| Centre town, administrations, commerces, port. | |
| Résidential and commercial décentralised | |
| Education, research, administration | |
| Industrial & port. | |
| Natural area, protected | |
| Unurbanized | |
| Military |
Noumea was founded in 1854 by Tardy de Montravel under the name of Port de France. After exploring Baie St. Vincent 30 km further North, he picked-up this site, a peninsula in the Southern end of New Caledonia (Grande-Terre), for its well sheltered deep water harbor.
The name Port de France was abandoned in 1866.
Noumea has always been before all a port. Its through it that all goods imported in or exported from New Caledonia are transiting.
Noumea has 130 000 inhabitants and perhaps more.
More than 80 000 people are established in the peninsula 70% urbanized .
The peninsula area as measured in 1996 is 5092 ha.
The residential areas are in the central and southern parts. Industrial areas are located in the Ducos peninsula and in the Doniambo (SLN)-new port area which are established on the smelter slag reclaimed land. Ducos peninsula is a hilly site with numerous coves. It would have been better suited for residential than industrial, the latter requiring generally on flat lands. To the contrary the flat land of the Koutio area in the North are devoted to residential and commercial.
Nou island is now linked to the peninsula but is not yet much urbanized. A small part is occupied by the University and a technical college.
Protected natural areas are not many. Only the western part of the Ouen-Toro
hill in the South has such a status. It is one of the last remaining zones
of dry forest in the island.
Mangroves
Noumea peninsula was a mangrove territory. They progressively vanish under landfill or died from pollution and lack of sea water renewal in areas where infrastructure works limit water exchange with the lagoon. About 1/4 of the mangrove has been destroyed since 1960 and 200 ha of other coastal wet lands have vanished due to urban developments (Ministère de l'Ecolgie, Etat de milieux en Nouvelle Calédonie, 2004)
For the old people in New Caledonia mangroves were infamous as being mosquitos lands although they liked catching crabs in them. It is only now that the mangrove ecological benefits and their beauty are getting recognized. However the local governments are is still not very keen of protecting them and infrastructures works keep destroying them.
Reclaimed lands
In this almost empty land of New Caledonia, Noumea has been paradoxically always in need of creating new space or to shape it according to needs by reclaiming lands on lagoon and mangrove. The works are named today "endigages" by the public developers. Slag has been produced in an ever growing and too large quantity by the SLN nickel smelter and provides the main filling material.
Reclamation started in 1857 because town planning as conceived by Paul Coffyn, was a regular right angle pattern of streets which could not fit with the hilly landscape of the place. It made it necessary to flatten a low hill named "butte Conneau" and to fill the mangrove which was sheltered by this hill (it is now "Place des cocotiers", and the Western part of "Quartier Latin"). The largest reclaimed areas are around the SLN Doniambo plant and are entirely filled with the plant slag. The "Rivière Salée" area, the causeway between Nou island and the peninsula (port extension) and the backwaters of Baie de la Moselle ("hôtel de la Province" and new market site) are all more or less recently reclaimed areas. With modern equipment, filling wet lands is accelerating . Large reclamation are done in many places for new roads constructions. In the Boulari bay a new highway has been constructed in the lagoon.