Lyon / Main characteristics
The city of Lyon is located in the Rhône Valley in South East France. The town offer a nice environment with various UNESCO World Heritage Sites as “Vieux Lyon”, a medieval area built at the foot of “Fourvière” Hill.
The recent redevelopment of many green spaces on the Rhône banks has made a great transformation to enhance the living conditions. The city is composed of three parts: old medieval quarter, buildings from 18th and 19th century and new architecture of 20th century in characteristic area of “Part-Dieu”. The three public Universities are a resource for a dynamic student population.
With about 500 000 of inhabitants, Lyon is the third city of France and the second in regard to whole the urban area (2.5 million of inhabitants). The Regional Capital of Rhône-Alpes used to be the place of active textile factories and is now a shrine of health, pharmacy and chemical industries. Lyon welcomes 5 competitiveness clusters, including 2 world-class clusters: Life Sciences and Chemical. The city is known to be a European economic hub thank you to well-connected transports.
In 15 years, Lyon has become a very attractive city with high level of income population (25 610 Euros) and also high population density: 2.364 inhab./km². The wealthy city is surrounded by sensitive areas that gather more fragile population as in the 8th district of the town. A special focus of food project points on equal food access to all kind of population in the larger Lyon urban area.