Avion

Avion
region	Hauts-de-France
Department	Pas-de-Calais
Arrondissement	Lens
Canton	Avion (main town)
Community association	Lens-Liévin
Coordinates	50 ° 25 ′ N , 2 ° 50 ′ E Coordinates: 50 ° 25 ′ N , 2 ° 50 ′ E
height	27-77 m
surface	13.04 km 2
Residents	17,622 (January 1, 2017)
Population density	1,351 inhabitants / km 2
Post Code	62210
INSEE code	62065
Website	www.ville-avion.fr
	; Avion Town Hall

The spoil dump Terril des Pinchonvalles (2003)

Avion is a French municipality with 17,622 inhabitants (at January 1, 2017) in the Pas-de-Calais in the region of Hauts-de-France . The place belongs to the Communauté d'agglomération de Lens-Liévin .

history

In the high Middle Ages, Avion was a small farming village with a windmill and the Saint-Denis church, completed around 1150 (rebuilt after its destruction in 1680). In the early modern period this region, like all of Artois , was part of the Spanish Netherlands (until 1659).

Due to its location in the northern French coal basin , which extends from Valenciennes via Douai and Lens to Bruay-la-Buissière , the Industrial Revolution also had an impact on Avion. Since the early 1870s, when the first slot on the municipal area drilled was the time only about 1,700 residents harboring municipality became a typical contemporary, rapidly growing mining community whose above-ground of town was heavily influenced by this sector ( mining towers , storage and transport facilities, Colonies of mines , spoil heaps, etc.). Two mining companies, the compagnies des mines of Lens and Liévin , were active there. Especially after the First World War , numerous Poles came to this region as miners - not infrequently after a stopover in the Ruhr area . After the Second World War and the liberation of the country from German occupation of coal mining in France and therefore the miners of Lens and Liévin in May 1946 for political and economic reasons was ( Bataille du charbon , dt. "Battle of the coal") nationalized and went into the Houillères Nationales du Bassin Nord-Pas-de-Calais . Around 1960, shortly before the onset of the coal crisis, Avion's population exceeded the 20,000 mark.

With the cessation of coal production (1988), the associated loss of jobs and the necessary structural change , a slow reversal of this growth process began. Mining activities in the early 21st century were reduced to the production of mine gas . The progress of the renaturation of areas, which still point to the former exploitation of coal deposits, is particularly noticeable on the up to 119 meter high terril d'Avion , also called terril des Pinchonvalles ( see illustration on the right) , one of the largest in terms of length and volume European tailings piles. Nowadays it is predominantly forested, is under nature protection and is part of a supra- local green axis .

Population development

1962	1968	1975	1982	1990	1999	2006	2013	2015
20,781	22,422	22,894	21,023	18,534	18,298	17,932	17,876	18,245

Personalities

Jean Wyart (1902-1992), French crystallographer
Théodore Szkudlapski (1935–2006), French football player
Timothée Kolodziejczak (* 1991), French football player

Town twinning

Avion maintains partnerships with the English city of Doncaster , the city of Oelsnitz / Erzgeb. in Germany and with Zgorzelec in Poland.

Web links

Commons : Avion (Pas-de-Calais) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

^ Marion Fontaine: Le Racing Club de Lens et les "Gueules Noires". Essai d'histoire sociale. Les Indes savantes, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-84654-248-7 , p. 105

[1] Marion Fontaine: Le Racing Club de Lens et les "Gueules Noires". Essai d'histoire sociale. Les Indes savantes, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-84654-248-7 , p. 105