2

he nature of today’s global economy highlights our

interdependence and the need for much better global

policies.

Inspiring Technovation is pleased to present its report on

transforming the city of Versailles into a hub for

sustainable development by renovating Versailles

Chantiers train station. Our strategy addresses the

relationship between eco-innovation, historical heritage,

entrepreneurship, economic, social progress and global

issues such as climate change.

Inspiring Technovation has helped generating innovative

solutions by analysing, diagnosing and developing

technology options for the benefit of Versailles city and

Versailles Chantiers train station. Their integration,

pathway and governance aspects for our project are also

discussed. We strongly believe that the solutions

presented are synonyms of success, sustainability and

economic growth.

The Versailles we propose will be ready for new local

and global challenges, with a long term commitment to

sustainability. We focused in four key areas to achieve

our vision towards 2050: mobility, sustainability and

utilities, customer experience and multi-pole

infrastructures.

With the publication of this report the reader has the

opportunity to look back at the Versailles of yesterday,

admire its progress, but at the same time to look forward

at what could be done better for the next 40 years.

In this report we also introduce new concepts such as the

circular economy and the idea that economy and ecology

are no longer seen as opposites. It is now recognised by

many authors that the markets of the future are green,

thus embracing eco-innovation and sustainability now

will assure a solid economical growth for the city of

Versailles while being recognised as one of the European

leaders on sustainability and Eco-innovation.

The main objective of this report is to inspire and to

illustrate fresh and innovative approaches to the

challenges that face the city of Versailles and the

Versailles Chantiers train station.

T

Elodie Gonthier (Team leader)

Kevin Ramirez

Sandra Velasco

Krishna Chandran

Anna Aghvanyan

Sirin Hamsho

3

he historical city of Versailles is located in the south

western suburbs of Paris; 17 km away from its centre.

This city attracts more than 6 million tourists every year

thanks to its rich historical heritage, with a magnificent

castle and gardens.

The Inspiring Technovation consultancy presents a

vision for a sustainable Versailles through this report and

a set of technological solutions that fulfil the vision of

transforming the city of Versailles into a hub for

sustainable development by renovating Versailles

Chantiers train station. The train station fails to meet the

needs of the customers in terms of mobility, ambiance,

both inside and outside.

The firm started the project with an extensive analysis

of the existing data (renovation plans, surveys,

presentations, etc.) of Versailles Chantiers and the city

of Versailles in order to build a first diagnosis. A

benchmarking study of technologies was undertaken and

the possible acceptability and economical feasibility

aspects were studied.

The core of the project was dedicated to the analysis

of different clusters included in our vision; we found

solutions for mobility issues, to improve customers’

satisfaction, and the creation of new infrastructures. As a

result, the profound analysis of these clusters led to the

identification and screening of different competitive

technologies that could be adapted overtime to meet the

changes of infrastructure, peoples habits and behaviour.

Through this report Inspiring Technovation depicts

how technologies and the integration of these

technologies in Versailles’ context can be a force in

transforming the Versailles station into a multimodal

transportation and eco-innovative centre for various

businesses and tourist activities. We believe that the

technologies proposed are clearly “market pullers”.

Our firm presents scenarios that clearly support our

vision towards Versailles in 2050, and illustrate the

possible futures, successes and failures.

A Foresight scenario which extrapolated current data

and trends in order to generate the most likely outcomes

is described. A scenario with a backcasting approach is

also presented. This approach starts by setting targets and

works backwards to define the solutions that are needed

in order to achieve such goals instead of looking at the

more likely scenarios. Furthermore, Inspiring

Technovation presents a mobility vision based on

multiple transportation solutions such as pods at a local

scale and tramways at a wider scale, for Versailles Grand

Parc. Landscape modifications are also proposed to

allow a multimodal mobility.

Versailles and Versailles Chantiers train station are

two potential world leaders in sustainability. Thanks to a

progressive and adaptative implementation of

technologies our vision can become true.

T

4

Foreword 2

Executive summary 3

Table of content 4

List of table and figures 5

Introduction 7

Building the project 8

Defining the scope of the project 8

Scenarios and the backcasting method 8

Designing the Versailles of tomorrow 11

The context of Versailles Chantiers train station and Versailles city 11

Project implementation 18

Governance 38

Resiliency 38

Challenges of the project 43

Recommendations 44

List of references 46

Appendices I

5

6

Historically, the increase of railways construction

started during the XIX century, as part of the

development of European States structural framework,

with a main purpose of reducing building costs, and in

terms of duration. But building railway stations was a

real generator of change as it had an impact on

infrastructures and the surrounding environment, often

generating conflicts with the city, partly because it was a

physical barrier due to the fact that a railway station and

its transportation duties are using a lot of space, therefore

impacting the organization of the territory (Conticelli &

Tondelli, 2011).

