The Mission Racine: Inventing a Riviera

The 1960s brought radical transformation to the Languedoc coast through the Mission Racine, named after the urban planner charged with developing mass tourism infrastructure. This ambitious project aimed to capture tourist revenue flowing to Spain while relieving pressure on the overcrowded Côte d'Azur. New resort towns—La Grande-Motte, Cap d'Agde, Port Leucate—rose from mosquito-infested swamps, their modernist architecture shocking traditionalists but offering affordable Mediterranean holidays to millions.

La Grande-Motte, the mission's most distinctive creation, features pyramidal apartment buildings inspired by pre-Columbian architecture. Designer Jean Balladur envisioned a city where every apartment enjoyed sun and sea views, where pedestrians took priority over cars, where architecture created its own landscape in the absence of natural features. Initially ridiculed as "concrete pyramids," La Grande-Motte has aged into appreciation, its buildings now protected as architectural heritage, their bold forms softened by mature plantings.

The transformation required massive engineering: draining marshes, controlling mosquitoes, building marinas, and creating beaches where none existed naturally. The environmental cost was significant—wetlands destroyed, natural systems disrupted—but the economic benefits transformed a impoverished region. Today's challenge involves retrofitting these resorts for environmental sustainability while maintaining their accessibility to the middle-class families for whom they were built.