FRANCE | Overseas Cities Projects & Construction

[Minato ku]

Originally Posted by elbart089

I think that the French government should colonize those lands and turn then into first world departments after all they are part of the French territory just like Hawaii is to the U.S.

BWT, do all these islands lower down France's indicators like poverty, corruption, etc.? or they are counted separately like independent countries?

Poverty is not so worse than in some departement of France.
Corruption is not higher than any other departement of France. (maybe even lower than in southern France)

These departement are in the first world.
A little Look of Saint Denis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jikgoe/...7600251791199/

[Substructure]

This is Saint Denis of Reunion Island, Minato Ku, not Saint Denis of France...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Reunion003.jpg

[Minato ku]

Reunion is France and we speak of Overseas departements , so it is more likely Saint Denis in Reunion island than Sant Denis in Paris.

[Saigoneseguy]

French are French, they don't do that frivolous kind of thing.

[dougfr69]

We speak about French Guyana so, the first bridge constructs between Guyana and Brazil was introduced by these two presidents.
This bridge, along of 300 m, is planned for 2010.


ifrance.com

[brisavoine]

Originally Posted by josean figueroa

Climate: There is such thing as air conditioning.

AC is good when you're inside, but one also has to go outside, unless you spend all your days at home, and there's no AC when you're outside unfortunately.

Originally Posted by josean figueroa

I think the French government should show some initiative/imagination and send 3,000,000 million to live in Guyane. Build a 'New France' in the tropics. It would be positive for S.America and France/Europe.

The people of French Guiana would never accept that. They are already upset about making up only 50% of French Guiana's population (the rest is made up of Brazilian, Surinamese and Haitian immigrants, as well as Metropolitan Frenchmen). They fear that their original French Guianese creole culture is being swamped and erased by all these newcomers (just imagine a country with 50% of the population being immigrants), so they would completely oppose the arrival of 3 million people from Metropolitan France which would turn them into a tiny minority.

Besides, France is not a dictatorship, so it's not like you can snap your fingers and have 3 million Metropolitan French people move to French Guiana. Of all the Europeans, the French have always been the least inclined to migrate. Even a paradise like New Caledonia has attracted only 50,000 French people since the 19th century. If French people were migrants at heart, North America today would be French speaking, and French would be the world language today instead of English because in the 18th century there were 4 times more inhabitants in France than in England. England, with 4 times less inhabitants than France, sent 230,000 settlers to North America in the 17th and 18th centuries (not even counting the Scots, Scot-Irish and Irish) whereas France sent only 30,000 settlers, two-third of whom returned to France (while extremely few English settlers returned to England), thus leaving only 10,000 French people in North America. The 7 million French Canadians and the nearly 10 million US citizens with French, French Canadian and Cajun ancestry are all descended from these 10,000 French settlers who remained in North America.

Even if the French government disregarded the uneasiness of French Guianese creoles becoming a tiny minority in their homeland, and suddenly promoted a large scale immigration program to French Guiana, I doubt they would attract more than a few tens of thousands of Metropolitan French people.

[josean figueroa]

Originally Posted by brisavoine

The people of French Guiana would never accept that.

So..could they really do anything about it?

Originally Posted by brisavoine

They fear that their original French Guianese creole culture is being swamped and erased by all these newcomers

Are creole cultures worth preserving? I couldn't care less about Puerto Rico's 'cultura criolla'...It is nothing more than immature colonial provincialism.

Originally Posted by brisavoine

Of all the Europeans, the French have always been the least inclined to migrate.

I am aware...and this failure to build a true empire means that the French language is destined to become 'caduc' (perhaps to the detriment of Western Civilisation).

Originally Posted by brisavoine

The 7 million French Canadians and the nearly 10 million US citizens with French, French Canadian and Cajun ancestry are all descended from these 10,000 French settlers who remained in North America.

Your numbers are somewhat mistaken: Only the people of Quebec are said to descend from 10,000 frenchmen, not the rest. There were french immigrants during the 19th and early 20th century also, to the U.S and other countries in America. I have relatives who are 'Bernier', whose French ancestors settled in P.R. 200 years ago. .

[brisavoine]

Originally Posted by josean figueroa

So..could they really do anything about it?

