Jean-Louis Borloo then Minister Delegate for the City during the launch of the ANRU on November 17, 2003 at the Grand amphitheater of the Sorbonne in Paris (AFP/Archives/FREDERICK FLORIN)
The mid-twenties crisis? Pillar of city policy, the National Agency for Urban Renewal (Anru) celebrates its 20th anniversary on Tuesday in all discretion, a few weeks after historic riots in working-class neighborhoods, where it acts the most.
Flagship instrument wanted by Jean-Louis Borloo (then Minister Delegate for the City under the presidency of Jacques Chirac) to change the face of the old large ensembles, the ANRU was created by the Orientation and Programming Law for the City and the urban renewal of August 1, 2003.
But to mark the occasion, the agency has instead retained the date of February 9, 2024, twenty years after the decree which formalized its creation, with a symposium whose details remain to be defined.
Celebrating the anniversary now would have seemed out of time, a month after the wave of violence, destruction and looting triggered in many cities in France by the death of 17-year-old Nahel, killed in Nanterre by a police officer during a road check.
The Aillaud Towers or Cloud Towers, built by the architect Emile Aillaud (1902-1988) in Nanterre between 1973 and 1981, in Nanterre on November 23, 2017 (AFP/Archives/Lionel BONAVENTURE)
In its June 2023 magazine, published just before these riots, Anru specifically welcomed the future renovation of the Cloud towers, located in the Pablo-Picasso city of Nanterre where the teenager lived.
Designed to respond to the impoverishment of what were then called “sensitive urban areas”, ANRU distinguished itself by its spectacular demolition-reconstruction operations of towers and blocks of buildings, whose images punctuated the newspapers televisions of the 2000s.
For its first program (2004-2020), it committed 12 billion euros in some 600 neighborhoods with 4 million inhabitants.
– Diversity –
But the recent conflagration of working-class neighborhoods has reactivated critics, particularly from the far right, who castigate policies that are too generous. “We are pouring billions into city policy with in reality zero results”, thus argued Marine Le Pen (RN).
Elected officials involved in city politics sweep away these criticisms, assuring that the situation would be much worse without these programs.
Paul Valery, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire in the La Noé district of Chanteloup-les-Vignes in the Yvelines on June 11, 2015 (AFP/Archives/Joël SAGET)
“If there hadn’t been the Anru, would we have waited until 2023 to have riots like that?” Asks Catherine Arenou, various right-wing mayor of Chanteloup-les-Vignes, a popular commune in the Yvelines transformed by urban renewal.
“We must remember the 2000s, neighborhoods where some buildings were in a state of significant disrepair”, abounds the current president of Anru, Catherine Vautrin, highlighting the jobs created and the social policies that accompanied projects.
“Nobody notices it now, but it remains an exceptional device”, assures Catherine Arenou, who praises “an ability to watch the evolution of a territory by integrating it, not exclusively housing, but the quality of life , public facilities, daily quality of life…”
It is however a recurring criticism of Anru, reiterated in mid-June in a report by LFI deputies: not having kept its promises of social diversity.
“Carrying out town planning operations to solve problems is only a small part of a possible solution”, supports the Toulouse deputy LFI François Piquemal. “You can demolish all the towers you want, if you don’t have a common right policy of access to school, to employment, you are not going to improve people’s lives.”
The president of the National Agency for Urban Renewal (ANRU) Catherine Vautrin at the Elysee Palace on May 7, 2022 in Paris (AFP/Archives/Ludovic MARIN)
This mission has not been accomplished, admits Catherine Vautrin herself. “Today, unfortunately, in certain neighborhoods, when someone who had a precarious situation succeeds, his symbol of success is to leave.”
The Insoumis also criticized the ecological impact of housing demolitions and reconstructions, too often chosen, according to them, to the detriment of renovation.
“There is no doctrine of demolishing to demolish,” retorts Catherine Vautrin. The boss of Anru prefers to highlight the “Resilient neighborhoods” program, launched in 2022, which directs 100 million euros towards the greening of renovation operations.
© 2023 AFP
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