With 130,000 workers commuting across the Franco-Luxembourg border daily and national policies to transform former steel wastelands into new urban neighbourhoods – Belval in Luxembourg and Micheville in Lorraine – the Franco-Luxembourg border is one of the most functionally integrated borders in the European Union. This functional specialisation of the Greater Region (GR) area – economic activities on one side, residential areas on the other – poses a significant challenge for planning policy (SDTGR, 2020: 12).
This policy paper, which is the result of a study carried out in the context of the European Capital of Culture Esch2022 (2021-2022), shows that while functional attachment to place is the basis of attachment in the cross-border area of Alzette Belval, emotional attachment is also an important democratic resource. A sign of personal projection and a symbolic relationship with the place, its identity and its values, emotional attachment indicates a willingness to stand up for the place, to enhance it and to protect it.
Bibliographical information
Evrard, Estelle / Landrine, Lise (2025): L’attachement au lieu : levier pour un aménagement plus juste dans l’espace transfrontalier Alzette Belval | Ortsverbundenheit: Ansätze für eine gerechtere Raumplanung im grenzüberschreitenden Raum Alzette Belval. UniGR-CBS Policy Paper 6, UniGR-Center for Border Studies.
Download: https://center-border-studies.uni-gr.eu/en/resources/publications/policy-papers/policy-paper-vol-6