Of course they could. They could declare independence, and then what could France do? Nothing. In fact there used to be a party advocating independence there, but it has lost most of its following now. Yet the imposed migration of hundreds of thousands of people there would of course rekindle calls for independence, let's not be naive.

Originally Posted by josean figueroa

Are creole cultures worth preserving?

It's not ours to decide. Every people have a right to keep their traditions if they wish too. If Alsatians wish to preserve an Alsatian regional culture, nobody can force them to abandon it. Same with the French Guianese creole culture. Besides, the French Guianese Creoles are in large part descended from freed slaves. They climbed the social ladder and ended up becoming the ruling elite of French Guiana. Now they see themselves being surrounded at home by ever more numerous White people from Brazil and France, so no wonder some of them feel unhappy about it. You have to strike a fragile balance in French Guiana: allow newcomers in to help the territory develop, but also blend newcomers with the original creole culture and not allienate the Creoles who until 40 years ago made up 90% of the local population.

Originally Posted by josean figueroa

I am aware...and this failure to build a true empire means that the French language is destined to become 'caduc' (perhaps to the detriment of Western Civilisation).

If so then German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and many more are also destined to become 'caduc'. I wouldn't worry too much about French, especially when the number of French speakers in Africa is set to surpass the number of Spanish speakers in Latin American by the middle of this century thanks to Africa's demographic boom.

Originally Posted by josean figueroa

Your numbers are somewhat mistaken: Only the people of Quebec are said to descend from 10,000 frenchmen, not the rest. There were french immigrants during the 19th and early 20th century also, to the U.S and other countries in America. I have relatives who are 'Bernier', whose French ancestors settled in P.R. 200 years ago. .

The 10,000 people figure I gave is for the entire North America, i.e. Québec + Louisiana + Acadia. The majority of US citizens with French ancestry are descended from French Canadians who migrated to New England in the 19th century and from Cajuns and French Creoles of Louisiana. In fact it is estimated that if French Canadians had not migrated to the US in the 19th century and early 20th century, there would be 12 to 14 million French Canadians in Canada today!

[josean figueroa]

Originally Posted by brisavoine

If so then German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and many more are also destined to become 'caduc'.

I don't understand what Spanish is doing in that list.

Note: 10,000 persons reproducing to 17,000,000 in 250 years?? I don't think so...your claims are absurd.

Check this Web pate: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAEfrance.htm

"An investigation carried out in 1978 revealled that since 1820 over 751,000 people emigrated to the United States from France."

[brisavoine]

Originally Posted by josean figueroa

Note: 10,000 persons reproducing to 17,000,000 in 250 years?? I don't think so...your claims are absurd.

Check this Web pate: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAEfrance.htm

"An investigation carried out in 1978 revealled that since 1820 over 751,000 people emigrated to the United States from France."

I know it sounds crazy, but that's explained by the extremely high fertility rate of the French Canadians and Cajuns until the middle of the 20th century. In fact they had the highest fertility rate of all the Caucasian people in the world, with an average of 7 to 8 children per woman. Families with 15 children where not unheard of in Québec in the 19th century.

These 10,000 original French settlers had already generated 80,000 people by 1760 (60,000 in Québec and 20,000 in Lousiana), and 210,000 people by 1800 according to censuses (160,000 in Québec and 50,000 in Louisiana). In other words they had already multiplied 21 times in just 100 years. Their fertility rate dropped in the middle of the 20th century. If we assume that since 1950 these 17 million people have had only a modest population increase of one-third, that means they were 13 million in 1950. An increase from 210,000 in 1800 to 13 million in 1950 means an average population increase of 2.8% per year over these 150 years, which seems quite realistic given their incredibly high fertility rate at the time. That's the kind of population increase that Subsaharan Africa is experiencing now. For example Congo has currently a population increase of 3.0% a year, Uganda 3.1% a year, Kenya 2.8%. So as you see, once you make the calculations, what seemed crazy in the beginning finds a logical explanation. What made the case of the French Canadians unique is that they experienced this very high population increase for nearly 250 years (1700-1950), whereas in Subsaharan Africa the UN estimate the very high population increase will last for about only 80 years (1970-2050).

Concerning the US I didn't take the entire population of French descent. There are of course more than 10 million people of French descent in the US, accounting for the immigrants from France in the 19th and 20th century that you mentioned.

Anyway, we should get back to the theme of the thread which is construction projects.

[elbart089]

All those rumours about French women most be true then

[brisavoine]

EDIT

[brisavoine]

Some interesting statistics I found which explain why there are so many urban projects going on in overseas France at the moment.

In 1982 there were 1,626,737 people living in the French overseas departments and territories. In 2008 the number of people living in the overseas departments and territories has reached 2,597,318. That's an increase of nearly a million in 25 and a half years. The population in the overseas departments and territories since 1982 has increased at the very high rate of +1.85% per year, compared to an increase of only +0.51% per year in metropolitan France (the European part of France), which is itself already quite good in a European context. Just to give an idea, if metropolitan France had grown as fast as overseas France since 1982, there would be 86.8 million people in metropolitan France today (whereas in the real world there are 61.9 million people in metropolitan France in 2008).

The rapid population increase of the overseas departments and territories is all the more remarkable considering that their population has at the same time been siphoned off by a large departure of young people in search of employment towards metropolitan France, in particular young people from Réunion, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, tens of thousands of whom are now living in metropolitan France. This departure of young people from overseas France toward metropolitan France was in part compensated by immigration to French Guiana (from Brazil and Suriname), to Mayotte (from the Comoros), and to New Caledonia (from metropolitan France), but it is above all the high birth rates of these overseas departments and territories that explain their high population increase, although the birth rates have been rapidly declining in recent years in all of overseas France.

Due to this high population increase, the overseas departments and territories accounted for 2.9% of the French Republic's population in 1982 but they now account for 4.0%. By 2030, if no overseas department and territory becomes independent in the meantime, they should account for 5% of the total population.

One of the overseas departments and territories with the fastest population increase is French Guiana, in part due to a very high fertility rate, much higher than in other overseas departments and territories, and in part also due to high levels of immigration from Brazil and Suriname. In 1982 French Guiana accounted for 4.5% of overseas France's population. In 2008 it now accounts for 8.3% of overseas France's population, and the share of French Guiana in the overseas France's population should continue to increase in the next decades. French Guiana is expected to see its population double by 2030.

To accommodate such a large new population, many urban projects have been started in several cities of French Guiana, planning entire new neighborhoods, with streets, utilities, schools, supermarkets, etc. I'll soon post info about these projects. There is no other part of France that has so many new urban districts planned as French Guiana, except perhaps in the also booming metropolitan area of Toulouse. Making room for such a large new population is a real challenge in a place like French Guiana, but the possible discovery of offshore oil off the coast of French Guiana later this year could be the solution to French Guiana's problems (the Matamata oil field, where drilling will start later this year, could contain as much as one billion barrels of oil according to confidential sources... [off-topic]information about Matamata oil field's potential has been completely ignored by large French medias so far, I wonder why, given that if it is confirmed that there are one billion barrils of oil reserves there, that would make it the largest oil field ever found on French soil so far, on par with some of the largest oil fields found in the North Sea by Norway and the UK... but the French medias prefer to speak about Mrs. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's love life, it's SO much more important of course...[/off-topic]).

[brisavoine]

New housing developments in the northern suburbs of Nouméa, New Caledonia:

[brisavoine]

The mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital and largest city of Martinique, has announced today that the tower planned on the seafront of downtown Fort-de-France is finally starting construction in earnest after delays due to the Martinique earthquake last year. The tower is now scheduled to be completed and opened in the end of 2010 according to the mayor.

The tower, located at the Pointe Simon ("Simon Headland"), will have 21 floors and its height will be 105.5 meters / 346 feet (I don't know if the spire is included or not in the 105.5 meters). It will be the tallest tower in the Lesser Antilles. The developers behind the project are from Trinidad and from Martinique. They are investing 236 million euros (347 million US dollars) for the tower and the surrounding buildings at the Pointe Simon. According to the mayor of Fort-de-France, it will be the most outstanding commercial estate complex in the Caribbean.

