Grandstand. The pitiful call to the rescue of a well-known brand of pressure washers hardly hides the sidereal vacuum that surrounds the so-called “neighbourhoods” issue in this election campaign. The citizen-voter is, however, far from being insensitive to the accentuation of the scourges that have accompanied suburban ghettoization: decline in diversity, school failure, unemployment, impoverishment, trafficking of all kinds, communitarianism, incivility, violence, rejection of institutions, etc
The suburban ghettos took sixty years to be built as we know them, driven by the complex combination of spontaneous forces such as the rejection of the different other and the inclination to regroup with their fellows, and urban planning choices that are at best complacent. with regard to these self-organizing forces, at worst knowingly amplifying them. If undoing these ghettos can take so long, we will have to start one day, unless we consider with resignation that this is pure utopia or postpone the work to future generations. But, ultimately, political resignation and cowardice can only contribute slowly but surely to the advent of an extremely segregated society, resembling that of Green Sunthe famous dystopia of Harry Harrison [Presses de la Cité, 1974]. The welcome given in 2018 by our current President of the Republic to Jean-Louis Borloo’s report on the Living together, living the Republic as a whole, for national reconciliation [il l’a récusé] Was it resignation or cowardice? It is true that ambitious initiatives, such as the National Program for Urban Renewal, launched in 2003 by the same Jean-Louis Borloo [alors ministre délégué à la ville]had virtually no impact on population concentrations.
Change gear
It is becoming urgent to change gear through a proactive city policy. This voluntarism has nothing to do with the right-wing and far-right tendencies to clean things up, which are more reminiscent of the sinister “clearers” of Green Sun. The voluntarism in question here calls for political courage, because it is based on a value that is incompatible with clientelism: abnegation. One cannot undertake to undo the ghettos without displeasing or accepting the frustration, for a councilor, of not being able to observe the results of his action during his term of office. The spontaneity of segregationist tendencies calls for constraining the distribution of the different socio-economic categories within the metropolises. For example, by duplicating at the intra-urban level the principle of the law relating to Solidarity and urban renewal (SRU), which obliges municipalities to have 25% of social housing. If the incentive arsenal of the SRU is based on fines for recalcitrant municipalities, that of the metropolises would consist of playing by district on local taxation. Another measure conducive to social diversity would be to unify the rent per square meter of social housing throughout a metropolis.
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