Angers will host the first connected items city

Angers accueillera dans les mois qui viennent la première "cité de l'objet connectés", dont le marché, montres, pèse-personne, domotique, est à l'aube d'un vaste développement. Le choix de la ville est le fruit d'une décision gouvernementale, mais surtout d'une long travail de préparation locale effectué par les industriels de la filière au premier rang desquels le groupe Angevin Eolane. 

After months and even years of bad economic years, has Angers at last lifted its head? Maybe with the announcement, by the ministry of economy, Arnaud Montebourg on June 18th, that Angers had been choosen to be the place where the first French connected items city will take place. That decision is part of a plan included in a series of 34 others which aims at the re-industrialization of the country.

Angers would become the French bridgehead in connected items in a country which itself strives after the first rand in the world in that field. Remote controlled houses, electronic tags or mobile phones giving informations about the healt of his or her user are some of the devices Angers would become the first France frontwindow. In fact, the choice of Angers was made easy for the government given that local Angers companies led by Eolane, already head of the Loire Electronic Applications Valley community, had for months worked with the national decision-makers of that sector.


The future city will be set up on the Valéo site in the Orgemont district. According to a three years plan, 15 millions euros will be invested on a 16,000 m2 area which wil include offices, tools for prototypes, an industrial innovation showroom and all the necessary materials to the manufacture at large scale of finished products. Fifty persons would, in a first period, work on the scheme. If the stakes are national (the attractiveness of the country, the start up stimulation), there are also local. Angers, whose mayor, Christophe Béchu, recently found regrattable it can't be identified on a map, could strenghten its fame and activate its growth as employment.