Laurent Théry
General Manager of SAMOA, Nantes Metropole, France

Speaker Bio:

Laurent Théry was born in France in 1949. He graduated in Economics and Geography. He’s married and father of two children.

To start with, he ran into urban issues for ten years in various study agencies and then dedicated himself to the development of the two cities of the French Atlantic metropolis: Nantes and Saint-Nazaire.

As of 1983, he developed, with the Mayor of Saint-Nazaire Joel Batteux, a global perspective for the development of the City experiencing at the time a major economic and social crisis. For this purpose, he both settled an agency dedicated to all aspects of development and managed the City council.

From 1995 to 2003, he managed and developed the Nantes Conurbation institution, presided over by Jean Marc Ayrault, Mayor of Nantes and member of French parliament. By the end of 2003, he decided to found a new public company, SAMOA, entrusted with studying and performing all operations and actions related to the global “Ile de Nantes” land-use planning program and also with elaborating a strategy for the development of the Nantes Saint-Nazaire metropolis, a large territory organized along the Loire Estuary.

Besides, he presides over since 2007 Club Ville Aménagement, an association that gathers around thirty land planning bodies in charge with political authority of complex urban operations and also State representatives dealing with land planning matters. He’s also President of the supporting association for the Urban Projects forum, created by Jean Audoin.