About Toulouse

Toulouse - The Pink City.

Toulouse (Tolosa in Occitan) is a city in southwest of France on the banks of the Garonne River, half-way between the Atlantic Ocen and the Mediterranean Sea. With a population of 1.05 million inhabitants in 2004, the Toulouse metropolitan area is the second largest in southern France and one of the fastest growing in Europe.

Toulouse, alos the fourth largest city in France after Paris. It is not exactly a city, but called a town ("ville" in french). The name pink city comes from the fact that all the buildings are made of red briks and the roofs also of red colour. So from an ariel view the city appeard pink.

An ariel view of the city

The cost of living in Toulouse is not much when compared to the main metropolitain cities of France. Calm place to live in and lot of opportunities. A rapid developement of Toulouse took place mainly due to the Aerospace Industry. It is the home base of European Aerospace Industry and hosts the headquartes of AirBus. A lot of job opportunities in every aspect of industry with the aerospace industry dominating though.

There are a lot of famous schools like SUPAERO, ENST, Ranguiel University, CNRS, INSA etc. With space establishments like CNES (space research for france), Onera (studies on environmental aspects), Astrium and Alcate Space, it has dominated the space studies also.

Coming to transportation, In addition to an extensive bus system, Toulouse has a modern metro system. The VAL (Véhicule Automatique Léger) metro system is made up of driverless (automatic) rubber-tired trams. The existing line A runs for 12.5km. It was recently extended and now runs from Balma-Gramont to Basso Cambo. The new line B is planned to open in 2006 will add 20 stations and will intersect line A at Jean Jaurès.

A view of the Bus A View of the Metro


The town center is called capitol. Where ever one wishes to go by bus, the main point of interchange is capitol. All the buses have an intersection at capitol and esquirol and go to the outskirts of the city. The nearest town is blagnac. Both these towns together have and airport. The most costliest means of transoport is the taxis of toulouse. So none other than business people use taxis at toulouse. People prefer to travel by bus or metro.

Capitol


There is a man made canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea. This canal extends through out the city. In other words it is used as a source of path finder. So when people get confused with the routes, they simply take the road along the canal and reach the destination with ease.

Thats all about toulouse. Will be out with some more topics like this.