Three Post-Carbon Districts

The optimization of rail operations freed up vast tracts of land: Jardin des Mécanos (18th arrondissement), Hébert (18th arrondissement), and Les Messageries (12th arrondissement). The exhibition Espaces Ferroviaires: Three Post-Carbon Districts, which ran from April 19 to August 20, 2023 at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, was an opportunity to retrace these three Parisian development programs.

“These positive transformation projects—Les Messageries, Jardin des Mécanos, Hébert—were all responses to the challenges facing Paris. Espaces Ferroviaires [SNCF’s property development arm] and its partners—architects, experts, urban planners, landscape architects, and local residents—are designing new parts of the city on land that used to be purely functional but has now been decommissioned, abandoned, sealed, and reinvented for Parisians and all those who live in the capital.” – Franck Boutté

These are rare opportunities to regenerate the city by handing back generous common spaces and landscape links, creating an urbanity that promotes new ways of working and living and giving a new face to SNCF’s heritage through its conversion, placing its history in context.