Student: Drew Williamson
Graduation date: May 2017
Capstone type: Thesis (honors)
Capstone project:
Constructing a World-Class Tramway System: Building Identity through Innovative Urbanism in the Glocal City of Strasbourg, France
Capstone file(s): Show file | Show file
In this essay, I explore the city of Strasbourg, France and efforts the city has made to boost its standing on the global scale while also seeking to provide a higher quality of life for its inhabitants at the local level. To better understand the purposes and constituencies that have been served by the city’s efforts in urbanism, I invoke relevant concepts of global (world) city theory; urban amenities; city branding and place promotion; and social implications of transportation infrastructure situated on a singular object—Strasbourg’s tramway system. Despite the city’s relatively obscure status, it plays a key role in global power structures, being home to multiple international organizations, most notably the European Union Parliament. Starting in 1989, the city’s government undertook radical, concerted action to improve local environmental conditions by constructing a tram network and banning most cars from the entire historic downtown to “return the city to its people.” Though highly contentious at first, in the twenty years up to today, the tram has rapidly reshaped life and how individual residents identify themselves and how they see the collective identity of Strasbourg; correspondingly, the city’s global importance has grown as a present-day example of high quality urbanism stemming from its ‘world class’ tram network.
Strasbourg’s choice to (re)-create public space through radical implementation of the tramway has been a tool for incorporating the city's global and local aspirations, creating a new mode of being on an individual basis, and a new identity for the city's residents, and for the city itself. This natural evolution has enhanced the meaning of the tram and how it is able to be communicated to the citizens and the rest of the world.