The legendary dimension of the history of the croix-rousse "canuts" (silk mill workers) would make one think that all has been said about this chapter, and that both the canuts and the croix-rousse are indissociable. However, the canuts only make up for an episode in the history of this district. By the end of the 19th century, the silk manufacturers of lyons experienced a slump which, unlike the ones that took place in the past, wasn't easily nor rapidly settled and which caused, in the end, the death of this craftsmanship and its development into a real industry. How did the urban space of the croix-rousse evolve, faced with such a crisis ? the historical process observed here is the decline. The effects of the latter were the disorganization of the socio-professional groups on which the silk business was lying, the depopulation and the ageing of the area, the damaging of a developed site (neglected by local authorities and private investors) and above all the dying out of a certain neighborhood atmosphere and a group osmosis based on social closeness and mutual acquaintance. In losing the silk activity, the croix-rousse slopes lost their labouring identity that used to structure its community. Newly occupied by middle classes, rather inward-looking and with more intimate ways of living, the district was led to an irremediable wane, all the more evidently that in the same time new working class and industrial areas were growing in lyons. The future was elswhere, and the croix-rousse slopes, former economical center of lyons, were fogotten and edged out, as if the historical weigh of the canuts was too heavy to enable the area to be reallocated and assessed again.