In Nantes, the last shipyard closed in 1986 leaving the city in a desperate situation. The cranes, symbolizing the industrial activity, one by one stopped. Unemployment stroked. The question was between turning the page, tearing down the workshops and reinventing a new story or trying to preserve would appear to most of the population, a kind of modern bulky legacy. In the early 2000’s, the revitalization of Nantes’ former industrial area, led to developing a new way thinking. Instead of designing an urban map with major spots and rows of housing, A. Chemetoff thought better to draw an urban landscape where the past could mix with the future. The industrial heritage has been then preserved in two diff erent ways: construction halls have been reshaped preserving the original structure, everything should be reversed. The intangible heritage, meaning worker’s knowledge, has been reinvested in the cultural industry. This way, the image of the city, its brand, moved from industrial to cultural, attracting a new kind of business, mainly high-tech, students, in a new: “art de Vivre” (Art of living).

Od kilku dekad brytyjskie kurorty nadmorskie (w tym Blackpool) przeżywają głęboki kryzys spowodowany przeobrażeniami rynku turystycznego, trendów społecznych i gospodarczych. Sytuacja ta domagała się wprowadzenia przekształceń dla zaadoptowania do nowej sytuacji ekonomicznej, turystycznej oraz kulturowych preferencji odwiedzających. Wyzwaniem dla miasta stało się zdefiniowanie nowej − zdywersyfikowanej i zawężonej do określonego pola działalności i aktywności − oferty turystycznej.

The article undertakes quastion of urban design in a context of urban sprawl linking it to the German debate on suburbanisation, conducted under the slogan of Zwischenstadt – a concept created by Th. Sieverts in 1997. The Ladenburger Kolleg „Zwischenstadt” (LKZ) developed 2002-2006 the interdisciplinary research titled: „Amidst the Edge: Zwischenstadt – towards the qualification of the urbanised landscape” The spatial effects of the dispersion processes were considered to be the manifestation of the creation of a new model of the city. The traditional image of urbanism does not fit its logic. Zwischenstadt (in-beetwen-city) recognized as a phase of the urbanization process, uncoordinated by any imposed urban vision, requires a innovative urban design leitmotives. This new planning tool is necessary to obtain the parameters needed to strengthen internal socio-economic development capabilities. The concept of the efficiency of urban design covered the issue of the character of a city›s image. The morphological studies on a megalopolis structure by Frankfurt a. Main, made a creative use of the Lynch research on the image of the city. Their main goal was to understand the characteristics of the dispersion meant as an urbanized landscape and to determine its susceptibility to the process of improving spatial quality – recognition of the endogenous potentials of generating a Zwischenstadt image.