French planners have fretted for decades about the lopsided development of the Ile de France region around Paris.

To the west of the capital lies the 'golden crescent' of commercial and prosperous residential real estate, including the modern office blocks of La De{'}fense, beloved by property developers and investors. To the east, there is a mix of cheaper housing and open countryside.

Over the past decade, however, the 1992 opening of the Euro Disney theme park - adjoining Val d'Europe - has begun to shift the balance eastwards. Val d'Europe itself, where a dozen cranes are now at work, is beginning to take shape. The first residents have moved in.

The new town, says Dominique Cocquet, Euro Disney deputy managing director in charge of development, 'is a way of realising an aim that has been around for dozens of years - to put more emphasis on the eastern side of the Ile de France'.

Val d'Europe is largely the fruit of a 1987 agreement between Disney and the local authorities to develop an urban area of 2,000ha over 30 years.

Disney brings in the tourists - it hopes to draw 16m to 17m visitors a year following the opening of the additional attraction of Walt Disney Studios - and negotiates with financial partners to develop office space, housing and commercial property in addition to hotels and other tourist facilities.

The state, for its part, provides infrastructure and vital services; the RER train station, linking the town to central Paris, opened last year.

Mr Cocquet says Euro Disney's role is as 'a catalyst for development, via the locomotive of the tourist destination'. Val d'Europe, he believes, has arisen from the combined desires of Disney to implant itself in Europe and of the French authorities to develop the Marne valley.

'I also think the interaction between a private company like us and the local authorities opens a new era of urbanisation,' Mr Cocquet says.

A total of {XEU}6bn has already been invested in the area, mostly for the Euro Disney attractions, but increasingly for property developments either unrelated or only indirectly linked to tourism.

Val d'Europe has tripled the number of its inhabitants since 1992 to nearly 20,000, a number that is expected to rise to 40,000 over the next 15 years. The employment figures and forecasts are similar, with many people commuting into the town to work.

Euro Disney accounts for 12,500 of the jobs, but other developments are under way.

Arlington Securities of the UK is developing a 600,000 sq m business park next to the A4 motorway. Two years ago, a large shopping centre - also, confusingly, known as Val d'Europe - opened in the new town, with Kle{'}pierre, the property arm of the BNP Paribas bank, as its largest investor. There are around 800 students attending the new branch of a local university.

Of the 2,000ha earmarked for development, about 800ha have been built upon as the end approaches of the second phase of Val d'Europe. Euro Disney and its partners have begun negotiations for the next phase, which is expected to include a 30,000 to 40,000 sq m conference centre.

A feature of the town is its conservative architecture. Mindful of the excesses of the 1960s, which produced stark buildings more pleasing to architects than their inhabitants, the developers of Val d'Europe have looked as much to the 19th century as to the 21st for inspiration.

In the town centre, the buildings recall the imposing but not overbearing Haussmann-era structures of Paris. In the suburbs, houses and blocks of flats blend almost seamlessly into the rural style of the existing Ile de France villages.

Even the design of the shopping centre, notwithstanding the vast supermarket signs, was inspired by the glass and steel constructions of Gustave Eiffel and his contemporaries.

The approach seems to work. Val d'Europe, for all the construction work, is starting to take on the aspect of a normal French town - so far without the graffiti.

Financial Times