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This document, which provides additional material to the EURICUR report, explores the various possible areas for developing the health sector by considering Lyon's assets in this domain. It thereby constitutes a work and presentation tool as regards drawing up a health strategy for Lyon.
Lyon has been involved with Eurocities right from their very beginning, and has always been an active participant in the decisions made by the Economic Development Commission. The initiative taken by Munich - identifying the driving sectors in major European cities - was of particular interest to us. The initial results showing the dynamic power that cities undertaking major action can envisage in the fields of : clairly confirmed our own conclusions on the matter. This is why within the framework of the EDURC Commission, we set in motion a special plan of action concerning Urban Tourism - which will be completed in Lyon in a few weeks' time. But at the same time we were interested in developing further action on the main driving sectors, as this obviously linked up with the steps we were already taking to work out a second urban research and technology centre action plan in the Lyon Region. A sector cannot really be called a driving force unless it possesses all the necessary elements. This naturally involves entrepreneurs, but trainers, researchers and various intermediaries are also vital. In May 1998, GREATER LYON (Lyon's urban community) initiated this second "Research and Technology Centre action plan", which, together with an overall plan for encouraging development-generating relationships, targets health and biotechnology in particular among the driving sectors. In addition, Lyon has been selected to pilot regional development in the bio-industries. It was therefore a foregone conclusion that this would be the area chosen for study in connection with the operating conditions of a cluster, as laid down by the EURICUR team. After giving you a general overview about Lyon, I shall go into the development potential of the urban regions in the health domain. I shall then describe the development strategy we are implementing, and lastly I shall give details of several major projects being undertaken to strengthen this cluster and give it a distinctive character in the context of the European Eurocities.
Lyon is located in the south east of France in the Rhone-Alpes region, which has a population of 5.4 million and covers an area the size of the Netherlands. As the third millennium approaches, the Lyon region has an extraordinary opportunity to realise its ambitions. It has numerous assets: its population (1.5 million inhabitants in 1 central urban zone, 2.5 million in the surrounding urban area), its university (102,000 students), its geographical position (on a major European pathway leading to the Mediterranean), its strength in the hospital, industrial and service sectors, its dynamic intellectual life, and its tradition as both market place and finance centre. It is also a city which is open to the world. Nor should we forget its quality of life (UNESCO has listed the city centre on the W orld Heritage List) and its image as a residential city shored up by a highly active urban development policy. Lyon has enviable potential :
GREATER LYON stands as one of the only scientific, economic and cultural centres of attraction that could well become a credible alternative to Paris. Its aim is to attract the best schools, universities and research centres so as to develop a sizeable number of expertise poles at the very highest level, in both the priyate and public sectors. Among these poles, three - soon to be four - are on their way to becoming urban high-tech centres in their own right: positive powerhouses for GREATER LYON.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Lyon has a number of very special assets where health and biology are concerned. Lyon is recognised as one of the main European cities in the health sector, not only in historical terms, with its founding of one of the first hospitals in Europe (the Hotel Dieu), but also because of its university, which today trains around 3,500 post-graduate students in sciences and health, and its International Cancer Research Centre (over 200 researchers from 16 different countries). A large number of well-known figures in the medical world, and more widely in the realm of biology, come from Lyon and have practised their skills in very different domains:
In recent years, Lyon has been the setting for a number of "firsts" :
The health sector in Lyon has relied for over a century on its advanced industrial companies and teaching hospital complex, and it constitutes today a complete network: industries and service providers, hospitals, basic and advanced training, research and public bodies.
It is true that one can hold a somewhat restricted view of this sector, if human health alone is taken into account, but as soon as one considers the " cluster" type approach, meaning a network of related activities, the connections between human health, animal health and even agrochemicals become clear. there are numerous links - from a biological point of view, of course, and certainly as regards , biotechnological processes, but also related to food safety. We may thus consider a three-fold domain consisting of human, animal and plant health. |
