What if we didn’t have to stop only at the face suddenly taken by a shopping street? If everything were more complex than the hasty conclusions that one could draw by comparing the signs of a street like that of the Church, in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), with the stores present a few years ago ? Because, indeed, this semi-pedestrian alley, a stone’s throw from the town hall of this city in the inner suburbs of Paris, where many families from the east of the capital settle, has nothing to do with its look of ten years ago.
At Royal, “oriental specialties”with its plastic tables set up outside, succeeded L’Atelier, a bakery where the balls of bread (khorasan, poppy, Kalamata olives) are not cooked at dawn and can be bought with a shortbread with red fruits. A little further, there is the Archi-Boucher, literally an architect who became a butcher at the age of 46, whose window, like an industrial glass roof, has replaced the entrance to the garage of the Church.
We should also mention, instead of the Youth Information Office, La Petite Epicerie, where figs, tomatoes, goat cheese, blood sausages, and perhaps even packets of crisps, come straight from the producer; the fish market and its clams “savages” which succeeded the sound library; “the Québabist craftsman” at the locksmith. Twice a year, parents wait an hour in front of the children’s bookstore to register their child for the book club and the Harry Potter evening.
In this district, the terminus of line 9 of the Paris metro, the real shift took place, six or seven years ago, when La Petite Epicerie opened, the move from Méliès, “largest public art house cinema in Europe”, consecrated the redevelopment of the square, and that the developer Nexity delivered on the remains of the old garage a luxury residence and its quota of social housing. The Biocoop store followed shortly. “Gentrifying! »will denounce some, without giving up their Saturday bakery, butcher, cheesemonger tour.
Concept born in the 1960s
“We are not in the business of erecting drawbridges and portcullises at the entrance to the city. Montreuil is attractive, we must have a reception capacityrespond Gaylord Le Checker, deputy mayor (PCF) in charge of town planning. But we must allow those already there to continue to live there. » He thinks in particular of the young adults of the city of La Noue, always with their parents for lack of finding a studio at a decent price. In the inner eastern suburbs of Paris, the prices of apartments for purchase have risen on average from 4,000 euros per square meter to more than 5,000 euros in five years.
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