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In the Saint-Nicaise district, in the heart of Rouen, the occupants of the Jardins Joyeux are threatened with evacuation this Friday. They have been fighting for six months with the support of local residents against the installation of a building complex that would destroy one of the last green spaces in the city center.
It’s a bit like David’s fight against Goliath, the fight between the old and the new world. On the one hand, a Norman promoter who took possession of a huge piece of land in the city center of Rouen at low cost to build a luxury residence that he will sell at a high price. On the other, environmental associations, heritage defense associations and some residents who are indignant at a project disconnected from the reality of the neighborhood, questions of urban resilience at a time of global warming and who intend to fight for it. to prevent. And in the middle, a town hall headed by the “ecology” gentleman of the campaign of Anne Hidalgo, the socialist Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, a little embarrassed.
We are talking about a small green lung in the heart of the center of Rouen, at a time when the city is trying to “renature” itself. From the outside, you can’t see anything. Just a large and long building at the corner of rue de Joyeuses and Impasse des Flandres: the former Sainte-Marie center, which could accommodate up to 250 young girls from good families until it closed in 2015 . It is located a few meters from a high school which saw Corneille, whose name it took, but also Flaubert and Maupassant, in a popular district, Saint-Nicaise, a stone’s throw from the town hall , filled with centuries-old convents and home to some of the oldest…