We continue our ‘Tour de France’ in the second series of major construction works and visit, among others, the largest European ‘techno pole’ – Sophia Antipolis – in the South of France, an ambitious project aiming to become “the Florence of the 21st century”.
Another city – American this time –was newly constructed near Paris – Disneyland ® Paris, Mickey’s dream city.
Strasburg as well has done major works when the tramway was built in the middle of the 1990s. And yet, the plans triggered a bitter debate, because shop owners feared that their clients would desert a city centre that offered less parking spaces “The city centre will die…” they claimed. And today? You’ll be hard pushed to find anyone still complaining about the tram.
What if great heritage sites, that are expensive to maintain, could also bring a lot of hard cash? It was this idea that prompted the regional council of the Gard region to decide in 1985 to improve the site around the Pont du Gard, the famous Roman aqueduct bridge.
And further north, at the opposite end of the country, 33 kilometers separate France from England... and make Franco-British relations so…special. Has the Channel Tunnel been able to bring the two countries closer together?

The episodes:
• Sophia Antipolis: High-Tech Utopia
(eps. 1/ Nicolas Frank)
• The Tram of Strasbourg: A Desire Named Streetcar (eps. 2/ Camille Juza)
• Disneyland ® Paris: Mickey’s Dream City
(eps. 3/ Marc Ball) - video on line IN FRENCH
• Channel Tunnel: Twenty Billions Under the Seas
(eps. 4/ Etienne de Clerck) - video on line IN FRENCH
• Pont du Gard: The Bridge That Lays Golden Eggs
(eps. 5/ Eve Minault) - video on line IN FRENCH
• The Tignes Dam: Tignes, Energy Drowning in Water (eps. 6/ Camille Juza)

Online for viewing (French version only) :
- Disneyland
- Channel Tunnel
- Pont du Gard