Yvelines

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yvelines

Coat of arms of the Yvelines department
Location

Administration
Department number:	78
Region:	Île-de-France
Prefecture:	Versailles
Subprefectures:	Mantes-la-Jolie Rambouillet Saint-Germain- en-Laye
Arrondissements:	4
Cantons:	39
Communes:	262
President of the General Council:	Pierre Bédier
Statistics
Population	Ranked 8th
-Jan.1, 2006 estimate -March 8, 1999 census	1,398,496 1,354,304
Population density:	612/km²
Land area¹:	2,284 km²

¹ French Land Register data, which exclude estuaries, and lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km².

Yvelines is a French department in the region of Île-de-France.

1 History
2 Geography
3 Demographics
- 3.1 Immigration
4 Tourism
5 Politics of Yvelines
- 5.1 Senators from Yvelines
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] History

Yvelines was created from the western part of the defunct department of Seine-et-Oise on January 1, 1968 in accordance with a law passed on January 10, 1964 and a décret d'application (a decree specifying how a law should be enforced) from February 26, 1965.

It gained the communes of Châteaufort and Toussus-le-Noble from the adjacent department of Essonne in 1969.

[edit] Geography

Yvelines is bordered by the departments of Val-d'Oise on the north, Hauts-de-Seine on the east, Essonne on the southeast, Eure-et-Loir on the southwest, and Eure on the west.

The eastern part of the department, as well as its northern part along the Seine, are part of the Paris metropolitan area, but the rest of the department is rural, much of it covered by the Rambouillet Forest.

Besides Versailles (the prefecture) and the subprefectures of Mantes-la-Jolie, Rambouillet, and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, important cities include Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Poissy, Les Mureaux, Houilles, Plaisir, Sartrouville, Chatou, Le Chesnay, and the new agglomeration community of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines.

Two regional national parks can be found in Yvelines: the parc de la Haute Vallée de Chevreuse and part of the parc du Vexin Français.

Yvelines is home to one of France's best known golf courses, La Tuilerie-Bignon, in the village of Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche.

[edit] Demographics

In French, a man from Yvelines is called Yvelinois (plural Yvelinois); a woman is Yvelinoise (plural Yvelinoises).

[edit] Immigration

Place of birth of residents of Yvelines in 1999
Born in Metropolitan France	Born outside Metropolitan France
85.5%	14.5%
	Born in Overseas France	Born in foreign countries with French citizenship at birth¹	EU-15 immigrants²	Non-EU-15 immigrants
	1.1%	3.0%	4.2%	6.2%

¹This group is made up largely of pieds-noirs from Northwest Africa, followed by former colonial citizens who had French citizenship at birth (such as was often the case for the native elite in French colonies), and to a lesser extent foreign-born children of French expatriates. Note that a foreign country is understood as a country not part of France as of 1999, so a person born for example in 1950 in Algeria, when Algeria was an integral part of France, is nonetheless listed as a person born in a foreign country in French statistics.
² An immigrant is a person born in a foreign country not having French citizenship at birth. Note that an immigrant may have acquired French citizenship since moving to France, but is still considered an immigrant in French statistics. On the other hand, persons born in France with foreign citizenship (the children of immigrants) are not listed as immigrants.