Here is a description of the complex that I found online:

Pointe Simon, a new travel destination in Fort-de-France, Martinique, will offer visitors a a full range of global business and leisure services. The project consists of a 21-story office tower, a seven-story condominium and an eight-story Marriott hotel with a fine dining restaurant, a 500-person ballroom, a spa and several boutiques. Infrastructure work will include new cruise ship docking facilities, a bus station, a pedestrian bridge, an expansion for the autobridge and a new central plant.

Pointe Simon today, a large empty land on the seafront of downtown Fort-de-France:







The building permit posted on site:



Some renders of the tower and the other future buildings at the Pointe Simon:















The tower is to the very left of the picture:


























Mariott Hotel to be built next to the tower:

[brisavoine]

You can watch the interview of the Fort-de-France mayor here. The part where they talk about the Pointe Simon commercial estate complex starts at 11:57 into the video.
Link: http://www.rfo.fr/v4_player_jt.php3?ids=2

You can watch the video until tonight directly by clicking on the link. After tonight, you'll have to select "Ven 29" to watch the video (it should be online for a week or so).

[Sagasu]

Thank you Brisavoine for this thread about Overseas Department of France


There's only one information I have to correct : actually, Fort-de-France's population is not 134,727 but 176,000 ! I don't know why the French National Institute of Statistics (INSEE) put the city of Le Lamentin (40,000 inhabitants) outside of Fort-de-France's urban area when, actually, it is part of it.

Indeed, if you look at the website of the Community of the Urban Area of Martinique's Center ("Communauté d'agglommération du Centre de la Martinique"), they precise that the urban area of FDF is made of FDF, Le Lamentin, Scheolcher and Saint-Joseph :

The cities of Fort-de-France, Le Lamentin, Saint-Joseph and Schœlcher, that make up the central urban area, have a population of 176,000 inhabitants : 99,000 in Fort-de-France, 40,000 in Le Lamentin, 21,000 in Schœlcher and 16,000 in Saint-Joseph.

source : http://www.cacem.org/cms/index.php?id=9

[Minato ku]

I through Fort de France had about 190,000 inhabitants.

[brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Sagasu

There's only one information I have to correct : actually, Fort-de-France's population is not 134,727 but 176,000 ! I don't know why the French National Institute of Statistics (INSEE) put the city of Le Lamentin (40,000 inhabitants) outside of Fort-de-France's urban area when, actually, it is part of it.

Looking at a topographic map, it seems you're actually right! I had never realized that.



I noticed the same problem with Cayenne. INSEE said that the Cayenne urban area is made up only of the communes of Cayenne and Remire-Montjoly, and they excluded the commune of Matoury even though Matoury is really part of the Cayenne urban area when you look at topographic maps and satellite views.

I don't know why they did that. Maybe they'll add Le Lamentin to the Fort-de-France urban area and Matoury to the Cayenne urban area when they redraw the borders of the urban areas, which they should normally do next year when the new results of the census are finally published.

So with Le Lamentin, the Fort-de-France urban area had 170,187 inhabitants at the 1999 census, which would make it the second most populated urban area in overseas France with almost as many inhabitants as the Pointe-à-Pitre - Les Abimes urban area. I wonder whether Ducos could also be added to the Fort-de-France urban area. Ducos looks almost physically linked to Le Lamentin. If Ducos is added (along with Le Saint-Esprit which is physically linked to Ducos according to INSEE), then the Fort-de-France urban area had 193,630 inhabitants at the 1999 census, which was as many inhabitants as the urban areas of Dunkerque, Le Mans, and Caen.

In the future, however, it is the urban areas of Nouméa and Cayenne that should become the most populated urban areas in overseas France, due to the high population growth in New Caledonia and French Guiana, whereas Martinique is experiencing only moderate population growth now.

[Sagasu]

Minato-ku and Brisavoine,

Actually, it is hard to determine precisely what is the size of Fort-de-France's urban area...

Indeed, since the 80's, Martinique is called "city-island" ("île-ville" in French) by geographs since urbanization has spread to much of the island, to the South in particuliar.

But, if we only talk about "urban continuity", the urban area of Martinique's capital stretches from Case-Pilote to Saint-Esprit with a total population of more than 190,000 inhabitants.

Well, that's true that Martinique's population grow slowly now and, indeed, maybe by 2020, Cayenne's urban area will be more populated than Fort-de-France's.