In the Parisian metropolis, the motorway has been synonymous successively with freedom, ease and fluidity, then nuisance, congestion and saturation. To revitalise Eastern Paris, to transform this ribbon into a catalyst for development, to enable the connections between different modes of life, an environment and structuring thoroughfare, realised through the re-conquest of the A4: the infrastructure of tomorrow will be less frozen in its uses and less defined in its limits than the traditional motorway.

The diagnosis leads to five scenarios that propose as many readings of the territory. The first is marked by a return to nature in the town, near Paris, which benefits from the presence of the Seine and Marne rivers and the Forest of Vincennes. The stretch shared with the A86 is a landscaped point of strategic contact between the motorway’s viaduct and the alluvial forest below. The third reading is orientated by the ‘great bend’ of the A4, from Nogent to Champs-sur-Marne: it concentrates a series of projects (planning, facilities, commercial and university schemes) and poses the major question on the pooling of new forms of public transport. Further towards the east, the section shared with the A104 is an essential logistic and ecological point of contact between the densely-agglomerated town the more diffuse satellite town. The final reading is based on the border motorway, between inhabited areas and forested hills.