Greater Geneva – Le Grand Genève

Greater Geneva (le Grand Genève) is a territorial cooperation project which aims at building a cross-border urban agglomeration of nearly one million inhabitants including the Swiss canton of Geneva and the district of Nyon together with 120 French border municipalities (212 municipalities in total). The exceptional nature of this cross-border cooperation derives from its peculiar geographical context and the ambition of the project. Enclosed within narrow territorial limits conferring to the city-state the status of quasi-enclave, Geneva has for a long time cultivated its development through its relationship with the wider world. In doing so, the city-state has tended to neglect its connections with its hinterland. From the 1970s, the growth of international and financial activities in Geneva combined with a control of its urbanization limiting the construction of housing induced an anarchic suburbanization of the neighbouring French territories. As a result, the intensification of cross-border daily labour flows engendered the formation of a metropolitan area functionally integrated but politically fragmented.

The first cooperation initiative triggered by this mismatch was the financial compensation agreement signed in 1973 between Paris and Bern. This initiative followed the financial requests of French border municipalities to meet the costs of suburbanization induced by Geneva’s economic growth. A year later, the Franco-Genevan Regional Committee (Comité Régional Franco-Genevois) representing the French state, the departments of Ain and Haute-Savoie, and the canton of Geneva established permanent commissions on several cross-border issues. However, progress was slow and it is paradoxically the refusal...