Blue Banana - History

History

The French geographer Roger Brunet, who wished to subdivide Europe into "active" and "passive" spaces, developed the concept of a West European "backbone" in 1989. He made reference to an urban corridor of industry and services stretching from northern England to northern Italy. Brunet did not see it as a new discovery, but as something easily predictable to anyone with "a little bit of intelligence and a feel for spatial properties."

He saw the Blue Banana as the development of historical precedents, e.g. known trade routes, or as the consequence of the accumulation of industrial capital. France, in his view, lost its links to the corridor as a result of its persecution of minorities (viz. the Huguenots) and excessive centralisation in Paris. In his analysis, Brunet artificially disconsidered the French conurbations, which are particularly narrowly concentrated around Paris, in order to persuade French authorities of the necessity of greater integration of business into the centre of Europe.

The name was added by the media: the banana shape was pointed out at a press-conference by Jacques Chérèque, a government minister; the colour was then given to it by an artist at the Nouvel Observateur, in an article by Josette Alia three days later which baptised the banane bleue. —Roger Brunet

It is said that the banana was rendered as blue, because it represented the core of Europe, and the flag of Europe is largely blue. Other sources claim that the colour refers to the clothing of industrial workers ("blue collar").

Its existence is sometimes attributed to the redrawing of the map of Europe after World War II, which led to the creation of a North-South axis (of which the highly-developed infrastructure of the Rhine valley provides an example), while East-West relationships were enfeebled. On the other hand, large centres already existed long before that time (Randstad, the Ruhr, Manchester) so that it was only natural that development would occur in areas that lay between these powerhouses, and that large populations would follow.