le tout minéral

19:34 Feb 14, 2017 

Thanks for these suggestions. @Nikki this is actually from a summary article, so the rest of the text is not directly related, it just describes various urban planning projects in the city. But you've all given me a lot to go on, thanks!

15:43 Feb 14, 2017 

Try googling it with google.fr set to "français" and with "urbanisme", not "architecture" and you should get plenty of ghits.

15:41 Feb 14, 2017 

As this is about town planning, not social studies, terms such as "concrete jungle", evocative as they are, are not really suitable. When submitting a planning application in the UK, you need to submit hard and soft landscaping plans.

As an example of the problems of balancing hard and soft landscaping, our town council recently improved our post-mod-meets-brutalist cultural centre by installing a green facade. However, a few months later, they concreted over a lawn in front of the building to make a skateboard park. The overall balance of soft and hard landscape has shifted slightly towards hard and the noise levels are (at times) much higher, though not as high as they'd be without the green facade. However, in terms of surface water drainage, the vertical soft landscaping does not in any way compensate for the increased horizontal, impermeable hard landscaping.

15:19 Feb 14, 2017 

15:13 Feb 14, 2017 

Iv'e googled "tout minéral" with "architecture" and it gets a number of various hits, of varying types, but a fair number of this type : http://www.info-chalon.com/articles/saint-remy/2016/05/07/21... Your ST, the idea is to break away from "le tout minéral des quartiers tertiaires classiques". I think you have a little bit of leeway as to how you can render this. It is about doing away with the all-stone and concrete block type environment. I mean, depending on the sort of choices you have made in the surrounding text, it is difficult to make helpful suggestions.

15:09 Feb 14, 2017 

bricks and mortar

14:59 Feb 14, 2017 

To get the ball rolling....