Cergy-Pontoise is an agglomeration in France, in the Val d'Oise départment, northwest of Paris on the Oise River. It owes its name to two of the communes that it covers, Cergy and Pontoise.

Population (2003): 183,430

Area is 77.74 km²

Population density: 2,360 hab./km²

Administration

As of 2004, Cergy-Pontoise is a communauté d'agglomération consisting of eleven communes: Cergy, Courdimanche , Éragny, Jouy-le-Moutier, Menucourt , Neuville-sur-Oise , Osny , Pontoise, Puiseux-Pontoise , Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône and Vauréal .

Population

Since the establishment of the new agglomeration, the population has quadrupled over forty years.

History

In the 1960s, faced by the fast development of Paris and its suburbs, it was decided to control and balance it by creating several new cities around Paris.

To the north, the choice was made on the surroundings of Pontoise. The old city was to be integrated in a much larger unit, whose center would be Cergy, at the time not more than a village. From 1965, the establishment of the new city was to be done in several stages:

• April 16, 1969: creation of the publicly-owned "Établissement public d'aménagement" (EPA)
• ? official creation of the new city of Cergy-Pontoise, gathering fifteen communes (the eleven current ones, and Boisemont , Boissy-l' Aillerie , Méry-sur-Oise and Pierrelaye ).
• 1971: creation of the Syndicat communautaire d'aménagement (SCA).
• 1983: the law Rocard amended the new cities.
• 1984: Syndicat d'agglomération nouvelle (SAN) replaces the SCA, four communes left the structure (the four mentioned above)
• December 31, 2002: end of the mission and dissolution of the EPA, following the completion of the new city.
• January 1 , 2004: transformation of the SAN into a communauté d'agglomération.

Sister cities

Cergy-Pontoise is a sister city to the planned cities of Columbia, Maryland, United States and Tres Cantos, Spain, and to Erkrath, Germany

External links

• Site of the communauté d'agglomération