Cité de la Plaine

Created close to the Cataroux plant during the period 1925-1929, the Cité de la Plaine is the largest Michelin workers’ housing estate in the Clermont urban area.

The Michelin plant was founded in 1889 by André and his brother Édouard. In 1900 it employed only around one hundred workers and 18,000 in 1924. Driven by a policy of social assistance and hygienics, in 1909 the factory created the Michelin society for staff housing and its low-cost housing programme (HBM). Workers’ housing estates were built between 1910 and 1930 in Clermont-Ferrand, then, after World War II, 50% of new constructions were built in the surrounding municipalities. In 1970 Michelin owned 8,000 residences. 27 Michelin worker’s housing estates still exist today throughout the urban area.

Close to the Cataroux plant, the La Plaine workers’ housing estate spans an area of 45 hectares with an octagonal layout. It is the largest in the urban area. The street names, given by Marie-Thérèse Michelin, Édouard’s wife, illustrate Catholic moral values: rue de la Foi, rue de l’Amitié, rue de la Bienfaisance, rue de la Bonté, rue du Devoir… Rue de la Volonté and rue du Courage are the longest in the housing estate.

The estates were built according to the Taylorism method practised in the plant. The estate is made up of 301 houses: four attached buildings, each with a garden of around 400 sq. m. They were built using simple materials: concrete blocks made from incinerator ash recovered from the plant furnaces, tiles and cement for the floors, oak for the joinery, pine for the floors and cast iron for the gutters and roofing tiles. Each residence features a ground-floor entrance opening up onto the kitchen, a bedroom and a lean-to containing the laundry with shower, WC and cellar; on the first floor are two bedrooms. In the 1950s an additional 235 houses from the cooperative movement, Castor, were added to the estate: self-built houses with the factory providing the plans, the materials at preferential rates and technical supervision. Then in the 1970s, group housing was added.

The estate has two schools and two cooperative shops that no longer exist (SOCAP: Société d’Approvisionnement), the church dedicated to Jesus the Worker and its sports facility, the Leclanché stadium. Commissioned by the city, and even though it came after the construction of the La Plaine estate, the Tournesol Jacques-Magnier swimming pool, on rue Louise-Michel, is in line with this standardised approach to construction with a social purpose (1976).