The future Bobigny city centre bears immense responsibility in relation to the greater scale of Bobigny as a whole: the city is made up of disconnected mono-functional districts and lacks a mixed centrality which would constitute a meeting place. In this light, we paid specific attention to the relationship and links between the different districts with the emerging city centre.

By its porosity, its large programmatic mixing and its landscape qualities, the new heart of the city is bound to become the major polarity that Bobigny needs, a space with intense urbanity and an assertive attractiveness.

The re-characterisation of the shopping-centre is a prerequisite for the creation of an attractive city centre for Bobigny; it impacts not only the immediate surroundings of the site, but equally the city as a whole: this site must become the interface between the different districts of the centre, but above all a major pole, immediately identifiable at the exit from the future pole of mobility. As the entrance to Bobigny, it must suggest it as an innovative, lively and metropolitan city.

The new district revolves around a concatenation of places, a succession of public spaces of various sizes and complementary uses: the shopping diagonal, the shaded central square, the landscaped alleyways and the sloping garden. These pedestrian spaces, compounds of successive mineral squares and punctuated by large urban structures, (re)connect the adjacent public spaces, notably the Jean Moulin esplanade and the Yitzhak Rabin – Yasser Arafat square.

Bobigny’s city-centre revitalisation project develops a high housing density, adapted to its current and future accessibility (metro line 5, tram T1, bus station and GPE line 15) and the commercial polarity it constitutes. This density is structured through seven islets, whose commercial foundation and the implantations of the prominent developments allows the offering of large suspended gardens. The district, richly diverse, develops nearly 103,000 m² of flooring space including more than 1,000 housing units, a student residence, nearly 14,000 m² of shops / services, offices and facilities.