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These hills, which are formed of limestone conglomerates and partly covered by a thin veneer of glacial deposits, can be described essentially based on their urbanisation, starting with the creation of the new town of Isle d'Abeau as part of urban policy in the 1960s. It is served by a major system of roads: the A 43 Lyon-Chambéry and Lyon-Grenoble motorway and the N 85 national highway.

Lyon's major suburbs spread out over two or three kilometres on either side of these roads. But once past this dense urbanisation, there are landscapes of the "belle campagne" where the motifs of the agrarian trilogy alternate: crops, mainly grains, meadows and woodlands. This is a mosaic of plots of land that sweep into the distance, sometimes crossing and converging on a village, as at La Grande Forêt. A significant level of agricultural mechanisation makes possible large open continuities that facilitate the legibility of the landscape. Nevertheless, this mechanisation also tends to undermine the accessibility of the landscape. It has sometimes led to eliminating roads so that it is now difficult to reach some noteworthy scenic points, for example the viewpoint from the dome between the Crachier and Chèzeneuve, or the view from Eparres over the Agny stream.

Residential construction is grouped around the villages, leaving agriculture with a maximum of space on the plateau. On the other hand, the small valleys, with their streams and hills, are very sensitive to any form of urbanisation. At Clos de la Barre near Meyrié, a subdivision was built around a circular road system, and, as time passed, it has come to resemble a village spread out around the chateau. In contrast, to the east of Meyrié, at Nivolas-Vermelle, the valley has been occupied and the river marginalised by linear urbanisation along N 85. Homes and companies have sprung up between the road and the riverside, which is now excluded from the landscape.