Ihe city policy is gradually being emptied of its vitality and is now off the government radar. The interministerial committee on city policy no longer has a predictable meeting date. And the April 4 circular from the Minister Delegate for Cities and Housing [Olivier Klein] to the members of the National Council of Cities as well as the recent announcements by Elisabeth Borne on the hundred days announce only cosmetic changes.
The priority geography will be updated, which the law already provided for, and the city contracts will simply change their name to be called ” 2030 neighborhood commitments », burying in passing the proposals of the Sicart-Vigouroux report commissioned by the Ministry of the City! And all this three years late (“ For an Act II of city policy. Working-class neighborhoods at the heart of our republican pact”, Frédéric Vigouroux, Hélène Zannier, Claude Sicart, National Agency for Territorial Cohesion, April 2022).
The policy of the city has for fifty years, with its limited means, achieved prowess with its elected officials, its associative militants, its professionals. Urban renewal has improved the living environment. However, the deep situation of working-class neighborhoods has not really changed. The social situation has remained the same and social diversity, one of the objectives of urban renewal, is almost non-existent.
Worse, the associative world has crumbled, leaving more room for traffickers, religious people, and among them, sometimes, the most extremists. City policy heals wounds, it does not cure illnesses. The priority neighborhoods are mostly physical, sociological or “ethnic” ghettos to which, in truth, the Republic closes its eyes.
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It is therefore now necessary for the State to change gear and engage in structural policies by letting local actors develop public policies (employment, health, sport, etc.) as close as possible to the field, in conjunction with the prefects. Here is the outline of what a strategy could be.
First, you have to understand. By relaunching the debate, and settling it, on the original statistics. No policy to fight against the discrimination experienced by the populations of the neighborhoods can be exercised if we do not recognize their composition and the specific evils of which they are the victims.
The generalization of the experiment carried out by RésO Villes on the use of data would also make it possible to understand the specific problems of access to employment, services, mobility, health or training (” Data & neighborhoods: the white paper. A look back at three years of experimentation », National Agency for Territorial Cohesion, 2022). This association, which seeks to promote exchanges between actors in urban social development in the Brittany and Pays de la Loire regions, has notably collected extensive data on the distances between home and job offers or on the non-use of complementary health insurance. .
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