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The management of the banks of the river Meurthe in Nancy raise a landscape-environment planning issue. Urban local authority programs carrying out environmental, economic and social policies usually foster concerns as to how the landscape may be reappropriated within the living environment. On the banks of the river Meurthe, environmental constraints – mainly floods – are turned into an opportunity to connect the city with the river. Hydraulic requirements and social facility development programs combine and contribute to the emergence of a new continuous landscape based on specific spatial patterns and new uses modelled by these programs. A combination of technical, political and landscape programs produce a different assessment of the Meurthe and of its supposed dangers, allowing for the reappropriation of its banks and riverside neighbourhoods. There is a road down to the river, which brings meaning to the well known “trame verte et bleue” of French urban planning.