubts are emerging in a context marked by contradictory injunctions. How to experiment without admitting uncertainty? Originally written for the 4th City Futures Conference organised by the European Urban Research Association and the Urban Affairs Association1, this article provides a critical analysis of the method used to design the adaptive masterplan of the coast of Vias. It fits into a thematic session entitled “Inhabiting Outside the Law: The Variety of Housing Informality/Illegality in Western Countries”, itself included in the first of 6 conference’s tracks called “Cities and Spatial and Social Justice - Creating More Inclusive Cities”.