VSIt should have been a great rehabilitation operation. In Roubaix, demolitions in the Alma-Gare district are met with determined protest from residents and heritage defenders. No argument made available to the public justifies such a brutal measure: the destruction of 486 homes without real consultation.
Trapped in the rehousing process, without the ability to intervene on the agenda or on the choices, the residents are stunned, as are the town planners, architects and sociologists… This project financed by the National Agency for Urban Renovation (ANRU ) is implemented by the city of Roubaix, the European Metropolis of Lille and social landlords.
Alma-Gare is not just any neighborhood, it has been, for more than forty years, a reference in participatory urban planning and urban co-production. It was built in the 1980s following a long mobilization of residents, supported by the State as part of the construction plan.
A collective intangible heritage
This “urban struggle” emblematic has given birth to a number of innovations: popular town planning workshop, intergenerational facilities, open school, first neighborhood management in France. Award-winning many times, this operation remains a reference in the teaching of architects and urban planners. The architectural firms Ausia, Gilles Neveux and François and Marie Delhay have built spacious, bright, double-access housing there.
The balconies or terraces of the red brick buildings overlook the hearts of green, peaceful, human-sized islets. Close to the station, the metro and the future tramway, Alma is neither eccentric nor isolated: it occupies a strategic position… This neighborhood has its problems: insecurity, drugs. But who can believe that demolishing buildings will solve them?
A large part of the inhabitants were relocated, many left with regret. Today there remain around a hundred families determined to refuse to be evicted. A collective of residents “No to the demolition of Alma-Gare” makes the voices of those who are attached to these beautiful homes heard. It doesn’t matter that these beautifully crafted buildings can live for another fifty years, at Alma, it is not just walls that we are going to destroy but a collective intangible heritage.
A destruction plan without any carbon footprint carried out
In reality, apart from a concern for social diversity, the upcoming project in this neighborhood is incomprehensible. It is all the more difficult to get through as the reduced consultation has boiled down to urban management disorders, rehousing, sometimes by videoconference… However, the housing crisis is exacerbating: access to property is blocked , social landlords are struggling to build, queues for social housing are getting longer. And the reconstitution of the supply elsewhere than in Roubaix, to compensate for the demolitions, does not create new housing.
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