The rivers, including the
Rhône, regularly overflowed their banks, leaving behind a swampy area. The first verifiable mention of the village of Vaulx-en-Velin comes from the year 1225. The place was not spared from wars either. In 1628 the plague raged in the village. Many people suffered from malaria - the field name "En Palud" testifies to this. A dike was built between 1863 and 1879 to dry out around 9,000 hectares of land. The Saint Jean Villeurbanne dam, built between 1879 and 1882, protects Vaulx-en-Velin from flooding. At the beginning of the 20th century, Vaulx-en-Velin, which had traditionally focused on agricultural production (wheat, vegetables, and fodder, later sugar beets), underwent a transformation: Industrialization began in 1925 with the founding of SASE (Soie Artificielle du Sud-Est, artificial silk of the southeast), which specialized in converting cellulose into viscose (artificial silk). Up to 3,000 people worked in the textile industry in Vaulx-en-Velin. When the crisis in the textile industry became apparent in 1980 with the closure of the former SASE factory, the town was hit hard by unemployment. The
Hôtel de Ville was completed in 1977. In 1971, the first riots and incidents occurred in a settlement that had been built specifically for
Harkis. In September 1979 the first
Banlieue suburban youth riots in France broke out in the Cité Olivier-de-Serres in Vaulx-en-Velin. One third of the population lives below the poverty line. On 16 December 2022,
a large fire broke out in a seven-storey apartment building, killing ten people, including five children, and injuring 14. ==Population==