Indeed, the main objective by building railway and

expending the network was to develop the structure of

the European territory, while land and environment

impact were not an issue that were really questioned. But

now, the global issues have changed, so have the local

issues related to train stations. In fact, what was a

secondary issue or not even an issue has become the

priority, namely the environmental impact of our

activities. Achieving sustainability is the main concern

and an important objective is the reduction of GHG

emissions, particularly CO2 emissions. As transport is the

main source of CO2 emissions nowadays in France,

representing 32% of the total emissions, it is a priority to

promote a shift from individual to public transport.

Moreover, as we said, the railways station, soon after

their implementation, became issues because they were at

the same time representing physical barriers. As a

consequence, we can tackle these two issues, of

environmental impact and place of the train station within

the city, by opening the train station to its surroundings.

In this report, Inspiring Technovation proposes a set

of solutions that are innovative, especially because they

are integrative, as an answer to these issues in terms of

sustainability, taking into account the current situation of

Versailles Chantiers train station, at a local scale with its

functions and at a more important scale, with the context

of its integration to the city of Versailles, while always

dealing with global issues such as global warming and

resources scarcity that are also important to take into

consideration, especially with such projects written in a

long term vision.

7

The work done over the last few months identifying,

assessing, estimating and studying the realities and issues

faced by the city of Versailles and the train station of

Versailles Chantiers has led our team to formulate the

following recommendations:

Global issues

For global issues such as climate change, global

warming, economical downturns and others that might

affect us a whole, there is a potential for a city like

Versailles to become a centre of innovation and a driver

of change, first at a national stage but with the potential

to become a role model at the European level.

Such transformation unfortunately does not come

from free; it first requires a clear motivation from the

local authorities to be an active player in generating

change, and second such motivation needs to be

accompanied by coherent and supportive legislation that

helps young entrepreneurs transform their ideas into

green businesses.

Another area that has to gain strength is the

cooperation between the state, the private sector and the

universities.

There are important opportunities to create synergies

that lead to innovation and new business models, such

interaction and cooperation between the private and

official sectors, are likely to promote the emergence of

solutions that address problems such as climate change

and global warming.

Integrating clean energy systems

The reality of transforming the Versailles train station

into a sustainable hub is such that individual and isolated

actions will not enable the rapid transition in a large scale

in the future. The energy infrastructure on which the

communities depend will therefore need to be adapted

and upgraded to meet the future energy demands. One of

the possible solutions is to develop and integrate clean

energy technologies needed to support demand.

The goals of integrating smart systems (water,

electricity, PV, transportation, gas, heat, EV charging)

through the use of information and communication

technologies (ICT) can promote increased sustainability,

reliability as well as social benefits such cost reduction,

better services and job creation.

Improve mobility

Special emphasis has been given to the mobility of

pedestrians at a local scale around the station. In order to

achieve improvements it is recommended to consider

developments to the main roads (Avenue) of Versailles,

allowing the pedestrians to freely circulate using bicycle

tracks and allowing for example the use of segways to

move comfortably through the city.

8

Reducing carbon emissions by promoting car sharing and

increased parking spaces, for people using their cars to go

to the station and then taking a train to reach their final

destination.

Identifying and promoting best sharing practices in

Versailles and beyond, like bike parking lots, electric

bike renting.

Greater access to mass transportation systems such as

tramways, pods and clean buses from stations to promote

sustainable public transportation.

Access to information

Providing accurate, easily accessible information to

customers by implementing energy saving practices and

innovative technologies such as interactive information

kiosks and smart tickets could play a major role in

customer satisfaction across the station and the city.

Community concept through Multimodal exchange

Promote collaboration between firms and work

collectively in environmental issues and in eco-

innovation projects, also with other stakeholders, like

universities.

Attract businesses in environment and technology sector

through the creation of Eco business parks to make this

model as a sustainable conglomerate of buildings.

APPENDIX 1: Questionnaire for the survey to Versailles Chantiers customers and results

APPENDIX 2: Administrative organization of Versailles (city and agglomeration)

APPENDIX 3: The 5 train stations in Versailles city

APPENDIX 4 – Flow of workers in Versailles city

APPENDICE 5: Projects in the surroundings of Versailles

APPENDIX 6 : Technical sheets (28 pages)

II

Solution : Changing road organization

Category : Mobility

Sub-category : Pedestrian’s mobility

Eco -innovation : organizational

DESCRIPTION

Place:

Implementation in time:

Partners and governance:

Costs :

PLAN OF IMPLEMENTATION

BENCHMARKING

References:

RELATION WITH VERSAILLES CONTEXT: