Bordeaux Report

B O R D E AU X REPORT

B o r d e au x R epo r t is a proj ec t o f Co h a b itatio n S t r at eg i es (Lucia Ba b in a , Guiller m o D elga d o C a s ta n eda , Em ilia n o Ga n d o lfi, C a r los Ga rcia-Sa n ch o, Ga b riel a R en d o n, M igu el Ro b les-D u r á n) in co ll a b o r atio n wit h Flo ria n e A r rij u ria M in a b er ry, Fa n n y Liata r d, A n n e- Cécile Pa r ed es, Em m a n u elle Ro ussilh es-Po uch e t.

Diag r a m s pro d uced by Guiller m o D elga d o C a s ta n eda , C a r los Ga rcía-Sa n ch o, M igu el Ro b les-D u r á n L ayou t d esig n by Civic cit y Da rius Go n d o r & Im k e Plin ta Ph otos by A n n e- Cécile Pa r ed es, Civic cit y (Da rius Go n d o r, Im k e Plin ta ) B o r d e au x R epo r t is pa rt o f E v en to 201 1.

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I N T RO DUC TI O N: B O R D E AU X R ESE A RCH PROJ EC T

By MIGU E L RO B LE S-D U R Á N

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By Fa n n y LiaTA R D, A N N E-CÉCILE PA R ED E S, C A R LOS GA RCÍA-SA N CH O

I N t ro duc tio n to t h e t er r ito ry

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U R BA N CO M PO N EN T S P 33

L A VI LLE D E PI ER R E

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T H E CIT Y O F PR IO R ITI ES

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T H E PROJ EC T ED CIT Y P 53 T H E I N S T ER TITIA L CIT Y P 59

G R AN D PARC

By EM m A N U ELLE PO U CH E T

I N t ro duc tio n to t h e t er r ito ry

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U R BA N FO R M: OW N ER SH I P A N D M A N AG EM EN T

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SO CIA L R EL ATIO N S P 92 E V ERY DAY LI FE P 101 M EN TA L CO N CEP TIO N S P 115

SAI N T M ICH EL

By F LO RIA N E A R RIJ U RIA min a b er ry

I N t ro duc tio n to t h e t er r ito ry

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SO CIA L R EL ATIO N S P 141

M E A N S O F ECO N O M IC E XCH A N G E A N D PRO DUC TIO N

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E V ERY DAY LI FE P 163 M EN TA L CO N CEP TIO N S P 171

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B O R D E AU X RESEARCH P R OJ EC T Co h a b i tat i o n S t r at eg i e s i s a co o p e r at i v e t h at fo c u s e s o n conditions of socio-spatial exclusion within the contemporary cit y and that at tempts to overcome the traditional bifurcation of planning and development by bringing together architecture a n d r a d i c a l u r ba n d e s i g n w i t h e x p e r t s f r o m p r o f e s s i o n a l , ac a d e m i c , a n d a r t i s t i c wo r ld s t h at e n g ag e i n t h e ci t y. T h e research project we present to you is orientated towards the possibilities to understand and address the parallel economies, a lt er n ativ e co h a b itatio n m o d els a n d so cia l r el atio n s i n t h e q ua r t i er s o f Sa i n t M i ch el a n d G r a n d Pa r c , b ot h v u ln er a b le an d seg r egated n eig h bo r h oods in th e lef t ban k o f Bor de aux, that we believe are exemplary urban case studies that reflect the socio-spatial casualties of the French neoliberal trend of u r ba n iz at i o n. T h e ov er a ll ai m o f t h i s r ese a rch i s to u n it e a cr itique o f po litic al eco n o m y wit h cr itic al m e ta-di sci pli nary analyses towards interventions into the contemporary spatial dynamics of Bordeaux.

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The Research’s Problematic In Western Europe

The neoliberal restructure that the world has gone through from the mid 1970s onward has driving multidimensional transformations in cities affecting spaces and people unevenly from neighborhoods to city-regions.

Central to this is the de-industrialization of developed countries and post-industrialization in developing ones starting in 1970s, and therefore, the boom of the service and knowledge-creative industry in the north along the raising of cheap labor in the south in the following decades. Such economic shifts besides the massive  migration from one hemisphere to another, have stimulated a radical change in urban dynamics and form in every place, scale and instance. Nonetheless, the reconfiguration of production, consumption, specialization, control and management of cities under a global economic system has been associated with a profit-based urbanization and has forgotten about people. Urban restructuring  has been the materialization of the economic inequalities stimulated by the new economic order and its neoliberal strategies of spatial organization which along state policy biased approaches have worsened the social and spatial disparity of Western European cities in the last three decades. Urban politics have allowed the intensification of a dominant urbanization based in privatization, commodification, entrepreneurship, competitiveness and beautification. Endorsing the fact that cities, as Harvey1 addressed 30 years ago, are founded on the exploitation of the many by the few.

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Due to urban restructuring many low-income inner city districts around Western Europe have emerged, reproduced and declined in the last decades.

Having barely or no means of investment and attention, the physical, social and economic shifts of those areas have been uncontested sytimulating a progressive urban decay; housing and public space degradation, urban and social exclusion, crime and unemployment. Nonetheless the intensification of  impoverished living conditions, insecurity and economic decline have set currently as a priority in the agenda of federal policies addressing housing and urban development and renewal in western Europe. But how the latest politics managing socio-spatial exclusion in disadvantaged districts have been addressed and in which way they differ form former ones?

Low-income neighborhoods have been destroyed (slums), and reconstructed (massive housing) in the course of the last century by bureaucratic policies of development and planning. Most of the times reaching housing requirements (quantity) but failing to fulfill people needs (quality), collective urban demands and spatial and social integration. Despite the fact that a series of reforms and planning approaches have been conceptualized with egalitarian ideologies, differentiation between low-income districts and the rest of the city has been present and growing provoking social polarization and dissent between certain groups. Alienation, stigmatization and urban marginalization have emerged and evolved successively. In addition from the mid 1970s onward globalization and neoliberal restructuring have impacted those areas stimulating multidimensional transformations around privatization, retrenchment and social polarization. i n t r o B o r d e au x r e s e a r c h p r oj e c t

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The Research’s Problematic In France

In France as in other wester European countries, the neoliberal urban trend gained high influence in the early 1980’s, externally triggered by American and European political pressures and internally by the overall questioning of the government’s role in the provision of housing and the economic stagnation that the Keynesian model had brought. The gradual tendency was to decentralize the control of the housing industry and privatize the existing housing stock, these moves were done parallel to a strong decrease of State funding and involvement in the provision of social housing as well as the provision of a strong stimulus to the private sector so they could slowly take over the housing industry and urban production. Under these terms, the following points summarize the problematic and suggest critical research questions in order to understand and find possibilities to insert in the city processes more socially sustainable forms of urbanization:

1. Free market urbanization.

The direction in housing policy since the end of the 1970s has been towards free market homeownership. Reducing public housing subsidies, and rising tax relieves in order to push such trend. Nevertheless the concurrent recessions, the shift from secured full time jobs into in-secured part-time jobs, the increment of mortgage interest, the deregulation of financial markets, and the high cost of housing has made the private housing acquisition affordable just for the middle and high income P a g e

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families. Researching this condition will be critical to understand how such market-oriented housing provision trend has influence the sociospatial structure of the city of vulnerable neighborhoods; and to ask if the impact been even or uneven? What sort of correlation or fragmentation has emerged in vulnerable districts like Saint Michel and Grand Parc in relation with the city and new urban developments?

2. Social housing as residual provision.

Social housing has turned once again into a residual provision for the disadvantage and marginalized citizens. The share of social housing due to recent trends in housing provision and urban regeneration programs fell substantially in the last two decades. Housing subsidies have changed in form, target and direction. Which implies that many families are not able to get such subsidies for the rental housing sector anymore. Researching these problematic is necessary to interpret what sort of policy programs and instruments have been set that address housing provision, urban development, improvement and renewal of neighborhoods categorized as clusters zones of: unemployed, welfare dependents, young and low-income families as well as to ask who has been leading such approaches? residents, local government, profit or not-profit organizations? and in which forms can they be reorganized with a strong social aim. i n t r o B o r d e au x r e s e a r c h p r oj e c t

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3. Private urban regeneration and gentrification.

Governmental housing agencies have dissolved, and there have been a shift of State driven housing control into traditional private landlords and real state developers, with diversification of activities barely keeping the social commitment. Housing and urban regeneration (community displacement) has set as one of the main focus of such housing initiatives, where the share of social rental housing diminishes and the one of private rental housing increases. Assuming that this is part of the mainstream development of the city, we feel is necessary to reveal how such shift has affected the social and physical structure of low-income neighborhoods.

It will be essential to ask, how have the different governmental institutions, housing industries, profit and non profit local organizations and citizens performed in urban governance and decision making?

4. Socio-spatial fragmentation and difference.

The economic and social composition of the social housing has changed dramatically due to the concentration of the lowest income households, which are vulnerable social categories that have emerged form the restructure and polarization of the labour market, the rising rate of unemployment, and the constant migration of unskilled workers with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This condition leads us to inquire about the dominant urban and housing demands of the new social structure in vulnerable districts and how difference could be a favorable factor for development rather than a conflictive one.

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5. Social cohesion and participation.

6. Cultural dynamics, marketing and

The disengagement of social bodies, the absence of integrated communal participation and the divisive social cohesion in the majority of vulnerable neighborhoods are a result of years of urban policies oriented towards the fragmentation of existent social compositions (especially immigrants) implemented on one hand for the sake of plurality, security and cultural integration and on the other for the sake of rental extraction.

The majority of these policies have rendered urban conditions that socially oppose the optimistic visions portrayed when the policies began, but have been very successful in generating image and profit for their developers. In most cases, vulnerable neighborhoods have been completely redeveloped, achieving only the displacement of their previous social conditions to another neighborhood or city. A thorough research on the dynamics of these social effects is required to foresee policy changes and modes of community participation that would help to reconstruct or empower the necessary social cohesion of these neighborhoods.

the communication of urban processes.

The visual forms of communicating urban processes to citizens have been replaced by marketing campaigns that portrait the city as a theater of private wealth and public order. Many campaigns to improve the urban image, as well as the marketing speak accompanying gentrification, are always reinforcing some form or incarnation of the neoliberal illusion. The

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replacement of an existing (public) housing stock by private apartments has become a routine operation, accompanied by sets of visuals attempting to lure citizens into the middle class dream. Whereas these and other kinds of campaigns are mere symptoms, it is now important that more socially engaged communication alternatives are developed. We feel it is of critical relevance to deepen into the marketing cover of the economic, social and physical polarization that has emerged, and to find local initiatives counteracting such tendency with grassroots programs, cultural dynamics and instruments that fairly communicate and involve the citizens in the making of their environment.

Research Tasks And Goals

The new relationship between the state and municipalities have also stimulated a reconfiguration of the relationship between the municipality and local private and semi-private institutions in one hand and the civil society in the other. Nevertheless the body of governance has pointed towards a system of barely fair structure bringing serious treats to disfranchised groups and marginalized city areas. The instruments and methods of urban restructuring in low-income and problematic neighborhoods have stimulating in many occasions undesired conditions (massive demolition, tenants displacement, rupture of communities) rather to improving the already uncontested ones. First, there is ambiguity in the role and outcomes of decision-making involving government actors, profit P a g e

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chosen students from other neighbourhoods

and non-profit housing providers and residents. Secondly, inequality of political power have lead to hierarchical relationships focused on dominant actors eliminating a fair collaboration.

Goals and strategies are usually set from above rather than emerging from the negotiations between actors and users. Finally, there is a need for research to evaluate and test the claims made about the benefits and efficacy of the current local governance system in securing community involvement and assisting social integration in complex urban regeneration programs and to explore the conditions necessary for these approaches to succeed.

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swimming pool

Clisthène school

city-scale facilities

policlinic

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areas with higher number of families and retired persons (above average for the centre)

area of intergenerational mix

> 1 500 €/m²

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Immigrants for eastern Europe PRESENT MIGRATION bigger appartments in periphery young proffesionals families

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‘bobo’ bohemian bourgeois

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(Victor Hugo market) microcredit

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migrant population épiceries small commerces

supermarket

bordelais

Place Meynard Place St Michel

saintmichelois

“welcoming, village, home” “degraded, insecure”

BORDEAUX

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What different spatial constructions will give rise to cohesiveand participatory forms of social relations? Or viceversa.

2. What other urban relationships can be thought between the spacesnow produced by large capital investment and the ones of smalllocalized production inserted in the social fabric of Saint Michel and Grand Parc’s everyday life ?

3. What collective sustainable technologies should be developed andhow should they relate to Saint Michel and Grand Parc’s inhabitants and its local means of production?

4. What type of interactive coexistences do we foresee between nature and Saint Michel and Grand Parc’s changing urban environment?

5. In what way will future spatial identities will be conceived and communicated so they could provide 1.

impoversihed neighbours forced to move south pockets of informality

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citizens with the right to appropriate their own space with a capacity to change it, whilerendering a social sense of belonging in the neighborhood?

Meta-Disciplinary Approach And Operation

Our young foundation has been researching on the design of a theoretical framework and urban lineaments that would define the socio-spatial reconstruction of vulnerable neoliberalized neighborhoods in Bordeaux.

No longer approaching the process of urbanization as the result of narrow, market oriented and reformist master plans, but by researching towards a unitary understanding of the urban industry so to find possibilities for rupturing its processes with socio-spatial insertions.

For our urban approach, we like to talk about the possibility of researching and designing for an urbanization within an urbanization, whose main materialization would be an urbanization of spatial ruptures produced by the empowerment of localized socio-economic exchanges between the inhabitants of the neighborhood. Contrary to the traditional perspectives on governance and urbanism which keep on building on the singular tradition of purely form producers or on the modernist tradition of utopian visionaries with conviction to design for a perfect city where no conflict exists, where humans are throttled, mollified, rendered miraculously convergent and where unity reigns without chance or contradiction; our i n t r o B o r d e au x r e s e a r c h p r oj e c t

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foundation’s primary task will be to speculate on the design of a unitary urban framework that produces space in response to localized socioeconomic exchanges that allows the citizen to embrace its difference and take control of its production and conflicts. We believe that if given the opportunity to extend our research intentions, we could speculate towards a parallel urban design framework that could create a positive rupture in the dominant neoliberal model.

The working methodology for this project (fig. 1) emerges from the critical and practical engagements, with institutions, society and all the individual behaviors that construct contemporary urban life, and to achieve this, we want to call for a radical expansion of knowledge and most importantly of action.

1. Research through direct engagement.

2. Disciplinary research.

In the three months of work we establish two urban observatories with the aim of understanding the everyday condition and relation of the inhabitants of Saint Michel and Grand Parc. Our intention with these observatories was to directly engage with the community that construct the quartiers and perceive the possibilities for organization towards different ways of producing collective space.

From the beginning of the research and until its end, we worked on the construction of a series of disciplinary understandings on the condition of Saint Michel and Grand Parc, this to be able to confront stances and enforce a dialogue of ruptures in the traditional understanding of the city.

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3. Relational constructions.

4. Intervention strategies.

Informed by the other instances of the research and parallel to them we continued to build a relational collapse of the disciplinary stances on the research topics into a common assemblage that could address Saint Michel and Grand Parc in a unitary and cohesive manner.

During the research process we will traced possible directions of intervention and strategies that would aid the artist in achieving a more cohesive project, these were done in the form of socio-economic processes, policy or spatial design.

We believe that any kind of urban artistic practice must acquire the knowledge to engage in governmental processes, in the organization of the political-economy, in the system of rights, in social organization and the environment; In our view, urbanism is research and socio-spatial design through disciplinary mediation. We define our organizational approach as Meta-disciplinary because we believe in the autonomous capacity of each engaged urban discipline (art, urbanism, architecture, sociology, geography, political-economy, graphic design and environmental science) to draw both in and for itself, from real instances in the politics of the urban, as well as in their relational capacity to engage with the other disciplinary apparatuses in the common research, design and activation of difference in the contemporary urban milieu. Difference for us is the transformation that arises from the empowerment of the regular citizen, its relational adaptation to space and the conditions imposed by society. i n t r o B o r d e au x r e s e a r c h p r oj e c t

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Production of spatial ‘difference’ is only achieved when all the strata of power – from marginalized citizens to the highest ranks of government – are choreographed in a dialectical struggle for transformation via structured participation, dialogue and mediation. In relation to this choreography, we diagramed our envisioned operative structure in fig. 1.

Ultimately, with this research, we would like to set the ground for urban interventions that are neither top or down, but that mediate the transformative realities that define the city’s dreadful ecologies. As David Harvey denotes: “The future must be constructed, not in some fantastic utopian mold or in a historicist perspective, but through the raw materials given to us our present state. This raw materials must be assembled through spatio-temporal dynamics, movements and processes”. This is the production of space that the Bordeaux research project wants to suggest.

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B O R D E AU X BORDEAUX REPORT 1/3

text by Fa n n y Li aTA R D, A N N E- C ÉCI L E PA R E D E S, C A R LO S G A R CÍ A-SA N C H O.

B O R D E AU X (M U N ICI PA LIT Y) 23 5 178 in h a b ita n ts (9t h in fr a n ce ) 4 936 h a s 47.65 IN H A B/H A 1 .65 IN H A B/dw ellin g 16.9% socia l h o usin g 14.6% U N EM PLOY ED 22 .4% yo u n gs t er (0-19) 10.6% Eld er ly (+ 60) 19. 1% m o n o pa r en ta l fa milie s

CU B (UR BA N CO M M U N IT Y O F B O R D E AU X) 702 522 in h a b ita n ts 3 8 100 h a s 18.44 IN H A B/H A 1 .65 IN H A B/dw ellin g View of bordeaux from the eastern bank ( l e f t, p h o t o b y a n n e - c é c i l e p a r e d e s ) L O C AT I O N O F t h e c i t y o f b o r d e a u x (co n tin ous lin e) in t h e u r ba n co m m u nit y o f b o r d e au x (d ot t ed). bordeaux

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gion

CUB Bordeaux Urban Community 719 489 inhab 55 188 has

Region: AQUITAINE

Department: GIRONDE

Municipality of Bordeaux 239 642 inhab 4 455 has

(2) (4)

(3)

BORDEAUX

(5)

(6) (1)

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INTRODUCTION TO THE TERRITORY Som e call it “bourgeois”, oth ers “underground”, oth ers still, “Sleeping Beaut y”, “Atlantic”, “European”… Which word best sums up Bordeaux? How are we to distinguish the stereot ype from realit y? How are we to divide things b et ween th e m ediatised cit y and the cit y in all its complexit y? Everyone w i ll j u d g e Bordeaux as they see fit, with information which they will either take or leave: these dossier may nevertheless, from different vi e w po i n t s, en lig h t en a n yo n e d e a li n g w it h t h e i ssu e o f t h e making, over time, of this multi-facet ted cit y.

b o r d e a u x i s t h e c a p i t a l c i t y o f a b i g g e r t e r r i t o r i a l u n i t, t h e b o r d e au x u r b a n co m m u n i t y (C U B ). t h e m u n i c i pa l i t y o f b o r d e a u x r e p r e s e n t s r o u g h ly o n e t h i r d o f t h e c u b ' s t o t a l p o p u l a t i o n . P o l i t i c a l ly, b o r d e a u x ' s r i g h t w i n g g o v e r n m e n t co n t r a s t s w i t h t h e s u r r o u n d i n g m u n i c i pa l i t i e s , w h i c h a r e p r e d o m i n a n t ly l e f t- w i n g . i n f a c t t h e m a y o r o f b o r d e a u x ( a l a i n j u p p é ) p e r t a i n s t o t h e u m p ( r i g h t- w i n g ) w h i l e t h e p r e s i d e n t o f t h e c u b ( V i n c e n t F e lt e s s e ) p e r t a i n s t o t h e P S ( L e f t- w i n g ) . a n o t h e r r e m a r k a b l e f e a t u r e o f t h e g o v e r n m e n t o f t h e m u n i c i pa l i t y o f b o r d e au x i s t h e lo n g - r u n n i n g t e r m s o f i t s m ay o r s . J A C Q U E S C h a b a n - D e l m a s wa s a m ay o r f o r 4 8 y e a r s , a n d j u p p é ( i n c u m b e n t ) h a s b e e n m ay o r o f b o r d e a u x fo r 16 ye ars, wit h a b rief gap b e t w een 20 04 an d 20 0 6. sin ce 2 0 1 1 j u p p é i s s i m u lt a n e o u s ly m i n i s t e r o f O R E I G N A F F A I R S o f the French Repub lic AND MAJOR OF BORDEAUX.

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Governance

Bordeaux is one of the 27 member communes of the urban community* of Bordeaux [communauté urbaine de Bordaux: CUB], established in 1968.

The CUB acts mainly in the following 12 areas: water and related operations (purification etc), urban transport, roads and signs, parking, waste treatment, environment and sustainable development, the slaughterhouses and the Marché d’Intérêt National [Market of National Interest], cemeteries, economic growth, city-planning (urbanism), housing, and education. But unlike other urban communities, such as Nantes Métropole, the CUB does not operate integrally in the cultural sector.

Currently, Bordeaux city is governed by Alain Juppé’s rightwing administration (the UMP: Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, currently the national government), while the other territorial entities (local authorities which Bordeaux is part of) are run by the left: the CUB, the department and the region. One of the explanations behind this contradiction has to do with the personification of power and the importance of the figure of Alain Juppé in the city. First elected as mayor of Bordeaux in 1995, he took over from Jacques Chaban-Delmas, who held the office for 48 years. In 2004, after a law suit (fictitious jobs at the Paris City Hall on behalf of the RPR party* [predecessor of the UMP]), Alain Juppé was sentenced to one year of ineligibility and forced to resign as mayor of Bordeaux and from the chairmanship of the CUB. Replaced by Hugues Martin, he nevertheless managed to be re-elected mayor of Bordeaux on his comeback to politics P a g e

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in 2006, thanks to the organization of early elections after the majority of the city council had resigned (on the announcement of his desire to return to Bordeaux). He was last re-elected in 2008, with 56.62% of the votes (his main foe was Alain Rousset, then President of the CUB and current President of the Regional Council). At the end of February 2011, Alain Juppé was appointed Minister of State for Foreign and European Affairs, one of the highest offices in the French Government. This may not be the first time that a mayor has assumed both local and government offices, but this development has re-launched the debate about the plurality of offices at the national level: how can a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants be managed on a part-time basis? Alain Juppé, for his part, has declared: “The day when the law changes, needless to say, I shall comply with it and I can tell you that […] in these particular circumstances I would choose Bordeaux”1 Bordeaux sees itself as a “million-plus metropolis” by 2030. Where governance is concerned, this ambition raises various issues.

Generally speaking, the development of inter-communality in France has not gone together with greater democratization. The President of the CUB, to whom the communes delegate major areas of competence, is still not elected by direct universal suffrage.

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Spatial organiz ation an d representations: Bordeaux and its two banks

If many Bordeaux citizens have forgotten the city’s past as a port, the river Garonne is there to bear witness to Bordeaux’s history as a city of trade and commerce. In the words of historian Pierre Veilletet, “the river is consubstantial with Bordeaux. It is not merely to be taken or left. It is there, not only as a water-course held in check by the local authorities and producing so many cubic meters per hour; it is there as a bedrock substance, like immemorable vapour embedded in the pores of the stone. An invisible halo floating about beings and things, exchanging fluid secrets with them” 2. Split in two by the Garonne, Bordeaux has to juggle with issues peculiar to each one of its banks, while presenting a unified identity. When you live in Bordeaux, you usually make quite a clear differentiation between the right and left banks. When you visit as tourist, you hardly relate to the “Right Bank”. Bordeaux residents tend to talk about the “Right Bank” as an extraneous whole, while the “Left Bank” is mentally understood by the many as the proper Bordeaux, and nothing else. The most apparent traces of the city’s richest past are concentrated on the left bank and thus, it is the most spectacular side of Bordeaux, opposite to the other embankment, which only became physically connected until 1822, when Napoleon ordered the construction of the first bridge, the “Pont de Pierre”, an infrastructural piece that would serve Bordeaux as its only bridge across the Garonne for the next 140 years.

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CUB Bordeaux Urban Community 719 489 inhab 55 188 has

Region: AQUITAINE

Municipality of Bordeaux 239 642 inhab 4 455 has

Today, due to the constant political pressure from the CUB to unify the two sides, things are starting to look different: a public tram line that passes over the “Pont de Pierre” that connects Bordeaux city to the right bank municipalities of Lormont and Cenon was inaugurated by Alain Juppé in December 2003, and two more bridges are currently on the drawing board: Bacalan-Bastide and J.J. Bosc. New representations involving the right bank are evolving. The GPV* (communes of Bassens, Cenon, Floirac and Lormont) is greatly contributing to altering the right bank’s image, through its programmes and communication efforts (2)

(4)

(3)

BORDEAUX

(5)

(6)

(1)

Administrations of the Mayors from the Bordeaux region Left

Right

Center JUPPÉ

CHABAN-DELMAS BORDEAUX 1900

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

2000

10

Begles (1) Le Bouscat (2) Lormont (3) Mérignac (4) Pessac (5) Talence (6)

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Department: GIRONDE

< 1 600 inhab/km² > 70% HOME OWNERS

ANRU URBAN RENOVATION AGENCY

STATE INTEREST

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30 % WHITE COLLAR

SOCIAL HOUSING (HLM) GREATER THAN 50% OF ALL HOUSING

DENSER AREA OF THE AGGLOMERATION

FOREIGNERS OUTSIDE EU MORE THAN 6% POPULATION

PRIORITY GEOGRAPHY (CUCS)

CULTURAL AND ADMINISTRATIONAL CENTRALITIES

7 300 inhab/km² 50-70% HOME OWNERS

> 20 000 inhab/km² < 20% HOME OWNERS

RIVE GAUCHE

>12 % BLUE COLLAR

MAIRIE DE BORDEAUX

>6 % WHITE COLLAR RIVE DROITE

< 1 600 inhab/km² > 70% HOME OWNERS

35 % BLUE COLLAR

GRAND PROJET DE VILLE

Lexicon * ANAH (Agence Nationale d’Amélioration de l’Habitat - National Agency for Housing Improvement) is a public institution created in 1971. Its mission is to implement the national policy of development and improvement of the existing private housing stock.To achieve this, it encourages housing restructuring by providing grants to single resident owners, to landlords and to condominium owners. Source: Ministère de la Ville * ANRU (Agence Nationale pour la Rénovation Urbaine – National Agency for Urban Renewal) is a public industrial and commercial institution (EPIC – Etablissement Public Industriel et Commercial), established in 2004 to finance the renewal of deprived neighborhoods with the aim of promoting social diversity and sustainable development. It depends from the minister in charge of the urban policy (politique de la ville). * Associations/am enities and facilities. The intervention of associations (such as Le Bruit du frigo, MC2a…) in neighbourhoods covered by priority geography has been encouraged by the urban policy.

The social centres are for the most part managed by associations; they propose diverse activities for all inhabitants, and aim to get inhabitants to take part in the improvement of the living conditions in their neighbourhood. The different programmes on offer are the outcome of inhabitants’ initiatives, backed by professionals. “The participation of inhabitants represents the very existence of the social centre project” (Federation of social and socio-cultural centres of France). The main financial backers are: the CAF (Caisse d’Allocations Familiales/Family Allowance Fund), local authorities, and the State’s devolved departments.

Local community centres (centres d’animation) are more directly associated with the Bordeaux City Hall.

And the people working in them are local officials. * Co m m u n au t é U r bai n e (urban community) is an EPCI (Établissement Public de Coopération Intercommunale – Public Institution of Intermunicipal Cooperation) grouping several municipalities, which join a common project of urban development and planning.

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The Communauté Urbaine have been created with the Act of July 12, 1999. Source: INSEE * CUCS (Contrat Urbain de Cohésion Sociale – Urban Agreement of Social Cohesion) is a contract signed by both the city and the state, and represents a contractual framework for the implementation of social and urban development, aimed at inhabitants of deprived areas identified as priorities at a national level. * DGA (Direction Générale de l'Aménagement General Direction of Development) is a department of the City Hall. * DSU (Développement Social Urbain - Urban Social Development) is a municipal department that has been in existence in Bordeaux since 1998. Its intervention is based mainly on the contractual provisions of the urban policy. So it does not intervene in the entire city, just in certain so-called “priority” neighbourhoods (seven in all in Bordeaux). Its general goal is to create new projects and programmes in the social arena.

“When it comes to facts, the incorporation of the social and human dimension in the urban project is not always evident”.

“Today, unfortunately, the trend (the development of State assistance) is inversely proportionate to the reality of the terrain, which involves a certain number of neighbourhoods becoming increasingly touch-andgo”. Source: P. Tournache, Director of DSU * GPV (Grand Projet de Ville - Grand Urban Plan)’s “aims are the transformation of the image of the neighbourhood, the perception people may have of it, and the economic promotion of it”. The GPV for the Hauts de Garonne (Garonne Heights) encompasses four communes (Bassens, Cenon, Floirac and Lormont), which house neighbourhoods built in the 1960s and 1970s, neighbourhoods with a certain number of problems. The idea is to re-incorporate these neighbourhoods within the metropolitan dynamic, and alter the image of the Right Bank.

“It was necessary to go much further in this logic of reconstructing the city upon itself, whence this notion of urban renewal”.

“The Right Bank has become one of the great challenges of Bordeaux’s metropolitan development”.

Source: E. Parin, Director of the GPV b o r d e au x 2 0 1 1

* Grille Dupont (Grid Dupont) is developed by the Ministry of Construction in the late 50s. This grid of equipments is used to define the necessary facilities (including schools and creches) according to the extension of the concerned area.

* PNRU (Programme National pour la Rénovation Urbaine - National Program for Urban Renewal) focuses on urban redevelopment projects in neighbourhoods classified as ZUS (Sensitive Urban Zones).

The PNRU programme includes several actions: urban redevelopment, rehabilitation, residentialisation, * InCité is a developer stemming from a public- housing and facilities (public or collective) demolition private partnership. It is in charge since 2003 of the and building, building or rehabilitation of commercial housing redevelopment of the historic centre of infrastructures.

Bordeaux (according to a public agreement which expires in 2014). Source: Municipality * Politique de la Ville (Urban policy) is a relatively recent programme, created in the * BAILLEURS (Management companies: Lessors/ mid 70s, with the actions Habitat et Vie Sociale (HVS), Developers). Aquitanis is one of the management aimed at rehabilitating the existing urban fabric, and companies operating in the priority areas. It is a the publication in 1977 of the report Peyrefitte about Public Housing Office [Office Public de l’Habitat] violence and delinquency. attached to the Urban Community of Bordeaux (CUB). The programme has further developed and Aquitanis has development concessions for the urban consolidated in the ‘80s and ‘90s, often under the community, and is also re-developing strategic sites, pressure of mediatised events related to upheavals in such as Grand Parc, Les Aubiers, and the Hauts de sensitive districts or to urban riots. The Ministry of Garonne. The second task is the construction of Urban Policy (politique de la ville) was created in 1990 buildings (for rent, and for new home-owners). The whose current minister is Maurice Leroy. third mission consists in the renewal of the city itself, and the job of urban redefinition (this is the case with the Hauts de Garonne). The lessors and management * T1, T2, T3, ... T stands for the apartment’s companies are proposing a supply of housing units, but typology and the numeration stands for the number are also taking part in the neighbourhood’s evolution of rooms in the apartment - except kitchen, bathroom, WC. (residential management, upkeep, etc.).

“The lessors have a role of social shock-absorber… The greatest modernity of a State is to have adopted social housing”. (Source: M. Blanc, Director of Aquitanis) * ZAC (Zone d'Aménagement Concerté – Participatory Development Zone) is a redevelopment process based on the dialogue between public and * Metropolis millionaire is part private developers. It has replaced the ZUP (Zone à of the plan CUB 2030 whose aim is to reach the goal Urbaniser en Priorité – Priority Urbanization Zone). of one million inhabitants.

See the article of Julien Rousse "Bordeaux, l’agglo a * ZUP (Zone à Urbaniser en Priorité – Priority l’appétit millionaire” in Sud Ouest, May 5, 2010.

Urbanization Zone) responds to the increasing demand of housing. ZUP was created to develop new districts: * PNRQAD (Programme National de housing, infrastructures, facilities.

Requalification des Quartiers Anciens Dégradés – National Program of Redevelopment of Old Degraded Neighbourhoods) was established by the Act of March * ZUS (Zone Urbaine Sensible – Sensitive Urban 25, 2009 and it is aimed at housing vacancies and fight Zones) is a government tool in order to define and map sub-urban and deprived areas to include in the against social exclusion. source: ANRU objectives of the urban policy (politique de la ville).

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URBAN COMPONENT S

Urban development concentrations throughout time bring together places and processes with visible or invisible projects, initiatives that are either constructed or immaterial, exposing the complexities and contradictions that produce an urban ecology. Thus, they can assist us in the understanding of the spatio-temporal cross sections that have defined the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s contemporary development priorities and directions.

When faced with the task of writing about the city of Bordeaux, we decided to first choose some â&#x20AC;&#x153;fragmentsâ&#x20AC;?, areas of interest which could show different ways in which the city is produced (localized in next page).

These different modalities of making and conceiving the city, even if they each follow their own logics, are often complementary, and they may also sometimes conflict with each other.

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[9]

[4]

[12]

[1]

[10]

[2]

[11]

[7] bordeaux urban components

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d i f f e r e n t " u r b a n c o m p o n e n t s " , a l l s e t at t h e s a m e s i z e , r eg a r d le ss o f t h ei r sc a le ( to p). t h e a i m o f t h e a n a ly s y s i s t o l o o k a t t h e s e d i f f e r e n t, s i m u lt a n e o u s w a y s o f f a b r i c a t i n g t h e c i t y c o n s i d e r i n g t h e m a l l e q u a l ly i m p o r t a n t. i n t h e n e x t p a g e , a l l o f t h e s e " u r ba n co m p o n e n t s" a r e lo c a liz e d.

They are thus urban 'components', functioning as a part of a whole, revealing a city jointly produced by varied experiences – and experiments – on varying scales. These “components” range in size from that of a single street, like the neighbour initiative of the “Impasse d'Agen”, to the 738 has perimeter (15% of the Municipality's area) of a State operation like the “Euratlantique” project.

Thus we shall look at Bordeaux as the result of the intricate dovetailing of people, plans, time-frames and spaces.

In order to go through these “components”, we have singled out four urban conditions, which exemplify contradictory and contrasting approaches towards the making of the city. These are conditions which sometimes overlap: most of the “components” fall under different categories, or may do so when they are subverted, used in a different way. Firstly, we shall look at the “ville de pierre” (city of stone), a term commonly used to talk about the protected, immutable historical centre. We are specially interested in seeing how the upcoming renovation projects will alter the population and everyday life of these neighbourhoods. The second chapter deals with the city of the 'geographie prioritaire'* (priority geography), focusing on the question of the 'grands-ensembles' (large housing complexes). Administratively, the urban policies introduced in the 'geographie prioritaire' come mainly from the DSU*, whereas elsewhere depend rather on the decisions of the DGA*, thus creating a geography of exception in which the “social” is imposed over the criteria of “urban planning”. The two case studies which will be further analysed in the Bordeaux Report, Grand Parc and Saint Michel, are somehow in between these two realities. They are both part of the P a g e

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'geographie prioritaire', but both also belong to the UNESCO perimeter*, inevitably linked to the definition of the city centre.

The “projected city”, discussed in the third chapter, involves the major future projects and thus represents an essential piece of the planned, communicated city. To be competitive, Bordeaux must be in the vanguard, and state-ofthe-art: speed, new technologies, sustainability, these are the buzzwords for its future growth. Even though embedded with novelty, these projects look sometimes like an update of old utopias: did the Mériadeck district, which is much criticized today by many Bordeaux citizens, not once convey the ambition of a modern, connected, European city that the Euratlantique project deals with today?

Finally, the last chapter deals with a more “interstitial” city: bottom-up initiatives which shape a city made up of different utopias, which try to illustrate how the citizens can be involved in processes of city-making.

Still, there is a large part of the CUB's surface which does not fall under any of these categories and which remains anonymous. Suburban fabrics are the way in which our cities are predominantly growing, despite the efforts of the administrations to pursue denser forms of urbanization. Outskirts are increasingly widespread and distanced from city centres, they embody a vague and generic transition between city and countryside.

bordeaux urban components

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gentrification: migration to periphery

[6]

VILLE DE PIERRE/ THE CITY OF STONE

grandsensembles

GEOGRAPHIE PRIORITAIRE/ THE CITY OF PRIORITIES

FUTURE PLANS/ THE PROJECTED CITY

n el io h at Mic v no St Relan p

an l as oo e p us pen o

[1] Ginko New écoquartier (construction phase) interference [2] Les Dames du Lac Illegal vietnamese food market [3] Les Aubiers Housing complex [4] Jardin de ta soeur Communal gardens [5] Grand Parc Housing complex [6] Génicart Housing complex [7] La casserne de Niel Self-managed cultural centre [8] Bastide-Niel New écoquartier (planning phase) [9] Les Quais Renovated waterfront [10] Place de la Bourse/ Miroir d‘eau Public square with a water surface [11] Mériadeck Housing/ office complex n la lp [12] Saint Michel a at st Central neighbourhood [13] Chahuts Poetry festival [14] Hall de Douves Associative space [15] PNRQAD Plan for the renovation of interference degraded districts [16] Place André Meunier Public square with neighbourhood initiatives [1] [17] Impasse d‘Agen Self-renovated street [18] Euratlantique Statal urbanistic project linked to the high-speed train [2]

BOTTOM-UP INITIATIVES/ THE INSTERTITIAL CITY

[4]

[3]

[5]

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[18] [8]

[7]

[16] [17]

[12] [13] [9]

[14]

[10] [15]

[11]

bordeaux urban components

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LA VILLE DE PIERRE DOWNTOWN, THE REBIRTH OF A bourgeois UTOPIA I n t h e l a s t d ec a d e , B o r d e au x’s c e n t r a l a r e a h a s b e e n t h e s p o t l i g h t f o r r e d e v e l o p m e n t, a n d i n pa r t i c u l a r o n i t s h i s to r i c co r e . D es pi t e t h e i m p o ss i b i li t y to d e n y t h e n egat i v e so ci o -eco n o m ic i m pac t t h at t h e r ecen t po lici es o f cle a n si n g, g en t r i fic atio n a n d b e au ti fic atio n h av e b roug h t to t h e low er i n co m e po pul atio n, t h e cit y o f B o r d e au x co n ti n ues to r a pi d ly regener ate on this path. It is therefore essential to gr asp what dy n a m ics a r e at wo r k i n t h i s r e- o ccupi ed “n ucleus”, a n d w h at i d en tit y i s b ei n g h ig h lig h t ed/prot ec t ed, o r n ot.

The Bordeaux City Hall defines the “centre ville” or “downtown” district (from the boulevards to the embankments, from Rue Fondaudège to the Cours Alsace Lorraine) as distinct from the “historic centre” (smaller, between the ring road formed by the various “Cours” (boulevards) and the Garonne). The centre is also affected by different zonings laws which overlap, and must be distinguished; UNESCO perimeter, PNRQAD, the territory of the “Ville de Pierre” (inventory of the architectural and urban landscape made by the Bordeaux City Hall).

The mental conception “centre ville” of Bordeaux is subjective, flexible and not always limited to the historic core or UNESCO’s definition. UNESCO lists the “centre ville” as World Heritage, covering 203 hectares/500 acres (i.e. 4.1% of the city’s area), while the complete listed zone, extends from inside the boulevards to the Garonne, spreads over 1,810 ha /4500 acres P a g e

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w h a t i s p r e c i s e ly t h e c e n t r e ? d i f f e r e n t definitions overl apping in th e borde aux

MERIADECK 1963, CHABAN-DELMAS

gentrification

the most vulnerable classes.

attraction of wealthier classes

t h e m , b r i n g i n e v i t a b ly t h e d i s p l a c e m e n t o f

eviction

( b o t t o m ) , r e g a r d l e s s o f t h e m ay o r b e h i n d

RENOVATION OF THE QUAIS (WATERFRONT) 1999, JUPPÉ

m a p ( t o p ) . t h e b i g o p e r at i o n s i n t h e c e n t r e

(almost half the city’s total area). Most of this large urban ensemble was built in the 18th and 19th centuries. The UNESCO perimeter is often attached to the “Ville de Pierre”, but it does not only include 18th and 19th century heritage buildings and structures. Inside this perimeter, the district of Mériadeck is a strong exception, and marks a break in the architectural homogeneity of the inner core, both in form and program. Mériadeck was one of Jacques Chaban-Delmas modern utopias of the 1960’s, a new administrative quarter built on top of an old low-income and cosmopolitan neighbourhood, which triggered a large and chaotic exile of working class population to the peripheries of the city. A large number of the displaced citizens ended up in the largest urban imposition of Chaban-Delmas, the modern housing ensemble called “Cité du Grand Parc”. It is important to denote that the 1960’s did not only see the building of showcase modernist projects, it also saw an acute urban decay that lasted decades, many parts of the centre were completely abandoned: according to InCité, between 1965 and 2005, the population of the centre steadily dropped, and in 1995 some 25% of housing in it was empty.

N eo lib er a l t r a n sfo r m atio n s.

Contemporary urbanization in the “centre ville” is no longer as inflictive and violent as it was in the 1960’s, neoliberal urban projects inside the UNESCO zone, consist mostly in the regeneration and beautification of old buildings, morphing the interiors of the homogeneous architectural carcasses, while bordeaux la ville de pierre

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UNESCOHeritage

heritage

UNITED NATIONS

DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS FOR BORDEAUX’S CENTRE(S)

D

Mairie de Brodeaux

CT TRI DIS TRE N E C

NT CE

heritage

RE

H

RI TO IS

E QU

investment

FRENCH STATE

ANRU - Urban renovation agency

QA

R PN

Urban renovation projects in the city center A Parc aux Angéliques B Réaménagement Allés de Tourny, Rue Esprit des lois C Deschamps D Requalification des têtes de pont Saint-Jean 1 Quai des Chartrons / Quai Louis XVII 2 Allées d’Orléans / Allées de Munich 3 Cours de Chapeau rouge 4 Quais Richelieu 5 Place de la Bourse et miroir d’eau 6 Cours de l’Intendance 7 Square des Commandos Îlot Bonnac 8 Place Saint-Christoly 9 Borne d’accès 10 Place du palais 11 Quai des salinières 12 Place Fernand Lafargue 13 Place Saint-Projet 14 Place Pey-Berland et place Jean Moulin 15 Cours de l’Hôtel de Ville 16 Parvis des Droits de l’Homme 17 Rue du Saint-James 18 Place Camille Pelletan 19 Rue du Mirail 20 Cour Victor Hugo 21 Place Sainte-Eulalle 22 Place de la Victoire 24 Cours de la mARNE 25 Marché des Capucins, halle A 26 Marché des Capucins, halle B 27 Square Don Bedos 28 Place du Général Sarrallh B 29 Place Camille Jullien 30 Square Vinet 31 Parc Saint-Michel

AM

TRAM C

A

1

2 3

6

r e n o vat i o n o f p u b l i c

7

b o r d e au x ( to p). t h ese u r b a n o p e r at i o n s , a s w e l l

5

8

s pac e s i n t h e c e n t r e o f

15

14

30 9 13

centre. saint michel a p p e a r s a s t h e o n ly s p o t u n t o u c h e d b y r e n o vat i o n ,

AM

A

TR

4

12

16

20

17

o f t h e t r a m w a y, h a v e

g e n t r i f i c at i o n i n t h e

10

29

a s t h e i m p l e m e n tat i o n

triggered processes of

B

TR

19

21 22

18

28 23

11

C D

31 ST. MICHEL

24

25

26

27 E

e v e n t h o u g h a r e n o vat i o n p l a n i s g o i n g t o b e s ta r t e d from septemb er 2011.

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sanitizing their facades and public gaze. It is now a time of urban renewal, which became very clear with the application of the PNRQAD* (representing an investment of 86 million euros).The PNRQAD was signed in Bordeaux on 21 January 2011, its objectives being as follows (source: City Hall, Cadre de vie-Urbanisme/Living Environment and City Planning, and projects): — 300 public housing units — 300 approved private rental units — 155 housing units for resident owners or new home-owners — 145 furnished hotel rooms — 2,500 sq.m. of commercial and artisanal premises Apart from these large lodging investments, the city of Bordeaux has put great focus in the renewal of its public places. This aspect of the city’s construction has obviously been very visible in Bordeaux’s “centre-ville”: for the past ten years or so, Bordeaux’s public places have been the object of very determined renewal. This policy has given rise to a dramatic transformation in the city’s practices. In addition to the expected efforts in the cleaning of façades, sidewalks and streets, the execution of the new tram system and the renewal of the left bank embankments, which became the symbol of determination by the current Major, Alain Juppé, a project referred by people in his team as the ‘Guggenheim of Bordeaux’.

Although glittery and functional, these rapid urban changes have raised many critical questions. bordeaux la ville de pierre

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Housing and gentrification

Renovation has brought excessive property speculation, resulting in an over-gentrification of the centre, and the exclusion of the most vulnerable population groups, as well as the creation of a “selective between-us (club)” (to use Jacques Donzelot’s expression (“entre soi sélectif”). In Bordeaux, the Saint-Pierre neighbourhood and Les Chartrons are often mentioned as examples of “gentrified” neighbourhoods, and victims of their own success, as their previous unprivileged populations with all its activities have forcefully abandoned them, and the (social and functional) class mix has not been sustained. These neighbourhoods are no longer “living” or “alive” in the way it used to be.

Jacques Donzelot3 observes a “threefold movement of separation” within the neo-liberal city: “The middle-class gentrification (embourgeoisement) of prestigious downtown areas, the flight of the middle classes towards less expensive and better protected peri-urban areas, and the relegation of housing estates”. Attracted by the historic wealth, the mixed nature and the popular character of certain neighbourhoods, these population groups return from the outskirts to the downtown district(s), keen to enjoy the advantages of living in picturesque density (proximity of work places, good public transport, services, shops…). It is clear that the urban renewal of such neighbourhoods –same as in most European cities– has been designed for higher income population groups and those who want to speculate on them.

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In 2010, the property prices of Bordeaux rose by 3%4. Based on figures published by the Notaires d’Aquitaine, the highest rise is occurring in the still low-income neighbourhood of Saint-Michel, where prices have increased by 9.6% in one year. The most expensive neighbourhoods are still Les Quinconces: 3,342 euros/sq.m. (+4.9% over one year) and Les Chartrons: 2,787 euros/sq.m (+5.1%)5.

According to the property management company Aquitanis, one of the major housing problems encountered in downtown Bordeaux is the shortage of units big enough to accommodate families at affordable prices. As a logical consequence of property speculation, it has become more profitable for a proprietor to divide an apartment into several units. In the face of this, the most vulnerable families, many of them of foreign origin, are relegated to collective housing in the outskirts, or even further out in suburban low-rise, or semi-detached, homes.

Museification-Uniformization/ Forms of Resistance

The perimeter inscribed by the UNESCO World Heritage listing is subject to specific regulations, which have been interpreted by the city of Bordeaux as a challenge to protect its heritage and develop a strong tourist industry, while continuing to make the city grow. Protecting the heritage meant taking into account the memory and representations of places – what it is sometimes refer to by historians as the “immaterial city”. According to Jean-Marie Billa6, 'Urbs' and 'Civitas' must not be separated: bordeaux la ville de pierre

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the city as a material object cannot be conceived without its symbolic dimension.¶ Bordeaux lives in the UNESCO mould of history day-in dayout. Many of the protective measures have already frozen the city in the packaging of its past. But is this because of UNESCO or simply because of a culture already rooted in Bordeaux minds? The tradition of Bordeaux’s “good taste” finds reminiscences in the present-day making of the City: a certain traditional vision of the “beautiful” city is still firmly anchored among a percentage of the people taking part in its making. There are marked disparities in the city; it is quite fragmented and exchanges between the different components of the city are not always obvious. Bordeaux is a very coded bourgeois city, without any major excesses, just “intermissions” (the wine fair, the river festival…). “Bordeaux is not a city of inebriations but one of sobriety” (P. Dandieu) – it is not really a Dionysiac city and yet it continues to grow in the inherited excesses of “good manners”.

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LO R I M Y P U M

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the city of priorities from the utopia of large complexes to the contradictions of today When talking about neighbourhoods concerned by “priorit y geography”*, France often uses the term “large complexes” (grands ensembles), because most of these neighbourhoods borrow the architectural form made up of large (residential) complexes consisting of high- and low-rise structures that offer low-rent public housing (HLM). The term “grands ensembles” generally applies to a large portion of low income neighbourhoods, but not all of them: the Saint-Michel neighbourhood, for example, is classified as a Zone Urbaine Sensible* (ZUS) (literally a “difficult” or “problem” urban area – often a euphemism for “poor”), but its urban fabric is part of “la ville de Pierre”.

In Bordeaux, “priority geography” inscribes 55,570 inhabitants, but in a more realistic way, the “outskirts” or “periphery”, where the large complexes are, along with estates and suburban homes, are outside the city of Bordeaux and not much in evidence. Neighbourhoods made up of large complexes are directly linked with negative imagery, violence, immigration and social problems. At their conception, however, their construction was seen as nothing less than a godsend, the culmination of social and technical prowess.

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th e g r an ds-en sem b les (l arg e h ousin g c o m p l e x e s ) a r e t h e m o s t r e p r e s e n tat i v e chooses

fo r m o f p r i o r i t y g eo g r a p h y ( to p). T h e r e i s a difference between those in the eastern bank, w h i c h a r e pa r t o f a g r e at p r o j e c t a d v e r t i s e d b y t h e m u n i c i pa l i t y, a n d t h o s e o f t h e GRAND PROJET DE VILLE GRAND PARC CUCS

renovation

ANRU URBAN RENOVATION AGENCY

FRENCH STATE

construction

d e v e lo p m e n t p l a n s .

LES AUBIERS ZUS

western bank, absent from the future urban

The postwar housing shortage: the ‘large complex’ solution

“My friends, please help”. These words came out from Radio Luxembourg 57 years ago, on 1 February 1954. The late Abbé Pierre (founder of Emmaus) launched his appeal for an “insurrection of goodness”.8 To come to the help of the homeless, which suffered from the terrible cold of that winter. Nine years after the end of the war, the housing situation was critical.

It was reckoned that in France, there was a shortfall of four million housing units; and 90% of existing units were insalubrious. Awareness of the housing shortage gradually took hold in tangible ways.

By a decree of 31 December 1958, titled “Urbanisme, HLM, Crise du Logement”, Pierre Sudreau, then Minister of Construction, established Priority Urbanization Zones (Zones à Urbaniser en Priorité/ZUP): the large complexes were born. The “ZUP” is the legal form that encompassed the construction of “large complexes”. Grand heirs of the CIAMs (International Modern Architecture Congresses) and the Athens Charter, built amid the enthusiasm of the “Trente Glorieuses” – the three thriving decades in France from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s--, the large complexes tallied with the ambitions of their day and age: a political determination to house French citizens, planned development of the territory, industrialization of building, and modernization of the domestic economy.

Accordingly, technical progress permitted rapid and inexpensive production: there were building peaks of 250,000 social housing units a year, which made it possible to solve and do away with a large part of the housing crisis. bordeaux the city of priorities

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GPV Grand Parc 1959-68 9,729 inhab

Cité de la Benauge 1948-50 3,000 inhab

Genicart 1960 10,000 inhab Les Aubiers, 1971 3,566 inhab (2006)

LOCALIZATION OF GRAND ENSEMBLES

The decline of the grands ensembles

When the large complexes were created in the 1950s, they were synonymous to French social success; they were the expression of the realization of an utopia and the access to modern comfort for a large number of people. But disenchantment soon reared its head. As early as in 1963, many people were highlighting their pathogenic aspect. The term “sarcellite” [from a Parisian district called Sarcelles, used to describe neighbourhood ‘problems’] appeared at that time, and was widely used by journalists. The “cités” or housing estates rapidly became symbols of an unresolved social crisis, poor or bad city planning and insecurity. It was in 1973 that the construction of large complexes finally pronounced its symbolic stop, when Olivier Guichard, then Minister of Public Works and Housing publicly said, “First of all, the large complexes must become small complexes”.9 It was at the end of the 1970s where we can pinpoint the birth of “urban policy”, offering to re-conquer the acute problems of urban space: “Urban policy defines the policy introduced by the public powers to redevelop problematic urban zones and reduce inequalities between territories” (Ministry of the City/Ministère de la Ville).

From 1983 on, the “Suburbs 89” programme was run by the architect Roland Castro and Michel Cantal-Dupart. This movement was representative of the process that led to the creation of the post of “Minister responsible for urban policy” in December 1990. In spite of all the urban policy experiments, it cannot be said that it has managed to reverse the trend P a g e

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as far as neighbourhoods with problems are concerned. According to the committee for evaluating and controlling public policies, which presented its conclusion last October on the Borloo law of 2003, “the present-day situation is overall no better than in 2003”. Unemployment and poverty have not undergone any notable improvements in relation to the rest of the country, and both remain at high levels. School results, which are another indicator of the situation in problematic neighbourhoods are less good in ZUS (problem urban zones) than elsewhere, and the “social ladder” does not seem to be working the way the State would like it to”.

In the face of such facts, the law of 1 August 2003 (the “Borloo law”) set up a policy of “urban renovation” based on massive operations of demolition and reconstruction, designed to “bust the urban ghettos”. The rehabilitation of neighbourhoods gave way to renovation: in particular, the law launched the PNRU (National Urban Renovation Programme) piloted by the State through the ANRU (National Agency for Urban Renovation). A link was established between the spatial configuration of large complexes and their economic and social reality. They came into being with this prospect in mind (cf. the Dupont “happiness grid”*), and the PNRU is nowadays displaying a desire to adjust the typology of large complexes to that of the “ordinary” city. But faced with the current difficulties besetting the most vulnerable families, the issue of destroying large complexes raises questions, within the framework of urban renovation policies. bordeaux the city of priorities

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New trends: 'Résidentialization'

Urban policy in its pure neoliberal form came into being in the 1990s with what is referred to in the language of certain developers as “Residentialization”. It appeared “legally” as a reference in a legal document produced in 2003. This notion has been complex to talk about, and everyone provides a very general and subjective definition: “Considered as a method of intervention helping to develop large complexes, an alternative to demolition, a precondition for management, back-up for inhabitants’ participation, residentialization responds to the major goals of urban policy, which are also social mix and the improvement of daily life.”10 “It is a matter of doing away with the “alien” nature of large complexes, toning down their differences with neighbouring districts, and rediscovering the ordinary interplay of the urban fabric”.11 The urban principle behind residentialization consists in introducing forms of individual ownership and gated shared spaces inside housing estates, transposing models of habitation peculiar to low-rise housing to the village, on the scale of the neighbourhood unit, seemingly synonymous with conviviality, proximity/localness, and social bonding. Residentialization is also strongly associated with social fears and the quest for a sense of security, protection of shared spaces, and proceeds by way of a clarification of public places and private spaces, by the redefinition of property, and ownership. This experiment in privatization has evolved into another bureaucratic and ideological confrontation between property management P a g e

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companies/lessors (bailleurs) and local authorities on the question of ownerships: what belongs to whom? By setting down boundaries, and by privatizing certain undifferentiated areas, it is easier to know who is entitled to have access thereto, and to whom access is banned (easier, too, to create a sense of â&#x20AC;&#x153;feeling at homeâ&#x20AC;?). We are thus seeing an increase in enclosures, gates, fences and door code systems... This raises the question: who is being protected from whom?

These days it is hard to assess the long-term impact of these experiments in policy. The ruling party believes in and encourages these new takes on urban policy, while those in the opposition see it as the ultimate atomization and polarization of the urban environment and its socius masked in a litany of meaningless acronyms.12

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the projected city bordeaux‘s role in the inter-urban competition If we consider the fabrication of the city and the image it projects as t wo different entities that follow different systems of logic, th e n ew developm ent s, r ath er than projec tion s of th e built environment, are images 'per se', symbols without a referent. They exist, therefore, only in the mediatised cit y, on billboards and in institutional campaigns, but they do, nevertheless, influence the urban processes that take place b ehind th em. Th ey work as massive at tractors of capital investment, as tools for the r e- q ua li fi c at i o n a n d r e-d e v elo pm en t o f t h e t er r ito ry, t h us shaping new geographies and centralities.

Sustainable development: the new 'common interest'.

David Harvey has mentioned that the main difference between Modernism and Postmodernism is how they attempt to shape space, the first considering it as a process “subservient to social purposes”, the latter merely driven by aesthetic goals.13 One could argue that the idea of the 'common interest', so difficult to define in the current condition, has become inevitably linked to the issue of sustainability, becoming the new dogma of spatial development.

In the case of Bordeaux, the CUB is defending a sustainable development programme based on public transport and density, the latter being mixed with the ambition of achieving a one million inhabitant goal in the metropolitan area, described in the plan for the “Ville Millionnaire”. These P a g e

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BOUYGUES private developer

GINKO: ÉCOQUARTIER plans, conceives

ECO-

* conditions of sustainability

b o u yg u e s.

labels as ecoquartier

facilitates

t h e b i g g e s t f r e n c h c o n s t r u c t i o n c o m p a n y,

builds

CUB

p u b l i c- p r i vat e - pa r t n e r s h i p w i t h o n e o f

allows

co n s t ruc tio n is, fo r t h e firs t tim e, a

PRIVATE-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIP

FRENCH STATE

éco q ua r ti er i n b o r d e au x (b ot to m), t h e

MINISTRY OF ECOLOGY

o f t h e c i t y, s t r u c t u r e d b y t h e t r a m w a y li n e s ( to p). i n t h e c a s e o f g i n ko, t h e f i r s t

MUNICIPALITY

l o c a l i z at i o n o f t h e m a i n " f u t u r e p l a n s "

gentrification

attraction of wealthier classes

RENOVATION OF THE QUAIS (WATERFRONT) 1999, JUPPÉ

ideas are mixed with a certain emphasis and praise for the European city, after a so-called “fascination with the American model”.14 The notion of sustainable development ('développement durable') has become one of the pillars of urban development in contemporary France.

Thus, the Ministry of Ecology (French: 'Ministère de l’Écologie, du Développement Durable, des Transports et du Logement') is responsible both for 'sustainable development' (from 2007) and for housing (from 2010), showing how intertwined these two concepts have become in the last years. From 2007 onwards, there has been a transversal political debate about sustainability led by the President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy; its conclusions and aspirations were summarized in the Grenelle Round Table resolutions. It was, in fact, announced by the then Minister of Ecology, Alain Juppé, who would later become mayor of Bordeaux. These inputs materialised on 22 October 2008 with the implementation of the “Plan for a Sustainable City”, which included the call for projects for “Écoquartiers”.

MERIADECK 1963, CHABAN-DELMAS

The Écoquartier as a unit of sustainable development

B o r d e au x t h e p r oj e c t e d c i t y

eviction

Écoquartiers – eco-neighbourhoods – are defined as “an impulse towards a sustainable city”, and they aim to create housing that promotes a responsible management of resources, is integrated within the existing city and participates in an “economic dynamism”.15 The aim to create a model for a new city mirrors the idea of the Modernist project, but perhaps the 'dynamic' aspect departs from the notion of a static, bold, autonomous P a g e

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t h e éco q ua r t i e r g i n ko : 5,000 housing units along the trams

pa r e d e s ) a n d p r o m ot i o n a l i m a g e 2 //, ( p h o t o f r o m

OIN Euratlantique 500,000 m2 offices 15,000 new dwellings

t h e ' p r oj ec t ed cit y ' i s

CAMPUS: Victoire

Bastide Niel 45,000 m2 offices 2,500 new dwellings

( p h oto by a n n e- c éci l e

b o u yg u e s i m m o b i li e r ).

CAMPUS: Carreire

LOCALIZATION OF THE FUTURE PLANS

Gingko housing development

c o n s t r u c t i o n s i t e 1 //,

t h e at t r a c t o r o f c a p i ta l investment fo r m u n i c i pa l i t i e s , w h i c h m a k e s n ece ssa ry t h e c r e at i o n o f

CAMPUS: Talence-PessacGradignan

CAMPUS: Carreire

at t r a c t i v e i m a g e s o f t h ei r u r ba n p r oj ec t s. t h i s r e p r e s e n tat i o n s , s y m b o l s with no referents, are a n i m p o r ta n t pa r t o f t h e ' m e d i a t i s e d ' c i t y.

conception present in most projects involving Grands Ensembles/Large Complexes from the 1960s and 1970s.

This flexibility also makes it difficult to define what exactly an 'écoquartier' is. The term itself has been criticized for having a certain ambiguity: the prefix 'éco-' is used in the French language for “economic” rather than “ecological”. But the 'écoquartier' label is also quite unspecific: it does not have a unitary form, but functions more as an umbrella term to encompass different local projects, with different contents, focuses and ambitions. It is thus a term that is in the process of definition, “which is evidence of ongoing reflection.”16 Bordeaux has two écoquartier projects: the first, Bordeaux Lac-Ginko, was awarded as such in the first call for projects in 2009; the latter, Bastide-Niel, is still in progress. Both of them are supported by a previous territorial structure: the ZAC ('Zone d'aménagement concerté' or Concerted planning zone). Both projects are piloted by the CUB (in cooperation with the Bordeaux City Hall), which has made sustainable development one of the highlights of their agenda. Both are also of a similar size, with around 2000-2500 dwellings being provided in each case, along with shops, offices and services. In the case of Bastide-Niel there is an emphasis on the nonresidential part of the program, with the office area doubling that of Ginko.

The main criticism of these developments is based on the fear of them becoming mere tools for urban marketing, ecological show-cases that may earn votes for the politicians who build them. The big question raised involves whom this new form of urbanization is aimed at, what kind of new P a g e

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social urban classes will these developments attract, but also who exactly is financing what, within the framework of a very complex private-public partnership. It is still unclear to what degree this sustainable development will also be socially sustainable.

Mobility: Flow of people and capital

Perhaps the other main force driving urban development is the changes in mobility. The development of high speed train networks in Europe, but specially in France, radically alters geographical conceptions and borders.

In the case of Bordeaux, this will mean being located only 2 hours away from Paris from 2016 onwards , which will make it virtually a satellite city of the capital. This will undoubtedly alter the development of Bordeaux, which will, all of a sudden, be closely connected to another urban reality in which the price of residential property per square meter is nearly three times higher. Âś The operation OIN-Euratlantique aims to plan and execute these changes, by delimiting a zone of 'National Interest Operations', which gives the State greater freedom of movement in the zoning, execution and concession of construction permits, while local authorities are responsible for drawing up the urban plan. The extension of the project, defining 250 types of program, shows a different urban strategy, much bigger in scale, which also has the objective of working simultaneously on both river banks, and creating an extensive business centre mixed with housing. The zone is, in fact, an agglomeration of different urban policies and programs (ZAC, B o r d e au x t h e p r oj e c t e d c i t y

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ORU, GPV, PNRQAD) that sometimes even overlap, and involve three different councils (Bordeaux, Floirac, Bègles) and the CUB. In contrast with this high speed transport of goods and persons, which in a way does away with territory, the strategy of interurban mobility is presented as necessary to retrieve and structure the urban territory, a fundamental tool to sanitize City centres and make them attractive, and also to open up the peripheries. Both of them are also bound up with the argument of sustainability, offering alternatives to a plausible oil-shortage crisis. The strategy within city centres is to densify the fabric near public transport routes, which is true for Bordeaux and its plans for the placement of 50,000 dwellings, but it is also a general tendency in France. We are sure that urban realities will be deeply altered in all these new central zones that are being created, and connected in transport networks, which enable the flow of people, goods and capital. The question that arises is what will happen in the areas that fall away from these central zones, and how the foreseeable economic and social differences are going to be dealt with.

Local authorities have fewer and fewer financial resources to make the city with, so they rely on private promotion, which has its operating rules and regulations, its systems of logic and its pace of production. Promoters are in a position to make investments.

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The contradictions of endless growth

While the plans of the Municipality rely on an idea of constant development and growth of the city, there is little discussion about how sustainable it is to create new urban fabric compared to renovating the existing one.17 With the authority earned by having learned from the past, and with the main argument from the parties involved being “we know how to build the city today”, our cities keep expanding, mimicking the logic of 'constant growth' that neoliberalism makes true through practice. The spearhead of this growth involves large projects with the premise of being “zones of exception”: grounds for experimentation, exemplary projects or merely areas defined and designed to bring in administrative facilities (tax reduction, investment promises, priority treatments...). However these developments are being publicized and displayed as the future city, and these examples are just rare exceptions of density and quality in a reality in which construction within cities is three times less than that in periurban areas, in the shape of low-rise detached house urbanization. This suburban sprawl, which is silently taking place in the outskirts of our cities is hidden because it does not belong to the public sphere, its realm is that of the private, the domestic. This urban fabric has lost any trace of what we understand by urbanity.

B o r d e au x t h e p r oj e c t e d c i t y

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the instertitial complimentary city city-making initiatives

This chapter is concerned with those less visible and less evident persons and parties involved in the making of the City, and with initiatives issuing from civil society, projects based on variable geometry, which are noteworthy in terms of both space and time. Being multi-facetted through the diversity of the processes giving rise to them, what are the conditions behind the emergence and implementation of these initiatives? Can we consider that they cause forms to emerge which are complementary with “tr aditional” urbanism? And that they too make the city, albeit from a different angle? Within this development concentration on the Interstitial City, we have selected four three very different projects, in their scope and scale, their history and their methodology, but they all seem to play a part in the making of our living environment. These initiatives are theoretically part of a much larger set of “au milieu/in the midst” phenomena* (Deleuze).

They are situated in a dynamic, transversal position, at the heart of a process of formulation based on multiple participation. localization of some of the bottom-up initiatives in bordeaux (top). these operations usually OVERLAp with other existing plans. In one plot of land in the rive droite, the eastern river bank (bottom), three projects coexist, initiatives with radically different scales, financing schemes and ambitions. The whole plot of land will become the second Écoquartier that Bordeaux will host, a project led by the CUB and with an urban plan by the well-known architecture studio MVRDV (The Netherlands). Collaborating with the CUB, the “Évolution” group aims to restore some industrial buildings in that plot of land, with the intention of creating ‘creative businesses’ and neighbourhood services. In one of those buildings, the association “La 58ème” carries out its activities with the permission of “Évolution”. It is a temporary permit, but their work became so known they will probably influence the future plans for the site.

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ÉVOLUTION private developer

gentrification

attraction of wealthier classes eviction

MERIADECK 1963, CHABAN-DELMAS

RENOVATION OF THE QUAIS (WATERFRONT) 1999, JUPPÉ

The Dames du Lac is an informal and temporary catering area, organized by families of Asian origin. It is set up every Sunday at midday on the shores of the Lake, from spring to autumn, on a known but variable perimeter. Sometimes it moves places and adapts. There are between 10 and 15 caterers, though their number fluctuates. Information is passed around like a rumour – this market is a phoney secret that spreads. As a family meeting place and a space of temporary conviviality, the Dames du Lac, makes for a nice halt on Sunday outings, as well as an urban gem to be discovered.

The caterers’ modular and moveable stands can be assembled and dismantled in an afternoon. The Ladies of the Lake all come from families of Asian origin, the system is a precise one based on community organization and a shared entrepreneurial culture. A corporate vision of competition, and one where “the client calls the client”. The service offered is very accessible, the prices are identical, and there is very little waiting time. Quality menus for an unofficial, underground, open air economy. The ladies take up their positions where, just before, there was nothing. We are on the shores of the Lake between the commercial zone and Les Aubiers. A discreet but visible installation.

Bordeaux the instertitial city

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OVERLAYING INITIATIVES. In one plot of land in the rive droite, the eastern river bank, three projects coexist, initiatives with radically different scales, financing schemes and ambitions.

ZAC BASTIDE-NIEL creative bussinesses

bottom-up

RENOVATION OF THE QUAIS (WATERFRONT) La 58ème 1999, JUPPÉ

CASERNE DE NIEL

ARTIE R PROJETDARWIN

influence

ÉCOQ U

top-down

CUB

The Dames du Lac

Impasse d’Agen

Place André Meunier

Halle de Douves

Casserne de Niel

Jardin de ta soeur

Dames du lac Informal food market

LOCALIZATION OF BOTTOM-UP INITIATIVES

Le Jardin de ta Soeur

This is an example how the city’s inhabitants, associations and players bring urban wasteland to life18 The garden is located in the northern part of Bordeaux. Like a space waiting to be discovered, this wasteland was earmarked for a building or housing project. In July 2003, after some urban exploration, the Social Centre Bordeaux-Nord, together with the collective Bruit du Frigo and volunteer inhabitants, came up with the idea of turning this space into a temporary garden, just for a weekend. A few months later, a collective (Collectif Bordonor) made up of local associations and inhabitants was formed, in order to propose to the city of Bordeaux a permanent participatory garden project on this land – a project competing with the building plan. The city was won over, backed the garden project and ratified it in early 2005: today it is in the process of being developed.

As a citizens’ scheme, the garden has been, since 2003, a local hands-on amenity for neighbourhood professionals (school, social, theatre), as well as a public place for inhabitants. Given the method of governance chosen by the collective, the garden has a long time-frame and involves complex decision-making processes: “Slowly but surely, they are cooperating”. This is a project which is experimenting with other ways of creating public places in conjunction with different local authorities. Today, the city of Bordeaux is also talking about this project. The method here is that of a city starting out on the basis of demonstration – a method being pursued on cooperative bases with local authorities.

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i m a g e s o f " l e j a r d i n d e t a s o e u r " 1 //, 2 // ( p h oto b y a n n e- c ĂŠc i l e pa r e d e s ).

T h e g a r d en s, t h e p r oj ec t o f a n ei g h b o u r s' co llec tiv e, i s a n e x a m ple o f a m o r e ac tiv e ' c o n c e r tat i o n ' b e t w e e n t h e a d m i n i s t r at i o n a n d t h e i n h a b i ta n t s .

La 58eme

The 58eme is a recent initiative bringing together associations that are involved with street culture. They are collectively underwriting a project involving a place, which encompasses a supply of services as well as a cultural provision around urban activities. As a temporary skate park, the place should be opening its doors in June 2011 and accommodating events such as concerts and exhibitions. It is being constructed today thanks to a group of volunteers who have been involved for a year within the association. The project, for its part, came in to being four years ago, the brainchild of its two instigators, and has developed thanks to the energy of the group formed and co-opted over the last three years of reflection.

It also enjoys the moral and financial backing of the creative marketing agency, Inoxia.

The 58th is part and parcel of the network of creative economy in Aquitaine and has become involved in the place where an eco-neighbourhood will be established, underwritten by the Urban Community of Bordeaux (CUB).

The place is Bordeauxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s old military barracks, now abandoned: the Niel Barracks. For the record, the last inhabitant of the place was the 57th regiment, so these residents are the next ones: the 58eme. Involved are diverse array of people and the assembly of a complex project, which permeates and associates private and public economies alike, and is incorporated in various intermediary time-frames and representations.

Bordeaux the instertitial city

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i m a g e s o f t h e l a k e i n s u m m e r 3 // ( p h oto b y a n n e- c éc i l e pa r e d e s ). the 'dames du lac' (ladies of the lake) provid e with foo d th e visito rs o f th e l a k e. t h is co m m ercia l e xch a n g e is n ot at a l l r e g u l at e d , a n d t h e r e f o r e s h o w s a c i t y w h i c h r e l i e s c o m p l e t e ly o n p r i v a t e i n i t i at i v e s , w i t h n o c o o p e r at i o n w i t h t h e p u b l i c a d m i n i s t r at i o n .

L’Impasse d’Agen/ The Agen Impasse.

The Impasse d’Agenis situated in the Sacré Coeur neighbourhood in the south of Bordeaux. As a neighbourhood with a diversified population, the Impasse is just like the neighbourhood, quiet but alive. Since 2003 or thereabouts, the inhabitants of the Impasse would customarily meet for an annual aperitif, at the beginning of the school year – as if to welcome new arrivals and get the new year off to a good start. The association came into being as spontaneously as any meeting with a neighbour, with the slight difference that it has come about in an Impasse. The circulation area is thus smaller and involves regular to-ing and fro-ing, and with this, the habitual greetings and hallos. In 2005, “after an aperitif which dragged on a bit [...] and left people a little tipsy”, various people suggested taking things further, by formalizing that spontaneous act and setting up an association: “a street association”, as they put it. “Les Impatients” (literally, “The Impatient Ones”) thus came into being. The association includes people and inhabitants of the Impasse d’Agen and among them social and cultural figures in the Bordeaux Urban Community. The goal of “Les Impatients” is to bring life to the Impasse d’Agen by involving as many residents as possible, and encouraging exchanges and neighbourliness. There has been a desire for self-management from the project’s outset. It is a question of making do with whatever and whoever is there. In this venue of words and projects, the programmes conducted by these “Impatients” are varied and have a direct impact on the daily round of their users – they are designed P a g e

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to make for “better living”. Everybody is brought together by one main event: the organization of the music festival in the Impasse. In an ever more sought-after place to live in, like those Ladies of the Lake “between cache and cachet”, word about the festival spreads by word of mouth. “On June the 21st, that’s the place to be”, in the words of a resident. Everybody takes part in it, children and their choir, teenagers and their rock group.

As the night proceeds, children go home and it is the turn of grownups to take over. The association undertakes more informal programmes: installing benches in front of houses, creating green spaces, setting up a huge screen for international rugby matches.

“Les Impatients” still refuse any form of contractual arrangement with the local authorities, “to avoid being made use of”, but also because such relations with the institution, for some people, are already part and parcel of their profession. What is produced in the Impasse d’Agen is everyday activities, ones which might be associated with the following expression: “We may not do much, but we’ll do it our way”.

Unfulfilled requirements

Requirements and needs not satisfied or unfulfilled seem to be the starting point for a certain number of these projects. Whatever the size of the group, its nature (community, political, friends, etc.) and its organizational form (legal or informal), it would seem that such utopian actions are keen to respond to a problem. A need for additional resources – Vietnamese Bordeaux the instertitial city

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market – a place devoted to urban cultures – the 58eme – , the creation of a space suitable for accommodating more direct neighbourly relations – the Impasse d’Agen –, each project, in a time-frame and with a method of organization peculiar to it, responds to this issue that is collectively confirmed and shared. This approach does not occur only in “alternative” or “marginal” projects. The Ministry of the Urban Policy, with its interministerial brief, for example, proposed a methodology trying to respond to the riots in Vaux-en-Velin in 1990; the Cité de la Benauge was built because of the fact that, in 1950, collective housing did not exist and there was a shortage of units to house post war workers; Euratlantique is a response to the desire to link Bordeaux with major European cities, making it more accessible and/or more competitive.

Empty-vacant spaces.

Some of these social alternatives are included within a perimeter of action formalized by norms and procedures, public policies, and private investors.

Others are situated precisely where the factor of vacancy even more directly proposes the possibility of “doing something”. Interstitial spaces thus become the city’s available area, places in the void, or perhaps which still put up some resistance from an urban viewpoint, temporarily at least, to basic development policies. As abandoned areas or spaces waiting to be developed, these forms of urban wasteland represent the “granary” of our cities – a granary still unoccupied and thus waiting to be mobilized. These

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voids also represent something undefined and indeterminate, in places where uncertainty is what remains to be cherished, where people can still experiment, and try things out. A waste plot, for the Jardin de ta Soeur; an isolated lake shore for the market; an Impasse spared of traffic for Agen.

Resources

When we talk of the urban void, this does not mean â&#x20AC;&#x153;nothingnessâ&#x20AC;?. These urban voids have qualities, and formal, urban and above all human potential.

These existing resources need to be triggered, driven by an individual or by a group of individuals, detecting and then activate them. The group thus relies on an existing common culture, or formalizes a way of acting together, and collaborating.

The Vietnamese market is situated by the water, on the shores of the Lake, where customers can quietly make the most of the landscape, far from heavy-handed authorities. Visitors get together on a community or even family basis, transposing techniques and organizational methods coming from their original culture.

The Niel Barracks is an area of wasteland representing a noteworthy industrial heritage. The project is underwritten by people who have completed higher studies in architecture and commerce, and is supported by Inoxia. The co-opted associations share a common culture, issuing from urban cultures, and are today experimenting with new methods of governance.

The Jardin de ta Soeur is an abandoned space in the heart of a neighbourhood in north Bordeaux. The terrain is located in a tangible and symbolic way Bordeaux the instertitial city

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at a point where a series of social and cultural parties meet – parties who know one another and have previously experimented with different kinds of collaboration.

The Impasse d’Agen, for its part, is very pleasant and wooded, traffic in it is reduced, and the people coordinating the association have, in many cases, come a local cultural and social associative background.

Specific features and assets.

Since the 1990s, the art, architecture and urbanism sectors have been raising the issue of “reappropriating” the City. They have been asking questions about ways of acting in the city, about freeing up areas of expertise in a territory, and more broadly about their role in the making of the contemporary city. They have experimented with processes of action and research, capable of showing up the contradictions of a global, standardized and communicated city. Their product is “living together” which involves re-injecting practices of urban user-friendliness. They apply temporary programmes, initiatives that can be modulated, and nomadic arrangements. The AAA (Atelier d’Architecture Autogeré) collective talks of “urban tactics”, those tactics which are aimed precisely at the interstitial condition, proposing new types of urban systems stemming from a spontaneous dynamics and everyday practices, thus permitting a permanent and ongoing reinvention of the city’s social and political space.

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These city pieces seem to have shared points, and seem to have developed qualities specific to their condition.

The temporary and the long term

Becoming involved in the temporary seems to culminate in more open and more flexible projects, and actions of a defined length which have the ability to get around prohibitions and conduct experiments where others would fear to tread. This short term factor amplifies the effect of surprise and strangeness caused by these practices. On the one hand, this feeling of strangeness develops their ability to mobilize and invent, and, on the other, it develops new ways of communicating projects: more informal. When the parties concerned talk of “temporary”, they are describing the time of the action more than the relationship they weave with the territory. Because the overall time-frame of the project, which includes the initial thinking and the creation of relations with the people concerned, is often part of the long term. The 58eme set itself up in the Barracks by negotiating a temporary occupation agreement, pending the eco-neighbourhood project, but its intent had already been around for four years. The Ladies of the Lake have been present for many years. But they appear and disappear in an afternoon, and once dispersed, the territory is once again intact. The development of the Jardin de ta Soeur was conceived for just a weekend period. But this demonstration will help to mobilize the future people involved in the association, and make this place “possible” in the imagination Bordeaux the instertitial city

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of inhabitants, professionals and decision-makers. Nowadays, the Garden is an ongoing programme supported by all the local authorities.

The fleeting nature of these actions and programmes actually makes it possible to try out new uses. The temporary, or even episodic aspect thus becomes an urbandiagnostic factor, an experimental stage standing in for â&#x20AC;&#x153;more classicâ&#x20AC;? development policies, an opportunity with regard to the assessment of urban outlooks. In a more general way, these initiatives introduce other forms of time-frames into ways of acting on a territory.

They often work in the long term and take time to appear. These timeframes are thus at times longer and more variable. Many of these projects question the daily round and weave a special relationship to the territory and those living in it. They take their time, because collaborating calls for work involving regularity and, for some, relationship.

Cooperation

These initiatives cooperate, collaborate, and encourage participation.

Some do so simply out of conviction, others are activists and militant, and champion rights, while others have experimented with and formalized this type of organization, because the main resource of these projects is often human and/or cultural. So it is important to learn how to make them co-exist, in order to put them into gear and produce a common good. Creating a place for everyone, giving everyone a role, inventing decision-making methods, re-inventing consensus, and defining the outlines of this shared space. These collaborations intervene P a g e

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on different scales, ranging from the local to the trans-local. They come into being from neighbourhood or street, in the micro-space, but they do not remain trapped in the parochial; they are also part and parcel of national and European networks.

Cooperative forms thus become intervention protocols, methodologies capable of forming a new way of conducting projects of consultation and participation, especially within development policies.

Conclusion

The time of the “classic” urban project is a time removed from what is living. It is a long time in which certain spaces remain in abeyance, in some cases disqualified. This time, which is necessary for consideration of the role of all the city parties, remains out of sync with the rhythm of everyday life, and runs the risk of cultivating“the trauma of Arles”, of the abandonment often felt by inhabitants in urban projects.Does that part of the city which we have described as “interstitial”, by way of the qualities that it develops, represent a possible reconnection with reality? It might be capable of softening the break that we sometimes notice between the time of urban projects and human time, by responding in a more spontaneous manner to specific and at times ephemeral requirements.

The fact that this type of project should come into being in spaces which are given less attention than elsewhere, lends them an innovative, not to say “pioneering” dimension. Because they have the capacity to flush out unsuspected places, and in some cases the territories occupied become coveted Bordeaux the instertitial city

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W e w o u l d l i k e t o a c k n o w l e d g e Pat r i c k T o u r n a c h e , M i c h e l D u c h è n e , E t i e n n e Pa r i n , G a b i Fa r a g e a n d Y va n D e t r a z ( B r u i t d u F r i g o ) , O l i v i e r D e m a n g e at, Bernard Blanc, Anne Gerstlé, Pierre Bambou and Ag n è s V i l l ec h a i s e fo r t h ei r t i m e s p e n t w i t h u s sharing their different views and opinions on the cit y o f B o r d e au x, a s w ell a s a ll t h e in s tit u tio n s a n d p e r s o n s f r o m G r a n d Pa r c a n d S a i n t M i c h e l who helped us in the research process. The d i a g r a m s r e p r o d u c e d i n t h i s p u b l i c at i o n w o u l d n o t h av e b e e n p o s s i b l e w i t h o u t t h e h e l p o f t h e D i r e c t i o n d e l' I n f o r m at i o n G é o g r a p h i q u e of

the

Bordeaux

Urban

Com munit y

(CUB)

a n d s p e c i a l ly P. D a n d i e u, F r a n c o i s F r e y n e t, Pat r i c k M a l l e t, M i c h è l e C o r r e a n d J e a n P i e r r e S a b at i e r providing

s u i ta b l e

cartographic

resources

w h i c h s e r v e d a s a b a s e f o r t h e v i s u a l i z at i o n s

areas. And when more institutionalized projects take their place, these interstitial spaces appear further on, further away, in the available space.

The cooperative dimension of these projects is an extremely interesting feature, in a society which, for the past 20 years, increasingly raises the issue of the bonds and communications between individuals and institutions...

Producing a mix of classes, reducing “social fracture”: the creation of new areas of expression and action can only contribute to the achievement of these goals. The idea is not to replace existing traditional areas of consultation, but, on the contrary, of confronting them. The interstitial city should not be understood as constructing itself against but rather with the more “conventional” city. Today’s city is possibly being made on all these scales, from the ground-floor to the ethereal spaces of the city. Does the challenge not involve inventing new forms of circulation and interaction between these different “cities”?

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( So u r ce D G I P CI 2010, CU B SI G 2010). A r c en R ê v e a n d e s p e c i a l ly É r i c T r o u s s i c o t w e r e c r u c i a l i n t h e u n d e r s ta n d i n g o f t h e B o r d e a u x t e r r i t o r y t h r o u g h t h e m e e t i n g s , r o u n d ta b l e s a n d u r b a n v i s i t s t h e y k i n d ly l e t u s ta k e p a r t i n . W e a r e g r at e f u l f o r t h e r e s e a r c h a d v i s e k i n d ly o f f e r e d b y M é m o i r e d e B o r d e a u x a n d i n pa r t i c u l a r b y G e n e v i è v e C a i l l a b e t.

We

are

also

thankful

to

M ich el a n g elo

Pi s to l e t to, Lu i g i Co p p o l a a n d t h e t e a m o f E v en to 201 1 fo r t h eir s t ro n g co m mit m en t w i t h t h e r e s e a r c h p r o j e c t, a n d t h e i r e f f i c i e n c y s o lv i n g p r o b l e m s a l o n g t h e way. W e w o u l d n ' t lik e to en d wit h o u t t h a n kin g v ery m uch t h e s t a f f a t t h e M o l l a t l i b r a r y a n d e s p e c i a l ly M r M o l l at f o r p r o v i d i n g u s w i t h a p r i v i l e g e d s pa c e t o w o r k a n d d e v e lo p o u r r e s e a r c h d u r i n g t h e s e t w o m o n t h s at t h e i r c o n f e r e n c e r o o m “ L a 9 1”, a s w e l l a s p r o v i d i n g a s u b s ta n t i a l pa r t o f o u r b i b l i o g r a p h y. A p a r t f r o m t h e s o u r c e s m en tio n ed b efo r e, t h e r ese a rch t e a m used t h e A r c h i v e s M u n i c i pa l e s d e B o r d e a u x , va r i o u s lib r aries fro m t h e U niversit é d e B o r d e au x an d t h e d o c u m e n tat i o n c e n t r e o p e n t o t h e p u b l i c at t h e A g e n c e d ' U r b a n i s m e d e B o r d e a u x .

W e r e g r e t i f s o m e o f t h e d ata i n t h i s r e s e a r c h m ay a p p e a r n o t a c c u r at e o r c u r r e n t e n o u g h , b u t t h e M u n i c i p a l i t y a n d t h e i r d o c u m e n ta l s o u r c e s fa i l e d t o p r o v i d e m o r e s u i ta b l e o n e s .

A l l t h e d ata p r e s e n t i n t h i s r e s e a r c h s t e m s f r o m a l r e a dy p u b l i s h e d r e p o r t s a n d d o c u m e n t s . W e a l s o a p o l o g i z e f o r a n y e d i t o r i a l m i s ta k e , a s w e d i d n ' t co u n t w i t h t h e s e rv i c e s o f a p r o f e ssi o n a l t e x t e d i t o r o r t r a n s l at o r o f o u r c h o i c e .

B o r d e a u x R e p o r t i s a p r o j e c t o f C o h a b i tat i o n S t r at e g i e s ( L u c i a B a b i n a , G u i l l e r m o D e l g a d o C a s ta n e d a , E m i l i a n o G a n d o l f i , C a r l o s G a r c i a S a n c h o, G a b r i e l a R e n d o n , M i g u e l R o b l e s- D u r á n ) in

c o l l a b o r at i o n

with

F lo r ia n e

Arrijuria

M i n a b e r r y, Fa n n y L i ata r d , A n n e - C é c i l e Pa r e d e s , E m m a n u e l l e R o u s s i l h e s - P o u c h e t. L ayo u t d e s i g n : c i v i c c i t y ( D a r i u s G o n d o r , I m k e P l i n ta ) . P h o t o s b y A n n e - C é c i l e Pa r e d e s Bordeaux

Report

is

pa r t

of

Evento

B o r d e a u x , 2 0 1 1 . w w w. c o h s t r a . o r g

Bordeaux the instertitial city

2011.

FOOTNOTES 1 Interview at Leparisien.fr, “Juppé au Quai d'Orsay: "je ne suis pas le Deus ex machina", published February 28th 2011. Bordeaux métropole Aquitaine), December 2008.

2 P. Veilletet, Bords d’eaux, Arléa, 1989.

3 Jacques Donzelot, “La ville à trois vitesses”, Revue Esprit, March 2004.

4 Sources: SudOuest, Laboratoire CLAMEUR. 5 “Des logements de plus en plus chers en ville”, published in SudOuest March 4th 2011.

6 .Jean-Marie Billa, “Le patrimoine comme sens de l’histoire urbaine : les obstacles”, from “50 question à la ville”, MSHA, 2010.

7 Quoted from P. Dandieu, from the CUB..

8 The whole discourse can be retrieved at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKSt3YY1fas 9 An interesting visual document of the time can be retrieved at: http://www.ina.fr/economie-et-societe/ environnement-et-urbanisme/video/ CAF97065335/guichard-grands-ensembles. fr.html 10 Christine Lelévrier, sociologist and city planner.

11 Philippe Panerai. Architect-urbanist, 2002.

12 Further information about the achievements of the 'politique de la ville' can be found at: http://www.ina.fr/economie-et-societe/education et-enseignement/video/2963628001006/30-ansde politique-de-la-ville.fr.html 13 David Harvey, “The condition of Postmodernity”, Oxford: 2004, Blackwell Publishing, p. 147.

14 Quoted from an interview with M. Duchène, Mairie de Bordeaux.

15 .“Qu'est-ce qu'un ÉcoQuartier?” http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/Plan Ville-Durable.html, Retrieved 2nd March 2011.

16 "Sociologie du développement durable urbain: projets et stratégies métropolitaines françaises.", Philippe Hamman et Christine Blanc, Volumen 9 de EcoPolis, Peter Lang, Bruxelles, 2009, p 125.

17 "Le piège des écoquartiers", Slim Mazni, LionCapitale.fr, 4th November 2009. Retrieved at http://www.lyoncapitale.fr/lyoncapitale/journal/ univers/Actualite/Environnement/Le-piege-des ecoquartiers

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GRAND PA R C

BORDEAUX REPORT 2/3

text by E M m A N U E L L E P O U C H E T

9 729 in h a b ita n ts 60 h a s 162 . 15 IN H A B/H A 2 .37 IN H A B/dw ellin g 53. 5% socia l h o usin g e x a m p l e o f p u b l i c s pac e i n

17% U N EM PLOY ED

grand

p a r c ( l e f t, p h o t o b y a n n e -

22% yo u n gs t er (0-20)

c éc i l e pa r e d e s )

34 % Eld er ly (+ 60)

g r a n d pa r c W I T H I N B O R D E AU X ( TO P ) OVERVIE W OF ITS MAIN

45 % m o n o pa r en ta l fa milie s

F E AT U R E S A N D L A N D M A R K S

30% b elow pov ert y lin e

le t ter code assig n ed to e ach h ousin g b uildin g (B OT TO M).

Mairie-Quartier Local representation of the Municipality

F O R A M O R E D E T A I L E D L I S T, R E F E R t o t h e g u i d e at t h e e n d o f t h i s c h a p t e r .

Policlinic

Elementary school Shopping centre K

L N R O’ O

M O’ O’

T

J

Social/ cultural centre

A

High school

U

I

V

H

D E G

F

Municipal swimming pool

Public library

W S2 S3

X

Middle school

P S1

C

B

Animation centre

O’

Shopping centre

Residence for the elderkly

S

Y

Salle de fetes (closed)

Z

S

ä g r a n d pa r c

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INTRODUCTION TO THE TERRITORY The Gr and Parc is a 'gr and ensemb le' (large housing complex) located in the nor th-west of Bordeaux, less than a kilometre from the cit y centre. It covers a total area of 60 hec tares/50 ac r e s h o u s i n g i n i t s m o r e t h a n 4 ,0 0 0 h o u s i n g u n i t s 9,7 2 9 i n h a b i ta n t s (20 0 6 es t i m at e). 1 T h e G r a n d Pa r c wa s es ta b li s h ed o n an o ld marsh l an d occupied by g r assl an d an d watercr ess b eds. The area was recognised as the Luze marshland and the palu de Bordeaux. A few insalubrious dwellings clustered in the shant y-like Cité des Cressonnières, which used to house a poor population that made a living by sorting waste accumulated in the area. 2 According to a resident: “If I had lived in the Grand Parc as a boy or teenager, I would have found areas of wasteland, pl aces fo r r a i s i n g cows, s m a ll c a b i n s co n s t r u c t e d w i t h o u t building permits on a huge territory that b elonged to the Luze fa m i ly, s t r e tch i n g fr o m t h e Pa r c R i v i è r e to way ov e r t h e r e , b eyond the present-day Parc des Expositions/Exhib ition Centre.

That’s what I would have seen…” 3

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G r a n d pa r c i s n o t a n

BORDEAUX NORD

a d m i n i s t r at i v e u n i t i n i t s e l f, i t i s pa r t o f t h e n e i g h b o u r h o o d o f g r a n d pa r c- pa u l d o u m e r . e v e n i f i t s i n h a b i ta n t s c h o o s e

g eo g r a p h y ', b u t a l e v e l b e low t h e z u s ( u r b a n s e n s i b l e zo n e ).

CENTRE

GRAND PARC PAUL DOUMER

Michèle Delaunay Conseillere générale General chancellor (PS)

it i n to t h e so - c a lled ' pr io r it y

Conseil General General council

n ei g h b o u r h o o d), w h i c h p l ac e s

Anne Marie CAZALET Local mayor

( R i g h t w i n g ) . G r a n d pa r c i s a ' q u a r t i e r p r i o r i ta i r e ' ( p r i o r i t y

Alain JUPPÉ (UMP) Mayor of Bordeaux

DSU Urban Redevelopment Mairie de Bordeaux Municipality of Bordeaux

m ay o r a n d a l s o p e r ta i n s t o u m p

Departmental level: GIRONDE

a p p o i n t e d d i r e c t ly b y b o r d e a u x ' s

Federal Government

c a n to n n u m b e r 2 ), t h e lo c a l m ay o r ( a n n e m a r i e c a z a l e t ) i s

Quartier Prioritaire (CUCS) Priority Neighbourhood

i n t h e c a n to n a l e l ec t i o n s ( g r a n d pa r c- pa u l d o u m e r i s t h e

Maire-adjoint du quartier Local mayor

a l e f t w i n g r e p r e s e n ta n t

In the 1940s, the government of Bordeaux envisioned the urbanisation of this territory. It purchased the total land between 1947 and 1954. It took four years to drain the marshland and another 9 years, from 1959 to 1968, for the construction work. The project of Grand Parc was an important part of a larger plan by Jacques Chaban-Delmas – then mayor of Bordeaux. It was designed and envisioned to modernise the city’s housing stock and to ameliorate the housing crisis.4 A resident remembers: “At the beginning, when we arrived, Mr. Chaban-Delmas, the mayor of the day, was proud of saying that the Grand Parc was his little city in his big one.

We had everything we needed.”5 The project provided modern housing units designed to accommodate about 16,000 people, in particular the inhabitants of the Mériadeck district, which was scheduled to be entirely demolished.

In 1955 Jean Royer, the consultant urban planner of Bordeaux with the assistance of Claude Leloup, got in charge of the overall plan of the housing complex. Like the Cité de la Benauge, which they had completed not long before, the Grand Parc referred to the functionalist principles of modern housing projects championed by the Athens Charter. The housing project was designed around 8-hectare of land where high-rise and low-rise buildings were erected. The buildings were arranged parallel and perpendicular to the orthogonal east-west and north-south axes. The narrow buildings, oriented towards the sun, offered mainly large housing typologies, from T3 to T5. They were organised wall-to-wall through the buildings, offering uninterrupted views and plenty of light. The homogeneous façades were G r a n d pa r c i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e t e r r i to r y

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punctuated by successive spans of windows, loggias, and trellised screens around the stairwell. The public amenities – city hall annex, community centre, schools, cultural and commercial centres– were built in the heart as well as in the edge of the housing complex.6 In order to develop and construct this housing project the city of Bordeaux created in 1957 a Mixed Economy Company (SEM), the SBUC (renamed InCité in 2003), which would be the principal contracting authority for Grand Parc together with the city’s Office d’HLM/Low Rent Housing Office (today called Aquitanis).

The construction of the Grand Parc was undertaken in three phases involving the following architects; Jean-Jacques Prévot, Paul Daurel, André Conte, François Brochet, Robert Bedout, Claude Ferret and Serge Bottarelli.

The first phase, from 1959 to 1963, began with the north-east quarter of the territory comprising residential buildings as well as two commercial centres, Counord and Europe. The latter would not be finished until 1968.

In the second phase, from 1962 to 1964, the initial plans to accommodate people repatriated from Algeria were altered to comply with the housing demands of ministerial directives. Thus, the south-west quarter of the housing estate was densified. It provided not only one but four low-rise structures and a high-rise tower. Between 1964 and 1968, the last phase of the building construction was completed in the north-west quarter of the estate alongside public amenities. The number of these amenities exceeded the number of the ones initially projected in the urbanisation plan in order to fulfil the necessities of the new ministerial directives. Many of these facilities gradually encroached upon the park. The constructions were P a g e

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rounded off by the Mozart Tower (1979) and the Maryse Bastié Residence for elderly persons (1993).7¶ The Grand Parc may have represented an utopia of modern urbanisation, but its heyday only lasted a few years. In fact, its construction was completed at the time when the urbanisation of large housing estates was called into question and brought to a standstill in France. The Grand Parc gradually lost its dynamism, effect mainly marked by the closure of major facilities such as the community centre and the Olympic swimming pool.

After a long ‘inactive period’ this housing estate has experienced a new dynamic – urban regeneration – mainly since it was listed as a priority neighbourhood (level 2) in the Urban Social Cohesion Contract (CUCS), which was signed by the city of Bordeaux.

This housing complex is particularly well equipped since its creation with shops, facilities and public services. It has been recognised as a ‘city within the city’. Its diverse and functional housing stock has prevented its association with a ‘sleeping city’. A resident explains: “We are in Grand Parc, we are in Bordeaux. It’s a city within the city. You don’t need to leave Grand Parc… practically everything is there!”8 But this semi-autarkic life, proposed and appreciated by the inhabitants – “at Grand Parc, there’s everything you need” – also has adverse effects of withdrawal and people sticking together, operating on the basis of village codes. This situation is heightened by a specific kind of urbanisation that raises issues of porosity between the neighbourhood, its environment and the city of Bordeaux.

The previous image of this housing complex, and the representations G r a n d pa r c i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e t e r r i to r y

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i m ag e s o f g r a n d pa r c ( p h oto s b y a n n e- c éc i l e pa r e d e s ). t h e u r b a n l a n d s c a p e o f g r a n d pa r c i s t h at o f t h e f u n c t i o n a l i s t c i t y, a n a r c h i t e c t u r e o f s l a b s a n d tow e r w i t h b i g o p e n s pac e s between them, and extensive public gardens 1 //, 2 //, 3 //. m o s t o f t h e d w e l l i n g s a r e social housing an d are managed by t wo l a r g e c o m pa n i e s : A q u i ta n i s a n d i n c i t é . its prices range from 4,8 €/m2 per month f o r i n c i t é t o 2 , 5 -3 , 2 € / m 2 p e r m o n t h f o r a q u i ta n i s ( a r e n ta l o f n o n - s o c i a l h o u s i n g in th e centr e r ang es from 10 to 1 5 €/m2 per m o n t h). o n e o f t h e d efin in g ch a r ac t eris tics of the neighbourhood is the aging of i t s p o p u l at i o n : o v e r o n e t h i r d o f i t s i n h a b i t a n t s a r e o l d e r t h a n 6 0 . 4 //

associated therewith, mean that Grand Parc is negatively perceived, whereas paradoxically enough, its everyday life is reckoned by its inhabitants as pleasant – older residents in particular feel a genuine attachment to the neighbourhood.

This working-class complex, where problems of security and incivility do exist, is quite well preserved as compared with other large housing estates in the city. The quality of life described by most inhabitants should not, however, conceal the real social problems of people residing within the estate. The ageing population and the over-representation of single parent families have been raising questions for several years in regard with precariousness, social and inter-generation diversity, and the neighbourhood’s future development.

P O S I T I V E A N D N E G AT I V E S PA C E S A S P E R C E I V E D b y

avo i d t h e lo o k s a n d co m m e n t s o f t h e c r ow d

t h e i n h a b i t a n t s ( T O P. S O u r c e : a ' u r b a ) a n d

g at h e r i n g a r o u n d t h e b u i l d i n g . t h e s h o p p i n g

b o n d i n g a n d s e g r e g at i n g e l e m e n t s ( b o t t o m ) .

centre and the public services near the

t h e s p a c e s w h i c h a r e m o r e n e g a t i v e ly

m a i r i e- q ua r t i e r a r e s e e n a s t h e m o s t p o si t i v e,

perceived are the buildings g, h and i, which

in addition to th e centr al garden.

a r e r e g a r d e d a s t h e m o s t p r o b l e m at i c ,

t h e p u b l i c s pa c e s t h at a r e m o s t a p p r o p i at e d

h o u s i n g t h e i n h a b i ta n t s w i t h l o w e r

are, howe ver, those of a smaller scale. while

resources. the social centre is also perceived

some elements of the original plan persist

n e g a t i v e ly, p r o b a b ly b e c a u s e t h e s u r r o u n d i n g s

[ b o t t o m ] , l i k e t h e c e n t r a l s h a r e d h e at i n g

a r e a g a t h e r i n g p o i n t f o r y o u n g s t e r s . i n f a c t,

n e t wo r k , s o m e a r e a s h av e b e e n f e n c e d o r

Y o u n g w o m e n w h o v i s i t t h e C A C I S ( F a m i ly

e n c l o s e d b y v e g e tat i o n , c o n t r a d i c t i n g t h e

p l a n n i n g c e n t r e ) , a t t a c h e d t o i t, c h o o s e t o

o r i g i n a l n at u r e o f t h e p r o j e c t o f a n o p e n ,

go through an internal door in the social

p u b l i c g r e e n s pac e .

c e n t r e a n d n o t u s e t h e m a i n g at e , t r y i n g t o

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SEEN AS POSITIVE BY THE INHABITANTS

SEEN AS NEGATIVE BY THE INHABITANTS policlinic GATHERING SPACES

‘APPROPIATED’ COLLECTIVE SPACES

A, B buildings

is of ain ax

m

residence

tion

unica

comm

social centre

church

shopping centre G, H, I buildings library

public services

BONDING ELEMENTS (SHARED HEATING)

SEGREGATING ELEMENTS (RÉSIDENTIALIZATION, FENCING)

G r a n d pa r c i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e t e r r i to r y

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AQUITANIS

INCITE

DIOCESAN ASSOCIATION OF BORDEAUX

CILOF/CIVIL SERVANT HOUSING

BORDEAUX COMMUNE

CUB

CO-OWNERSHIP

STATE

GIRONDIN COMMITTEE

URBAN FORM The cit y of Bordeaux is divided into eight institutional distric ts, o n e o f t h e m i s fo r m e d by t h e G r a n d Pa r c a n d Pau l D o u m e r ag g lo m e r at e . E ac h o f t h e s e d i s t r i c t s h a s a t ow n h a ll r u n by a d epu t y m ayo r a ssi s t ed by a loc a l, h a n ds- o n t e a m. I n t h e distric t of Gr and Parc people tend to vote for the lef t. However, t h er e i s cu r r en t ly po lit ic a l o pposit i o n i n pu b lic i n s t it u t i o n s b e t w een t h e di s t r ic t m ayo r ess M r s. C a z a le t o f t h e U M P (r ig h t ) a n d t h e G en er a l Coun ci l, t h e R eg io n a l Coun ci l, a n d t h e Ur ba n Com munit y of Bordeaux (CUB), all run by people affiliated with the Socialist Part y (lef t ). Tensions rise when elec tions are held.

Gr an d Parc som etim es fin ds it self at th e core of contr adic tory po litic a l ch a llen g es.

G r a n d pa r c i s n o t a n a d m i n i s t r at i v e u n i t i n i t s e l f, i t i s p a r t o f t h e n e i g h b o u r h o o d o f g r a n d pa r c- pa u l d o u m e r . e v e n i f i t s i n h a b i ta n t s c h o o s e a l e f t w i n g r e p r e s e n ta n t i n t h e c a n t o n a l e l e c t i o n s ( g r a n d pa r c- pa u l d o u m e r i s t h e c a n t o n n u m b e r 2 ) , t h e l o c a l m ay o r ( a n n e m a r i e c a z a l e t ) i s a p p o i n t e d d i r e c t ly b y b o r d e a u x ' s m ay o r a n d a l s o p e r ta i n s t o u m p ( R i g h t w i n g ) . G r a n d pa r c i s a ' q u a r t i e r p r i o r i ta i r e ' (p r io r it y n eig h b o u r h o o d), w h ich p l ace s it i n to t h e so - c a lled ' p r io r it y g eo g r a p h y ', b u t a l e v e l b e low t h e z u s ( u r ba n s e n si b l e zo n e ).

G r a n d pa r c u r b a n f o r m

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owns/ manages

park public space social housing

AQUITANIS also owns the surrounding ground areas

wage

guardian: solves local problems, takes care of building/ surrounding areas.

manages

MAIRIE DE BORDEAUX AQUITANIS public social housing company

JURISDICTION AND LANDLORDS

This condition tends to slow projects down. The political divergence between the different parties are expressed by conflicts involving the management and development of Grand Parc. In fact, one of its features is that it has a state-owned division divided between 12 proprietors; institutions, landlords/management companies or moral persons. If the distribution of the territory is not always clearly identified and legible, it is conveyed by the presence of enclaves, enclosures and differences of quality in treatment, which gives rise to a feeling of parcelling and juxtaposition of public places.

Boundaries, which are often ill-defined and not very visible, also sometimes end in conflicts of use (e.g. the areas at the foot of buildings), and a lack of responsibility on the part of managers.

The two housing management companies of Grand Parc are Aquitanis and InCitĂŠ. Aquitanis (low rent housing office) is a social housing company present throughout the CUB. It manages 2,326 housing units in Grand Parc, which means that the 61% of the total rental housing stock is social housing.9 InCitĂŠ (SEM) is a housing management company which functions also as a developer and construction company. Part of its housing stock is social, while the other part is private. In Grand Parc it manages 1,001 private rental-housing units, the 26% of the rental housing stock.10 P a g e

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o p e n s pac e s u r r o u n d i n g t h e b u i l d i n g s i s a c t u a l ly o w n e d b y t h e ' b a i l l e u r s ' ( s o c i a l h o u s i n g a d m i n i s t r at o r s ) , u n l i k e t h e p u b l i c s pac e o f t h e g a r d e n s , w h i c h i s a r e s p o n s a b i l i t y o f t h e m u n i c i p a l i t y.

E V E n t h o u g h t h e r e h a s b e e n at t e m p t s t o f e n c e a n d ' p r i vat i z e ' t h i s s pa c e , a q u i ta n i s , t h e m a i n ' b a i l l e u r ' i n v o lv e d i n g r a n d p a r c has refused the plans proposed by some neighbours. the 'gardian' is a neighbour e m p l o y e d b y t h e ' b a i l l e u r ' w h i c h ta k e s c a r e o f c e r ta i n b u i l d i n g s a n d t h e i r s u r r o u n d i n g a r e a s . t h e r e a r e 1 2 ' g a r d i a n s ' i n g r a n d pa r c , w h o k n o w a l l t h e f i r s t- h a n d i n f o r m a t i o n o f t h ei r r e s pec tiv e b u i ld i n gs.

These two companies have an office giving service to tenants in the Grand Parc. They employ residents to work in the maintenance of the building (12 with Aquitanis and 8 for InCité). In addition to this work and the maintenance of shared premises they have other functions, including the up keeping of dwellings’ interior. The day-to-day presence of these employees provides social mediation among neighbours – “they are a bonding agent, an element of social cohesion”11.

Four buildings in the Grand Parc are in the private sector; building D, historically designed for housing local officials and today managed by SNI-CILOF (i.e., 8% of the rental stock), the Mozart, Condorcet and Montesquieu residences (i.e., 300 housing units are jointly owned by private proprietors). Lastly, a residence for elderly people (RPA) houses 43 persons and the hospital for dependent elderly persons (EHPAD) accommodates 63.

Urbanisation and Neighbourhood Architecture

The Grand Parc is constituted by 24 low-rise and four high-rise buildings, plus four residential blocks and 25 buildings housing services, shops and public amenities. New constructions (essentially residential accommodation and offices) have been built in the extreme north-east complying with Environmental High Quality norms (HQE), while in the south-east residential areas composed mainly by “échoppes” (small traditional Bordeaux G r a n d pa r c u r b a n f o r m

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houses) continue to be present.¶ The horizontal and vertical urbanisation of Grand Parc is monolithic with repetitive façades and distinctive features like roofing terraces and stripping windows. Unlike other large housing complexes, the ground density is low, just 15% (i.e., 65 housing units per hectare) as opposed to 50% in traditional neighbourhoods with échoppes12.

The decision to create an open housing complex organised around a large central urban park has helped to avoid the feeling of crowdedness. The spacing and orientation of the buildings offer lovely views over the city.

One resident explains: “I live on the 17th floor; I have an uninterrupted view over Bordeaux! You can see steamers; you get the impression they are actually entering the city. I don’t need to move from here”.13 Every entrance hall is equipped with an intercom system and access is made with a magnetic badge. Most of the buildings’ ground floors have shared garages for bicycles, strollers and individual cellars. However these spaces are under-utilised by tenants due to robbery (in buildings H and I these areas have vanished due to numerous problems). As a result, residents belongings are stored on apartment landings, cellars or balconies.

The housing units are deemed by their occupants to be spacious and well-lit because of their double exposure, the numerous windows and French windows giving onto balconies or loggias. The equipment in the units is obsolete and rudimentary, the kitchens have a sink set on a standard base (obligatory minimum equipment for collective housing), and most of the bathrooms are still fitted with “sabot-type” (“clog”-type bathtubs), or even a bidet (which is no longer suited to present-day lifestyles and is not very practical for families and elderly people).14 P a g e

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Public Art at Grand Parc

Public art is not present at Grand Parc except in two places, the community and the social centre. In these two sites public art has been exposed deliberately to distinguish the buildings from the general monotony of the housing complex. The community centre (Salle de fêtes) was designed by the architects Ferret, Bedout and Bottarelli and built between 1964 and 1967. Its structure, shaped like a cotton reel, and its colourful façade, based on Ferret drawings, form a geometric composition made with enamelled featuring the city of Bordeaux logo. It has been closed for almost 20 years because of asbestos problems, but it used to accommodate up to 800 people.

It offered theatre, films, dances and banquets. Some rehabilitation and transformation projects have been initiated to turn it once again into a major cultural venue in the areas, however none of these attempts have succeeded.15¶ The social centre (centre d'animation), distinctive due to its spiral form (also called “the snail”), was built by Autier and Peyssard.

Its architecture was enhanced by a dreamlike fresco made by Annette Messager (an artist who won the first prize at the 2005 Venice Biennial).16¶ In 2008, the General Council had a plan to install an art work produced by the sculptor Nicolae Fleissig, but differences of opinion between the representative, Mrs. Delaunay (Socialist Party) who supported the approach, and the Bordeaux city hall halt the operation. Instead, Mrs. Cazalet managed to realise a Parisian style enclosed garden called the “Europe square”.

In recent years Gran Parc has been integrated to the UNESCO World Heritage list.

G r a n d pa r c u r b a n f o r m

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Energy, Technology, and Waste Recycling

Modern materials were used to construct the Grand Parc buildings, as the hollow concrete board with acoustic and insulation properties17. However, fifty years later the housing complex seems obsolete and far from new environmental regulations. Throughout these years there have been many rehabilitation operations involving façade renewal, roof waterproof rehabilitation, lift and electricity system upgrading, landing doors and woodwork improvement, double-glazing installation, shutters and blinds replacement, as well as stairwells and entrance halls retrofitting. The interior of the apartments hasn’t been improved, this affair is usually at the tenant’s expense, unless the unit is in an extremely bad condition to be rented. Some housing units have been adapted for elderly or handicapped persons at their request with specific funds.18 InCité is responsible for managing the collective central heating system.

The two boilers which supply Grand Parc are installed in the complex.

One of them is a collective utilities system which produces both electricity and hot water used for floor heating. The other works with gas. InCité is examining new forms of energy like geothermal power and wood since gas price has increased. Regarding waste management, some buildings are still equipped with waste chutes either in the apartment cellars or in the stairwells. This condition have produced some maintenance problems.

Grand Parc still does not have any waste selection system in its communal premises, just a few bins are supplied to this end in the housing complex.

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Security and Privatisation

Because cantonal elections are being held during the period of this study, it has not been possible to meet the municipal police or have access to information about security at the Grand Parc. Nevertheless it is possible to say that this is a relatively quiet neighbourhood, mainly if we compare it with other housing estates in Bordeaux. Torching cars and dustbins are sporadic actions. The damage done to public goods and residences, vandalism, is always repaired right away giving a relatively neat and clean look to the housing complex (except around buildings H and I and in the Europe parking lot). However, it must be acknowledged that drug trafficking exists, as well as motorbike rodeos and incivilities occurring mainly in building hallways and staircases (broken windows, petty vandalism, damage to letter boxes and cellars). These actions together with the occupation of entrances, young people gatherings around the buildings, and disputes between neighbours, are the main object of residents complains documented by the housing management companies. A Grand Parc resident specifies: â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are gang-related phenomena in the housing estate; this is well known.

Here, they are not violent. It simply starts with murderous looks, petty remarks, making fun and petty destruction of fixtures and equipment, damaging lawns with motorbikes which are spun in such a way that they crush the ground, and thus taunting those in charge of maintenanceâ&#x20AC;?.19 The most vulnerable group to incivilities, physical or verbal, are the elderly population. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is too much sloppiness, people are no longer afraid G r a n d pa r c u r b a n f o r m

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of anything or anyone these days, it is forbidden to forbid at Grand Parc.

There’s no longer any courtesy or respect – no longer anything at all.”20 Residents have demanded different solutions to get rid off the previous abrupt actions, as the privatisation of entrance halls, which have been actually carried out as part of recent renovation operations. In its early days this housing estate lived in a quite different way. A resident explains: “Doors? People never closed them. We didn’t have all the security measures we do now. There was no need. We just had a key, to the landing door.

There was a concierge in the entrance. We were safe and we didn’t feel the need to be safe. It’s really a life that people miss.”21 In addition, other proposal has been to remove the benches around the complex to decrease disputes. However this solution has affected the areas of social interaction, leaving large zones of public space empty and unused, as illustrated by these words: “They should put back the benches. They took them away when they were working on the post office, but they have never put them back! The fact is that old ladies go out! And they want to sit down when the weather’s fine, and spend an hour or two outside.”22 An attempt to residentialize a group of Aquitanis buildings did not reach completion, mainly because the privatisation of parking lots would make impossible to park near the library. On the other hand, other parking lots near the tram and the Polyclinique have been privatised because “buffer cars” ('voiture ventouse', cars which remain parked in the same spot for a long time) bothered the nearest residents.

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G r a n d p a r c i s n o t a n a d m i n i s t r a t i v e u n i t i n i t s e l f, i t i s p a r t o f t h e n e i g h b o u r h o o d o f g r a n d p a r cpa u l d o u m e r . e v e n i f i t s i n h a b i ta n t s c h o o s e a l e f t w i n g r e p r e s e n ta n t i n t h e c a n t o n a l e l e c t i o n s ( g r a n d pa r c- pa u l d o u m e r i s t h e c a n t o n n u m b e r 2 ) , t h e l o c a l m ay o r ( a n n e m a r i e c a z a l e t ) i s a p p o i n t e d d i r e c t ly b y b o r d e a u x ' s m a y o r a n d a l s o p e r t a i n s to u m p ( R i g h t w i n g ). G r a n d pa r c i s a ' q ua r t i e r p r i o r i ta i r e ' ( p r i o r i t y n e i g h b o u r h o o d ) , w h i c h p l a c e s it i n to t h e so - c a lled ' p r io r it y g eo g r a p h y ', b u t a l e v e l b e low t h e z u s ( u r ba n s e n si b l e zo n e ).

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SOCIAL R E L AT I O N S

T h e G r a n d Pa rc h a s e x per i en ced t wo wav es o f m ig r atio n, t h e fi r s t i n 1970 a n d t h e s eco n d i n 19 9 0. I n 1975, t h e G r a n d Pa r c cou n t ed wit h 12 , 900 i n h a b ita n t s, b u t b e t w een 1990 a n d 1999 t h e p o p u l at i o n d r o p p e d b y 2 % . T h e i n i t i a l o cc u pa n t s w e r e essentially larg e families. Th e parent s have remain ed at G r an d Pa r c b u t t h ei r ch i ld r e n h av e le f t a f t e r acco m pli s h i n g t h ei r s t u di es. T h us, couples a n d si n g le peo ple a r e occu pyi n g l a rg e housing unit s. In 1999 it was docum ented that almost half th e dw elli n g s h a d a si n g le h ouseh o ld. T h e tota l av er ag e n um b er o f per so n s per h ouseh o ld at t h at t i m e wa s 2 . 1 (a s co m pa r ed wit h 1 .73 i n B o r d e au x). T h e vac a n c y r at e o f t h e h ousi n g un it s i s low (0. 3% a s o pposed to 1% i n B o r d e au x). T h e sa m e a ppli es to t h e r at e o f po pul atio n r en e wa l (i n 2005, t h e rotatio n r at e wa s 8.3% a s o pposed to 11 . 5% i n B o r d e au x).

g r a n d p a r c s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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In the last ten years, the Grand Parc have halted depopulation, particularly because the management companies have tended to replace departing elderly persons (going to institutions or passing away) by families whose numbers are in relation to the size of the housing unit. However, even when its population reached about 9,186 inhabitants in 2006 (i.e., a density of 139 inhabitants per hectare), the housing estate remains under-occupied. It was designed to house the twice of people. There is still a potential stock of large housing units in the context of a city whose stated aim is to reach 1 million inhabitants in the decades to come.

Age Pyramid and Family Structures

The Grand Parc has a very atypical population pyramid, which is unbalanced for such a large housing complex. One of its distinctive features is the high number of elderly people (more than 60 years old) representing almost onethird of its total population (i.e. 34% as opposed to 20% for Bordeaux).24 On the other hand its population under 20, which represents just 22% of the total inhabitants (as opposed to 18% for Bordeaux). This number is strikingly low for this sort of housing complex (i.e. young population under 20 in the Aubiers housing complex is 37%)25 and difficult to rise.

Rebalancing the age pyramid represents a slow process since elderly people are living longer and the rotation rate is low at Grand Parc.

The number of ageing people at Grand Parc has generated issues of adaptability in housing and the environment. A programme called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Growing P a g e

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POPULATION CITIZENSHIP

9,186 INHABITANTS

100% INHABITANTS < 60

66%

FRENCH NATIONALITY

81%

IMMIGRANT (some with French Nationality)

11%

FOREIGN

8%

HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION

INHABITANTS > 60

34%

FAMILIES, COUPLES AND SINGLES

55%

SINGLE PARENTS WITH CHILDREN

45% ECONOMICALLY ACTIVE POPULATION

42%

EMPLOYED

83%

UNEMPLOYED (1999)

17%

OTHER

6%

DISTRICT ADMINISTRATORS

5%

INTERMEDIATE OCCUPATIONS

22%

EMPLOYEES

45%

WORKERS

22%

LONG TERM

33%

20%

< 25 YEARS

Old Gracefully at Grand Parc” has been introduced by the Bordeaux City services, in partnership with many other parties, to support elderly people on topics of welfare, assistance and services. Acknowledging that this segment of residents feel good at Grand Parc and they wish to end their days there, it is clear to visualise that the estate is becoming removed from its initial purpose. It was meant to house families, so the change of this purpose over the long term has showed a loss of dynamism. A local resident explains: “I have a T4 and I have a guilty conscience when I see that some families are in one room with five or six kids. My children are advising me to move but, at my age, where should I go? The problem is that quite often large apartments are occupied by elderly persons, and they are entitled to stay in their home. That is thoroughly logical. You don’t tell someone who has a house to leave their house. Why would one tell a tenant to leave his apartment because he has a large space? It’s his life, too.”26 This cohabitation between elderly residents and the rest of the population also causes issues of intergenerational diversity which local parties deal with through numerous actions, but not always in a spontaneous way: “We should teach old people to look at young people with an indulgent eye, and teach young people to look at old people with an affectionate eye.”27 Regarding family structure, we note an over-representation of single parent families, mainly female (unmarried or divorced mothers). The 45% rate, higher than in Bordeaux, is constantly rising. This figure puts the Grand Parc in second position among Bordeaux’s CUCS neighbourhoods, where the number of single parent families is usually high.28 P a g e

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The particular social composition of Grand Parc leads to the observation of greater precariousness among its inhabitants (isolation, dependenceâ&#x20AC;Ś), and raises questions about the stigmatisation of this residential area. Even if impoverishment is less marked than in other large housing complexes, it is very real. The number of people living with complementary universal health cover (used as one of the poverty indicators in France) is, incidentally, relatively high. It concerns 15.7% of the population in the area having an average monthly income of 900 euros (as opposed to 1,500 euros for Bordeaux).29 Class Structure

The high proportion of elderly people in the Grand Parc is logically conveyed by a low representation of the working population, which was 42% in 1999.

The unemployment rate is 17%. One job seeker out of five is under 25, and one out of three of this category is long-term unemployed.30 Regarding socio-professional categories, 31 when the Grand Parc was first occupied, the number of workers (blue collar) was higher than the one of employees (white collar) (40% as opposed to 20%), but today the trend has proportionately reversed (22% workers and 45% employees).

These two categories are over-represented; they account three-quarters of the economically active population of Grand Parc.32 The intermediary professions represent the 22% of the previous segment, while managers just the 5%.33 Women leading single parent families have the most difficulty g r a n d p a r c s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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finding stable employment; they are often not very qualified and have problems finding people to look after their children. There is a lack of places for childcare and flexibility in the neighbourhood, in the play school (20 places) as well as in the collective nursery (70 places).

The composition of the active population has been affected by the housing allocation policy conducted when the Grand Parc was first occupied, a policy addressed to the middle classes. The relatively low rents, the social criteria introduced by the owners (especially Aquitanis) and the implementation of higher rents to persons with higher incomes than these criteria (Aquitanis stock only) have influenced the typology of the people living in this complex. This has stimulated a phenomena of “sticking together”, and does not encourage social diversity.

Ethnic composition and cultural practices

It is an uneasy task to access to figures about the ethnic composition at the district level in France. Thus, it has not been possible to obtain precise data of the territory here in question in that regard. However information from INSEE and other sources can help us to picture for instance general information about origin and citizenship.

According to INSEE the difference between an immigrant and a foreigner are the following. “An immigrant is a person born abroad and residing in France […] It is the country of birth, and not the nationality at birth which defines the geographical origin of an immigrant”. So the fact of P a g e

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being an immigrant is permanent, an individual continues to belong to the immigrant population, even if he becomes French by acquisition. “A foreigner is a person who resides in France and does not have French nationality, whether they have another nationality or no nationality”. A foreigner is not necessarily an immigrant, he may be born in France (take minors as an example), this definition of foreigner does not last forever, it is possible to become French by acquisition.

A working document issued by the DSU34 records 8% foreigners and 11% immigrants in the complex (figure included the average between Bordeaux and the CUCS neighbourhood). Grand Parc has a relatively low rate of foreigners and immigrants since, unlike other large complexes (like Les Aubiers), it has never had a reception policy for population groups resulting from immigration. An study made in 197135 confirms this low representation, the few nationalities listed at the time were Spanish, Italian, and African. The 350 families repatriated from Algeria listed that same year were regarded as having French nationality. Ethnic mix may not be significant but it exist, it is represented by 30 nationalities.36 Regarding religious practices, the church built at the construction of the housing complex, and whose austere architecture has earned it the nickname of “Fort Jesus”, accommodates some 600 people every Sunday morning.37 This weekly mass, held by Father Francis Ayliés, is joined by many elderly people. One resident comments: “I go to church every Sunday. Here, in Grand Parc, there are plenty of people! It’s full and it seems that there are even people coming from Caudéran. The church doesn’t put me off, it’s very nice. People call g r a n d p a r c s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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the priest “Francis”. He’s a good priest! In church I meet the ladies of Grand Parc”.38¶ Regarding the residents following the Islamic religion, they have to go to the El Huda mosque in Saint-Michel, which raises travel problems for older people. An association of Muslim citizens has been formed in Grand Parc Bordeaux-North (ACM-GPBN). A space located above the commercial premises of the Europe shopping mall is used as a worship place.

SEcondary Economy, Solidarity

The oldest residents in Grand Parc talk nostalgically about a rich social and united fabric which was organised in a spontaneous and informal way. A resident explains: “I think that previously, there was a solidarity that you no longer find, that no longer exists these days”, “We were very united at the time. My female neighbours helped me a lot when my father was ill. I even saw a dentist’s wife come and iron my laundry when I was very tired. There were very strong bonds between us”.39 Social bonds nowadays seem more strained, but some examples help us to understand the existing solidarity networks in Grand Parc. A ressourcerie (resource centre), the D’Eco-solidaire workshop, was set up in the heart of the complex a few months ago. It collects useable rubbish (essentially furniture) to give it a second life. The idea is to get active young people between 16 and 25, as well as women, stimulating crafts and artistic expression. The final aim of the workshop is to exhibit and sell the end products, it forms part of the programmes of integration.40 P a g e

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Since April 2010, a Cressionnières System of Local Exchange (SLE) has been active in form of a residents association with DSU backing. Today it has 25 members that exchange services, goods and skills without any economic transaction.41 Other inhabitants have initiated the “Grand Parc in Motion” group, which together with the social centre organises neighbourhood meals and yard sales. Its purpose is to encourage convivial moments among residents.

As part of housing renovation projects, the Compagnons Bâtisseurs d’Aquitaine organise solidarity workshops. The idea is to technically train and financially support different rehabilitation operations in the social and private housing stock. These activities are carried out by tenants (16 families a year) who participate in workshops. The aim is to mix residents encouraging participation and integration in the rehabilitation of their own habitat.42 Shared gardens are made at the Parc Rivière (which has an ecolabel) with different local parties, for instance, the association “Les jardins d’aujourd’hui” and inhabitants from Grand Parc and Bordeaux. The goal is to create social bonds among residents through gardening and educational environmental workshops. These workshops are organised including Grand Parc’s residents as well as people from outside the neighbourhood. In an space of 1000 square meters around 60 people cultivate individual and collective parcels based on environmental friendly practices.43

g r a n d p a r c s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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E V E R Y D AY LIFE

T h e G r a n d Pa rc pu b lic space i s n ot r e a lly a sh a r ed t er r ito ry.

I t i s r at h e r o r g a n i s e d i n a su cces s i o n o f s o ci a l t i m e- fr a m es w h ich e ach t y po logy o f user m a r ks wit h h i s di s ti n c t li fes t y le, o n t h e b a s i s o f d i f f e r e n t r h y t h m s a n d m o b i li t y. O u t s i d e a fe w cle a r ly i d en ti fi ed ti m e slot s (s ta r t a n d fi n i sh o f sch oo l, wo r k , Sat u r day m o r n i n g m a r k e t ) t h e e s tat e h a s li t t le li f e a n d f e w p eo p le a r e p r e s e n t i n t h e p u b li c p l ac e s g i v e n t h e n u m b er o f i n h a b ita n t s, a s it h a s b een d escr i b ed by t h i s fem a le r e s i d e n t: “ B e fo r e , t h e r e w e r e c h i l d r e n p l ay i n g , c h i l d r e n ’ s cr i es! N ow yo u d o n ’ t h e a r a n y t h i n g a n y m o r e . I d o n ’ t k n ow w h er e t h e y’v e go n e! T h e G r a n d Pa rc i s g e t ti n g o ld. T h er e a r e q u i t e a f e w yo u n g p eo p le , b u t t h e y le av e v e ry e a r ly t o g o o ff a n d wo r k. O n Sun days, t h e y ta ke t h ei r c a r s a n d t h e y go o f f, I d o n ’ t k n ow w h e r e , o r e l s e t h e y da n c e o n Sat u r days u n t i l s i x i n t h e m o r n i n g a n d o n S u n day s t h e y s l e e p a n d d o n’t go ou t”. 4 4

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Spatial Occupation

So, the territory is rather shared by necessity and for some it involves avoidance strategies. Elderly people (one-third of the residents) in fact use the public space at very precise times, mainly in the morning between 9 a.m. and midday, and sometimes in the afternoon to do their shopping or deal with administrative matters. However, they don’t go out much at nights and on weekends (the Saturday morning market and the Sunday mass being exceptions)45 as it has been illustrated in these words: “I only go out in the morning when there are people out. When I have to go to the Caisse d’Epargne, I never go in the afternoon. And I never go on the back way since one day I was followed by a bunch of young people. Oh, poor little guys! They probably wouldn’t have done anything to me, but I was a bit afraid”.46 Young people gather in precise places (around the Europe shopping mall and the social centre), mid- and late afternoon, as well as in the early evening. Interactions between these populations are limited and waver between suspicion and indifference, with moments and places where they can meet in the neighbourhood being rare.47 Spaces with a positive and peaceful perception are linked with the spaces they occupy and use, for instance, the Europe shopping mall, the area around the CPAM, the library, the bowling place, the RPA, the polyclinic and the church. These spaces are appreciated by the residents. Whereas others are negatively perceived, as the Place de l’Europe , with its large dilapidated parking lot, the buildings G, H and I and their surroundings, g r a n d p a r c e v e r y d ay l i f e

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g r a n d pa r c h a s a g r e at n u m b e r o f p u b l i c fa c i l i t i e s , w h i c h at t r a c t n e i g h b o u r s f r o m o t h e r pa r t s o f t h e c i t y ( b o t t o m ) . t h e m o s t i m p o r ta n t o n e s a r e t h e s w i m m i n g p o o l , t h e g y m s , a n d at a m o r e l o c a l l e v e l , t h e l i b r a r y, t h e s c h o o l s , t h e c h u r c h , a n d t h e a d m i n i s t r at i o n a l b u i l d i n g s . i n t h i s s e n s e , t h e t r a m i s c r u c i a l i n c o m m u n i c at i n g g r a n d pa r c w i t h t h e c i t y, a s 4 9 % o f t h e i n h a b i ta n t s o f g r a n d pa r c d o n ot ow n a c a r. c o m m e r c e i s c o n c e n t r at e d i n t h e c e n t r a l s h o p p i n g c e n t r e , w h i c h i s v e ry w e l l r eg a r d e d b y t h e i n h a b i ta n t s 1 //. p u b l i c fa c i l i t i e s a r e a c t i v e i n g r a n d pa r c , a n d o r g a n i z e p l e n t y o f a c t i v i t i e s , s o m e o f t h e m a i m i n g at a i n t e r - g e n e r at i o n a l e x c h a n g e 2 //. ( p h o t o s n y a n n e - c é c i l e p a r e d e s )

and the social centre.48 These buildings suffer from socio-spatial segregation in the neighbourhood because, since their construction, they have housed the poorest families (originally large working class families from the Mériadeck district after its demolition, and second-hand traders, scrap metal merchants, prostitutes, and foreigners of North African origin).

Today these buildings house the most deprived residents, and are among those rare constructions that haven’t been renovated.

The central urban park crystallises several contradictions. It was once appreciated for its large open space and its character of nature, urbs in rure. However, it has been lately also perceived as a monotonous and obsolete. It functions more as passageway, with lots of formal pedestrian areas, than a place for relaxation and leisure. Even when some areas are the exception, as the children playgrounds. This major public open space in Northwest Bordeaux cannot be seen from any of the roads circumscribing it. Its landscape can’t be well appreciated by visitors crossing the district, including the ones using the entrance and the main access to the Cours de Luze.

The green areas in the north and south of the neighbourhood are likewise divided, both in use and quality. To the north, the park with its soughtafter qualities is widely used, especially as a place for walking. Whereas to the south, the area has not much quality, nor vocation, in fact this side is neglected.49 A sort of invisible border seems to exist between Grand Parc and the Parc Rivière, situated on the western edge of the district. This latter belonged to the wealthy Luze family, and you can still see the ruins of the P a g e

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chosen students from other neighbourhoods

centre/ rue Ste. Catherine

shopping centre AUCHANMĂ&#x2030;RIADECK

shopping centre AUCHAN-LAC

city-scale facilities

library

Clisthène school

swimming pool

church

quinconces CITY CENTRE

flows towards Grand Parc: points of contact with the city

flows from Grand Parc: relation with rest of the city

flows inside Grand Parc: commercial nodes

city-scale facilities

shopping centres

bus lines

tram line C

castle in the middle of wooded French-style 4-hectare grounds. Although it is free and open to the general public, it is relatively little used by Grand Parc residents. They seem to have a “problem” when it comes to crossing Rue Mandron and visiting the adjacent neighbourhood.

Shopping

The Grand Parc economic activities are not based in manufacturing, they are mainly focused on the tertiary sector, commerce and administrative services. The number of local shops are slightly lower than the ones located between the boulevards. They are concentrated in two commercial centers managed by InCité, the Europe and the Emile Counnord.

The Europe commercial center (1,600 sq. m.) is located in the heart of the housing estate and holds 20 shops and a “Simply Market” supermarket (formerly “Atac”). It used to be an active area when it was inaugurated, very busy and appreciated by residents. Despite its renovation in 2006, it seems today much less dynamic. A fire affected three shops in 2008, this event increased the dismal impression, especially since the fire damage still awaiting for renovation. A female resident remembers: “The shopping mall has deteriorated. It is damaged. I remember when it was possible to stroll around it; now you just walk through it. Sometimes you stop but you don’t really feel like it! There’s no life in the place anymore, and you don’t meet people except when you’re walking and carrying your shopping bags and you bump into another friend doing the same. There’s plenty of improvement to be made”.50 P a g e

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images of different housing interiors of g r a n d pa r c ( p h oto s b y a n n e- c éc i l e pa r e d e s ). e v e n i f t h e b u i l d i n g s m ay l o o k u n i f o r m from outside, many different social classes, a g e s a n d c u lt u r e s c o e x i s t i n g r a n d p a r c .

M a n y p eo p l e g ot o l d i n G r a n d - Pa r c a n d t h e y s t i l l l i v e i n t h e s a m e b i g a pa r t m e n t s , w h i l e p a r a d o x i c a l ly f a m i l i e s o f n e w c o m e r s a r e hosted in smaller ones.

There is a surgery clinic and numerous health services (pharmacies, an orthopaedic shop…). In addition, some home assistance services, which include meals on wheels for elderly people. These services are linked with the particular social composition of the Grand Parc, as it is humorous emphasised by one elderly resident: “There’s no shortage of pharmacies!...

We’re all very ill, that’s for sure!”51 The Emile Counord commercial centre, the first to be established in the neighbourhood and smaller in size, should be renovated in the near future.

As a complement, the neighbourhood is enlivened by a weekly market which is held on Saturday morning. As part of it around 15 stalls are set up in parking lot of the Europe commercial center. This quasi-autarkic supply of goods and services is rounded off by residents by using the Auchan Lac and Mériadeck shopping malls, where there is a wider choice of cheaper products.

Education

The Grand Parc’s educational facilities are equivalent to the rest of the city with a variety of education levels. Three nursery schools, the Pierre Trébord, the Schweitzer and the Condorcet. Two primary schools, the Schweitzer and the Condorcet.

One college/secondary school, Grand Parc with 600 students and an experimental section, the “Clisthène”, which has been there for nine years and has four classes with about 100 students. The mission of this school is based on three main points; violence prevention, dropout prevention g r a n d p a r c e v e r y d ay l i f e

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and democracy initiation. Its aim is to stimulate social mix within the school through the selection of students with heterogeneous profiles and socio-economic background (30% privileged, 30% middle class, 30% less privileged). The goal set by the educational team is to dispense general instruction through new forms of apprenticeship, and to increase interdisciplinary classes using theme weeks (social mix, violence, boy-girl equality…).52 One lycée/high school, Condorcet with 700 students, including about 250 advanced technician certificates who divide their study time between two sites, Condorcet and Schweitzer. After a period of poor national rating, this high school has received funding for educational support and refresher courses during holidays. Last year, the school had an 83% success rate for the Bac (i.e., a rise of 30% in three years), 78% for the professional Bac, and 79% for the BTS. The school having two European classes (Spanish and English), maintains numerous partnerships with the scientific institutions and other establishments of Bordeaux (preparatory classes). In addition, it offers well-equipped classes for students involved in sports training programmes (rowing, swimming, BMX…).53 The Grand Parc schools are not listed as a Priority Education Zone (ZEP).

However both, the secondary and the high school, suffer from a bad reputation. The stigma is not always justified, but creates recruitment problems. Parents have been developing different strategies to avoid the enrolment of their children in Gran Parc’s schools due to fear of not giving them the best opportunities and access to the “social ladder” represented P a g e

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by education. Parents enrol their children in the public and private schools located near Grand Parc. The arrival of the tram in the area has facilitated this pattern of behaviour. One female resident observes: “The Grand Parc has always had a bad reputation and my children have suffered from it.

We’ve even been forced to change our son’s school”.54 Since Grand Parc is not included in the Priority Education Zone, there is not guarantee of funds for improving educational facilities in the neighbourhood, although they are needed. “In 2012, between 30 and 50 new children will attend elementary school in Grand Parc and no new class is going to be provided”.55

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CONSEIL GENERAL (Department) CAF Family Credit Union financing

MAIRIE DE BORDEAUX

Grand Parc Inten-cité (association)

church muslim praying room (unofficial)

space for other associations

social/cultural centre

animation centre library

“lost solidarity” among neighbours

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G r a n d p a r c h a s a w i d e a r r a y o f c u lt u r a l a n d s o c i a l fa c i l i t i e s . w h i l e t h e l i b r a r y a n d t h e a n i m at i o n c e n t r e a r e v e r y l i n k e d t o t h e m u n i c i p a l i t y, t h e s o c i a l / c u lt u r a l c e n t r e i s m a n a g e d b y a n a s s o c i at i o n o f i n h a b i ta n t s (g r a n d - pa r c I n t e n - C i t ĂŠ ). w h i l e t h e r e i s a c h u r c h i n t h e n ei g h b o u r h o o d, t h e r e i s n o official mosque. a n eigh bour has howe ver o p e n e d a " p r ay e r r o o m " i n o n e o f t h e va c a n t s pac e s i n t h e s h o p p i n g c e n t r e . A m o n g t h e i n h a b i ta n t s t h e r e i s a s e n s e o f l o s t s o l i d a r i t y, a n o s t a l g i a o f t h e p a s t t i m e s , w h e n t h e r e wa s n o t s o m u c h s e c u r i z at i o n p r e s e n t.

Mobility

The traffic/circulation plan for Grand Parc complies with the logic of the functionalist city, which means that automobile and pedestrian circulation are dissociated. Although 49% of the population do not have a car (1999 figures), plenty of spaces were originally designed for vehicles in the housing complex. Parking space is a recurrent problem for residents and visitors.

Parking, usually located at the foot of buildings and along the main roads, give the impression of omnipresence in the landscape of the housing estate.

Vehicles conceal the park.56 Little room is made for non-motorized traffic, only Rue Schuman and Rue Portmann have cycle tracks. Some bicycle areas have been set up inside and beside schools and sports facilities.

Public transport is quite present on the outskirts of the housing complex, four bus routes, and limited in its hart, only route number 15 has been kept (was once under threat). The arrival of the tram system has altered behaviour and encouraged back and forth movements with downtown now only 10 minutes away by tram. Route C, which runs between Bègles and Les Aubiers has three stops (Emile Counord, Grand Parc and Ravezies). The reasons given by residents for leaving the neighbourhood are work, study, shopping, administrative business, leisure, culture, holidays (second home, the nearby ocean), visiting family and friends, gardening in the CUB allotmentsâ&#x20AC;Ś

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Cultural, Sports and Recreational Places and Events

The Grand Parc enjoys of excellent sport and cultural amenities (equivalent to downtown in number and higher in density). The three major sites established since the complex construction are the library, the community centre and the social centre. The library has around 3,200 members, the great majority elderly people and children. This place, a genuine place of social mix, attracts people from Gran Parc and other areas, as Les Chartrons, Le Bouscat and Bordeaux. It has initiated a special activity in the last four years, a house delivery service of books especially for elderly people ( around 20 persons have enjoyed of this service). It has also taken part of the “Grand Parc Memory” project in partnership with the social centre. This project consist in collecting testimony from elderly people about life in the neighbourhood, with the final aim of publishing a book.

The library is a user-friendly place, open to the neighbourhood and beyond, and closely linked with Grand Parc figures, a place organising exhibitions and meetings.57 A resident express: “The library is the only thing still living in the neighbourhood!.”58 The community center has a family-oriented social mission. One of its goals is to serve children and teenagers. It provides school support, homework assistance and leisure activities (visual arts, sports…). It holds also a music school and a game centre. Besides these type of services, it also provides service to parents.59 An elderly resident tells us a little more about its P a g e

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history and philosophy: “The origin of the social centre comes from a group of residents in buildings D and C, who spontaneously created it one step ahead. At that particular time, there were social square metres (especially in the HLM-SBUC sector); after that, the public authorities set it up but it’s my feeling that they profited from a cocoon that was all ready for them. It was a centre where you contributed human matter, which you exchanged with others. For example the literacy campaign was a strong point. It was recognized as a leading feature. There were people who came from neighbouring communes (Eysines, Mérignac, Le Buscat)”.60 These two centres take part of the local cultural life by organising small events with the residents, like the carnival, and spectacles for children…

The numerous sport facilities (three gymnasium, two of which have a stadium, one city stadium and two tennis courts) are scattered throughout the neighbourhood with enough size and capacity to accommodate people from outside Grand Parc (leisure centre, schools, sports clubs…). The most emblematic facility is the swimming pool, rebuilt in 2007 on the site of the initial Olympic pool. It consists of a 25 metre pool with tiered seating, a paddling pool and a solarium. It attracts more than 400,000 people a year.

A resident explains: “We have organised petitions for the pool because the asbestos removal lasted a very long time. The work seemed never ending…

We organised petitions and it worked! The pool is a good thing! It is not an Olympic pool, but because there were lots of clubs which came, Grand Parc residents did not necessarily go to it”.61 No other place can accommodate cultural events in Grand Parc since the g r a n d p a r c e v e r y d ay l i f e

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community hall (“Salle des fêtes”) closed, nearly 20 years ago. This has been something often lamented by residents: “What I would like to point out of Grand Parc is the community hall which was a place really lively and busy. We used to go there to see dance festivals and listen to jazz. We went there to see concerts several times, and on two occasions I clearly remember seeing galas d'enfants. There was always something happening, lots of concerts. There were Christmas shows all the time! It was very busy, but now there’s nothing going on anymore…”62 And yet there is a demand for a user-friendly venue available to residents to celebrate family events, as well as to artists who would bring activities and attract people from outside the neighbourhood. Now and again, Aquitanis, in partnership with artists who perform in Bordeaux concert halls, organises concerts in residents’ homes. For an evening, a resident can invite some 20 people, especially his nearby neighbours, to attend a “private” musical show. The objective of this actions is to bring culture and artists into the heart of a neighbourhood, to meet inhabitants who are not used to going to concerts.63 There has been, for the last 10 years, a must-visit annual rendezvous in the neighbourhood called “Grand Parc Celebrates”. It is organised by a collective with the same name which if formed by the following organisations and institutions; social and cultural centre, community centre, library, UBAPS, CACIS, Chantecler neighbourhood house, Maryse Bastié retirement home/ EHPAD, Aquitanis, InCité, shopkeepers association, Bordonor collective, the Barbey rock school, day treatment centre for persons with head injuries, ALIFX, Grand Parc schools and inhabitants and MC2a. For three days, P a g e

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free of charge, spectacles either outdoors or in marquees are proposed in the neighbourhood. The event is an awaited convivial moment combining culture and social action, in which many neighbourhood figures and people take part. This is the only cultural event in the neighbourhood, relying on a budget of about 65,000 euros every year. The budget is only for artistic productions, all the members of the collective contribute to the organisation in kind.64

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M E N TA L CONCEPTIONS

The Gr and Parc is not a homogeneous territory, it is the outcome o f a j u x ta p o s i t i o n o f s e v e r a l n e i g h b o u r h o o d s o pe r at i n g i n acco r da n ce wit h a n i m plicit h i er a rch y. To day it i s s ti ll m a r ked by t h e o r i g i n a l fu n c t i o n s a n d co n ce p t i o n s o f t h e b u i ld i n g s ( t h o s e e a r m a r k e d by P i e d s- n o i r s, F r e n c h co lo n i a l s b o r n i n Algeria , as well as by local officials an d oth er first resident s), an d still gives rise to prob lem s related with co -hab itation an d so cia l m ix. A r esi d en t e x pl ai n s: “You m us t liv e i n t h e b ui ldi n gs t o u n d e r s ta n d t h e m . I t a ll d e p e n d s o n h ow t h e b u i ld i n g i s i n h a b i t ed. W h en t h e y s ta r t ed fi lli n g t h e b lo cks, t h e y fi lled t h em wit h t h e sa m e i n divi dua l a ffi n iti es. O n e b ui ldi n g wa s fo r A r a b s, a n ot h er wa s fo r ot h er peo ple. So t h er e s ta r t ed to r i se cl a n s a n d g a n g s.” 6 5 T h e o ccu pat i o n o f t h e b u i ld i n g s m ay n o lo n g er b e di ffer en tiat ed a s such, b u t so m e b ui ldi n gs a r e s ti ll s tig m ati sed wit h i n t h e n eig h b our h o o d, fo r i n s ta n ce b ui ldi n gs G, H a n d I. T h ese h ousi n g b locks a r e t h e m os t di l a pi dat ed a n d h av e t h e h i g h e s t co n c e n t r at i o n o f p eo p le w h o s e li v e s a r e pr ec a r i ous. l o c a l i z a t i o n o f t h e b u i l d i n g s g , h a n d i 1 // a n d i m a g e o f t h e i r s o u t h e r n f a ç a d e s 2 //. these three buildings are perceived very n e g a t i v e ly b y t h e i n h a b i t a n t s , s p e c i a l ly t h e a r e a b e h i n d t h e m , c lo s e to t h e s c h o o l, which is used as a dump site.

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80 dwellings 225 dwellings 225 dwellings

I

garbage dumping

H

G neglected area

School Condorcet

Distinctions are currently found between the buildings of the two housing management companies, even if it is not necessarily obvious and recognised.

One resident explains: “At the beginning there were no differences (in rents, services, and charges) between the low rent buildings (HLM) and the SBUC, except that the low rent buildings were better equipped with lifts. Later on, there was a divergence; the less privileged people went into low rent housing, while the others, with more or less normal incomes, went into the SBUC (InCité)”.66 Another resident affirms this fact: “We are slightly privileged here. People called us ‘the Neuilly of Grand Parc’, in the four SBUC buildings, because we have bathtubs instead of showers.

It’s true that the apartments are very, very well designed. There are two balconies, and they are large balconies. We are two per floor. We are privileged here”.67 In the old days, this hierarchy sometimes existed within one and the same building, depending on the floor you lived on: “The buildings worked very good. The tenants were allocated according to their jobs. I was on the eighth floor, which was for municipal employees. At the bottom there were people who were okay and not so okay, and, in the middle, honest workers. There were lots of children”.68 ¶ The ageing of the population who originally inhabited the Grand Parc is accompanied with a strong attachment and is always expressed with nostalgia for the golden age of the complex. The phenomenon of population ageing is one of the integration criteria in the area, it produces forms of solidarity among residents but also a sense of exclusion for newcomers. Young families have been allocated in the complex recently to balance the social composition. g r a n d p a r c M e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n s

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The Grand Parc is definitely a unique space. It is a good choice for people looking for collective housing. When people express reluctance and visit the place this feeling disappears. The house units are popular because they are spacious and inexpensive. The complex has plenty of open space offering a pleasant living environment. In addition it is close to the hearth of Bordeaux and is equipped with tram since 2007. A resident comments: “People here stay as long as possible in their apartments; this is a sign that things are okay. There is every possible service, there are plenty of facilities which help towards a good life. People are jealous of us because we now have the tram which connects us to downtown Bordeaux”.69 The Grand Parc thus operates like a fully-fledged neighbourhood, in an autonomous and autarkic way, with its own in-house logic which is hard to understand for people living elsewhere. Its urban fabric is poorly connected with its immediate surroundings and with the city of Bordeaux, which raises questions about its porosity and its permeability. It can be understood on the basis of two concepts used by Bordeaux’s urbanism agency, as part of an urban diagnosis: as a “fortress” and a “labyrinth”. 70 Grand Parc as a “Fortress”

The Grand Parc has forged its identity based on its history and its inhabitants, but also through the special nature of its urban form manifesting a total break with the surroundings; the architecture made up of small homes or échoppes (the Tivoli neighbourhood to the west and south), the zones P a g e

1 1 7

b o r d e au x 2 0 1 1

r e p r e s e n tat i o n o f g r a n d pa r c a s a f o r t r e s s 1 // a n d a l a b y r i n t h 2 //. t h e a u t o n o m y o f g r a n d pa r c d e ta c h e s i t f r o m t h e r e s t o f t h e c i t y, i t s s l a b a r c h i t ec t u r e co n c e a l i n g t h e c e n t r a l pa r k . o n t h e ot h e r h a n d, n e wco m e r s fi n d i t d i f f i c u lt t o o r i e n t a t e t h e m s e l v e s i n a v a s t o p e n s p a c e w i t h f e w r e f e r e n c e p o i n t s 3 //.

with low-rise housing (the town of Le Bouscat to the north) and the gated Hausmann residential neighbourhood (Ravezies to the east).

The urbanisation consisting of long low-rise buildings and tall towers circumscribing a central park gives the impression of a fortified neighbourhood which is hard to trespass. The rare entrances are poorly signed and the only obvious one, Cours de Luze, is right by the Europe commercial center. In general, the access points are hidden and once you are inside Grand Parc the neighbourhood seems to be formed by several enclaves. The height of the buildings magnifies the effect of feeling crushed when you move around the estate and the vegetation (trees and shrubs) is not always high enough to help to diminish this sensation.

Grand Parc is not a place for strolling around, people do not enter it randomly. Visitors go there for a reason, in particular because of the presence of many administrative services (CPAM, neighbourhood town hall, School Inspectorate, Employment Office), health services (BordeauxNord Polyclinique, Tivoli Clinic, CACIS), sports (three gymnasiums and swimming pool) and cultural centres (library), as well as for recreation (social centre and community centre), for visiting a resident (including elderly people in the RPA), or for religious worship (Sunday mass at the Church of the Trinity). When visiting the complex you must find your way around this territory.

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Grand Parc as a “Labyrinth”

Whatever means of transport you use positioning into the area is difficult.

For anyone coming from outside Grand Parc, the residential buildings all look alike with just a few high-rise towers offering landmarks, such as the Mozart Tower. The colours of the façades, balconies and blinds, serve as a reference to identify not only the buildings but also the housing management companies that own them. Aquitanis has buildings with coloured façades (yellow) and blinds, often with red stripes. While the InCité housing units can be recognised by their light façades (white) with blue balconies and blinds.

The public buildings are small (except for the imposing CPAM tower), sometimes out of proportion with the surrounding structures. They are not always clearly marked, including the façades of the buildings (one example being the library). The initial project proposed that the facilities involving social projects were aesthetically pleasing providing landmarks in the uniform urban landscape. This notion can be visualised in the architecture and the decorated pediment of the community hall and the community centre. This last one was also called “the snail” making reference to its particular shape. Its façade was designed by Annette Messager. ¶ The actual nomenclature of the buildings is complex and based on alphabetical order.

Aquitanis has renamed its buildings with artists’ names keeping the letter originally given. However, residents do not really use these new names, they still refer to the buildings with their original names. The first nine P a g e

1 1 9

b o r d e au x 2 0 1 1

buildings have a rational nomenclature, but it is confusing for all the others.

Circulation signs are also unclear in the neighbourhood, and no maps or plans are displayed. Even if a circulation board includes an information point in Grand Parc, it is nowhere to be found. A programme being conducted by residents is currently being undertaken by the Urban Social Development department to produce a precise neighbourhood plan. It will be in the form of a map and may also be a moveable information point; it is planned to list the neighbourhood amenities and facilities and indicate their functions. This document will be produced for new arrivals in the estate. In addition, for residents who admit, particularly in the case of recent arrivals, that they have little knowledge of their territory and the people working there. Non-residents feel lost in Grand Parc and reduce their use to the primary reason of visiting. This avoids any possibility of discovering and enjoying the neighbourhood.

Future Plans

Nowadays, the Grand Parc is an urban zone that is being completely reorganised, starting from the Les Chartrons neighbourhood and extending as far as Bacalan and Bordeaux Lac. It is the last neighbourhood with a high potential to supply housing due to its large housing units in a territory provided with extensive green areas which cannot be built upon. Thus, it has a strategic position in the extension of the city of Bordeaux and its aims to reach one million inhabitants. The neighbourhood may have not g r a n d p a r c M e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n s

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much available area for new projects on existing wasteland plots, apart from the planned construction of two establishments for elderly people and the creation of a nursery, but the challenges are rather with the renovation and re-activation of the existing facilities, like the Lycée Condorcet, the social centre, and the Counord commercial center.

So, the housing complex is in a crucial moment in its history, when in order to guarantee its continued existence, it is looking for new ways to attract people. “Tomorrow’s Grand Parc will be an ethnic mix with a lot of life! It may be inter-generational and inter-cultural.”71 Regarding the estate management companies, the previous mean keeping an eye on the diversification of the profile of residents. And for those developing the public space, making sure that the neighbourhood has a functional diversity.

This perhaps bringing up new provisions, new convivial and user-friendly spaces.

Lastly, the Grand Parc must be open to the city of Bordeaux through a number of urban improvements and modifications, and by the alteration of its representations; the driving force here, not to say the possible accelerators, are the sports, leisure and cultural facilities. The beginning of the neighbourhood’s re-population over the past 10 years or so, with a younger population, compatible with the housing units and facilities proposed, is a tangible sign of the changes underway. A resident comments: “The Grand Parc is definitely getting older and a macabre turnover is bound to happen. Since housing demand is increasing, it will become younger. We’ll have to wait until the generation that is in the way of this P a g e

1 2 1

b o r d e au x 2 0 1 1

has moved on, and then, the place will be inhabited again in new ways. It is conveniently placed, close to downtown Bordeauxâ&#x20AC;?.72 The ageing population on the estate, the greater life expectancy, and the policies designed to help elderly people stay in their own homes mean that the rejuvenation of the neighbourhood will be a slow and lengthy process. The social composition must be re-balanced by the input of younger new inhabitants and families with children. So, a compromise must be found between respecting the choice of old people to live out their lives in the neighbourhood to which they are attached and whose history and soul are trustees of. And rediscovering the neighbourhoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s calling to accommodate families with moderate incomes, at the same time avoiding the pitfall of segregating a precarious population and the risk of stigmatising this housing estate which has hitherto been relatively spared.

The diversity and motivation of the various parties on the site is not enough to re-activate the Grand Parc; it also depends on the ongoing nature of national arrangements in terms of urban policy, currently under threat, as well as on the various projects and methods which the local authorities and the city of Bordeaux will have to become involved in.

g r a n d p a r c M e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n s

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FOOTNOTES 1 Diagnostic urbain, A’urba (Agence d'Urbanisme Bordeaux métropole Aquitaine), December 2008.

2 “Bordeaux, la conquête de la modernité, architecture et urbanisme à Bordeaux et dans l’agglomération de 1920 à 2003”, Robert Coustet and Marc Saboya, Mollat, November 2005.

3 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, “Mémoire du quartier de Grand Parc,” Sandra Queille, Harmattan, April 2011.

4 See footnote nr 2.

5 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

6 See footnote nr 2.

7 See footnote nr 1.

8 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

9 See footnote nr 1.

10 Ibid 11 Mr. Diene, InCité caretaker, from “De la Sbuc à In’cité, 1957- 2007, 50 ans de pratiques urbaines à Bordeaux”, In’cité, 2007.

12 See footnote nr 1.

13 Ibid 14 “Mémoire du quartier de Grand Parc,” Sandra Queille, Harmattan, April 2011.

15 Interviews with the gardians (caretakers) of ’In’cité, Madame Laigle from In’cité et Madame Lissard from Aquitanis-Grand Parc.

16 Guide d’architecture de Bordeaux, Confluences, 1996 17 Ibid 18 See footnote nr 2.

19 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

20 Ibid 21 Ibid 22 Ibid 23 See footnote nr 1.

24 Ibid 25 Ibid 26 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

27 Ibid 28 Document de travail CUCS, Compas-Tis, mai 2009 29 Ibid 30 Ibid 31 According to INSEE the socio-professional categories are the following; Workers include P a g e

1 2 3

maintenance professionals, trade, unskilled light industrial and agricultural workers, as well as industrial and craft-type occupations.

The boundary between workers and employees is not easy to trace. Employees include a wide variety of occupations, including secretaries, office and hospital workers, vendors, fire and domestic servants. Women occupy the vast majority of these occupations except in the police and the military. This group brings many young people, particularly among administrative employees of companies and commercial employees. Intermediate occupations include in its vast majority (two thirds) intermediate positions between managers and enforcement officers, workers and employees. The other part includes workers in education, health and social work, among teachers, nurses and social workers.

Woman is very limited, especially in technical professions.

32 See footnote nr 1.

33 Ibid 34 Document de travail CUCS, Compas-Tis, mai 2009 35 “Cité du Grand Parc, approche sociologique”, Danièle Turbet Delof (sociologist), September 1971 36 Interview with Madame Cazalet, Maire-adjoint de quartier 37 Interview with Father Francis Aylies.

38 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

39 Ibid 40 Interview with Nathalie Kaïd, from “Éco solidaire”, Grand Parc 41 Interview with Madame Dominique Jouandoudet, from “Sel des Cressonnières”.

42 Interview with Madame Adeline Brillet, social coordinator, “Les Compagnons Bâtisseurs d’Aquitaine”.

43 Interview with Alise Meuris, from “Les jardins d’aujourd’hui” 44 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

45 “Requalifier le projet du centre social pour une participation optimale des populations à la consolidation du lien social”.

46 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

47 “Requalifier le projet du centre social pour une participation optimale des populations à la consolidation du lien social”.

48 See footnote nr 1. b o r d e au x 2 0 1 1

49 Ibid 50 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

51 Ibid 52 Interview with the responsible person for the Collège Grand Parc and Clisthène, Monsieur Ferrer and teachers Monsieur Marty and Madame Coussyclavaud.

53 Interview with Madame Prévot, from the Lycée Condorcet.

54 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

55 Interview with Stéphane Marolleau, director of the Grand Parc social centre.

56 Diagnostic urbain, A’urba (Agence d'Urbanisme Bordeaux métropole Aquitaine), December 2008 57 Interview with Madame Dominique Dat, director of Grand Parc's library.

58 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

59 Interview with Monsieur Fabrice Escorne, old director of the Centre d’animation de Grand Parc.

60 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

61 Ibid 62 Ibid 63 Interview with Monsieur Grégory Larcher, Social engineer, Aquitanis.

64 Interview with Monsieur Lenoir, association MC2A. 65 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

66 Ibid 67 Ibid 68 Ibid 69 Ibid 70 See footnote nr 1.

71 Excerpts from interviews with the inhabitants, See footnote nr 3.

72 Ibid

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ADMINISTRATIONAL/ GOVERNAMENTAL SERVICES 01 Marie-Quartier Grand Parc/Paul Doumer, representation of the Municipality of Bordeaux in the neighbourhood. Mme. Anne-Marie Cazalet, Maire-adjoint de quartier Place de l'Europe, 05.56.50.08.08, Mon-Fri 9-12:30 et 13-16:30 02 Développement Social Urbain/ Central Headquarters of the Social Urban Development, Municipality of Bordeaux. Mme Valérie Girard, local development agent , 11, rue père Louis de Jabrun, (out of map) 05.56.10.27.53, v.girard@mairie-bordeaux.fr 03 Pôle technique, Technical services of the Municipality of Bordeaux.

Mme Catherine Rouche , 111, Boulevard Alfred Daney, (out of map) 04 Direction générale de la vie sociale et la citoyenneté/ General direction of social life and citizenship, Municipality of Bordeaux. Mr Guillaume Sengenes, coordinator 11, rue père Louis de Jabrun (out of map), 05.56.10.34.14, g.sengenes@mairie-bordeaux.fr 05 MDSI, Departmental office or solidartity and Insertion.

Mme Gomez, Mme Gillardo , 63, rue Camille Godard, 05.57.87.02.14

00

EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES 06 Collège Grand Parc/Middle-school, run by the department (Gironde).

25, rue Pierre Trébod, 05.56.11.19.60 07 Clisthène, Experimental annexe to the Collège Grand Parc, run by the region (Aquitaine). Mr. Marty, principal, Mme. Nadine Coussyclavaud, Arts teacher.

25, rue Pierre Trébod, 05.56.39.21.75, http://clisthene.ac-bordeaux.fr, clisthene.net.free.fr 08 Lycée Jean Condorcet, Highschool, run by the region (Aquitaine).

Mme Prévot, proviseur , 89, rue Condorcet, 05.56.69.60.50, annie.prevot1@ac-bordeaux.fr 09 Groupe scolaire Schweitzer/Elementary school rue du Docteur A. Schweitzer 10 École maternelle Trébod, Nursery 25, rue Pierre Trébod

00

CULTURAL, SPORTS, RELIGIOUS AND OTHER FACILITIES 11 Centre social du Grand Parc, Social centre, financed by the CAF (Family credit union) at a regional level (Gironde). Mr Stéphane Marolleau, director, stephanemarolleau@ laposte.net , Mme Élodie Breton, social and familial economy counsellor. 44, place de l'Europe, 05.56.50.38.22, csgrandparc.direction@wanadoo.fr 12 Centre d’animation du Grand Parc/Animation centre, run by the Municipality of Bordeaux. Mr Dominique Dumas, Directeur 36, rue Robert Schuman, 05.56.50.31.63, ca.grandparc@centres-animation.asso.fr, cagp@wanadoo.fr 13 Bibliothèque du Grand Parc/Public library, run by the Municipality of Bordeaux.

Mme Dominique Dat, Director , 34, rue Pierre Trébord, 05.56.50.28.35, closed on Mo. 14 Piscine du Grand Parc, Public swiming pool, run by the Municipality of Bordeaux.

Mr Franck Tomei, Directeur , 60, cours de Luze, 05.56.90.89.40 15 Gymnases I, II, III, Sport facilities Rue Condorcet, Rue Jean Artus, Rue Pierre Trébod 16 Parc Rivière, maison du jardinier, gardening facilities run by the Municipality of Bordeaux. Rue Rivière, 05.56.43.28.90 17 RPA Maryse Bastié, Residence for the elderly, run by the Municipality of Bordeaux through the Centre for Social Action (CCAS) Mme Herbo , 16, rue Maryse Bastié, 05.56.69.31.31 18 Direction du pôle sénior, facility for the elderly run by the Club sénior Lumineuse.

Mr André Nèble, conseiller de secteur 196 rue Achard (out of map), 06.20.33.69.23, a.neble@mairie-bordeaux.fr 19 CACIS, Sexual information centre, run by the department (Gironde) as part of a public health program. Mme Blazy, coordinator , 44, place de l'Europe, association. cacis@ alicepro.fr, www.cacis-asso.org 20 Église Trinité et Notre Dame de Lourdes, catholic church.

Mr Francis Aylies, priest , Place de l'Europe, 05.56.50.19.40

00

P a g e

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b o r d e au x 2 0 1 1

21 22

Police Station 23, rue Ducau, 05.56.52.43.28 Salle de fêtes, abandoned community centre, owned by the Municipality of Bordeaux. cours de Luze 23 Le petit trianon, abandoned residence for poor families. 4 rue Jean Artus COMMERCIAL AREAS 24 Centre commercial de l'Europe, shopping centre Mr Ledit, President of the association des commerçants de Grand Parc , Place de l’Europe 25 Centre commercial Emile Counord, shopping centre rue Emile Counord

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SOCIAL HOUSING ADMINISTRATORS 26 Aquitanis, neighbourhood delegation, public social housing company linked to the CUB Mme Lissard, Tour Mozart, 05.56.11.19.40, i.lissard@aquitanis.fr, www.aquitanis.fr 27 Aquitanis, central headquarters Mr Grégory Larcher, social engineering, 94, cours des Aubiers (out of map), 05.56.11.87.68, g.larcher@aquitanis.fr, www.aquitanis.fr 28 In'cité, private-public social housing company linked to the Municipality of Bordeaux.

Mme Laigle, responsable, housing management, 05.56.50.20.10, Mme Marie Dubois, communication, 05.57.19.05.94, m.dubois@incite-bordeaux.fr – local delegation: 52 rue Pierre Trébod , central headquarters: 101, cours Victor Hugo (out of map), incite@ incite-bordeaux.fr, www.incite-bordeaux.fr

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ASSOCIATIONS AND COLLECTIVES 29 Collectif "Grand Parc en Mouvement", collective.

Contact person: Soumia , 44, place de l'Europe, 05.56.50.38.22, csgrandparc.direction@ wanadoo.fr 30 Maison de quartier Chantecler, association financed by the Family Credit Union (regional level) and the Municipality.

Mr Vermeulen, Director, 2, impasse Sainte Elisabeth, 05.57.87.02.57, maisondequartier.chantecler@orange.fr www.maisondequartierchantecler.com 31 Association "jardins d'aujourd'hui" Mme Alise Meuris – 05.24.07.65.79 32 Association de locataires, Confédération du logement, tenants association.

Mr Antoine Louis-Alexandre 06.34.75.43.98 33 Association de locataires In'cité, In’cité tenants association.

Mme Françoise Bouille – 05.56.43.02.92 34 Migrations Culturelles Aquitaine Afriques (MC2A) Catherine Tetard 44, rue du Faubourg des Arts (out of map) 05.56.52.43.28 35 Association du Lien Interculturel (ALIFS) Troufik Karbia 9, cours Pasteur (out of map), 05.57.57.21.11, alifs.asso@orange.fr 36 Système d'Échange Local (SEL) des Cressonnières, local exchange program run by the Municipality.

Mme Dominique Jouandet, accountant, Social centre Tue. 10-12, Mairie de quartier Tue. 17-19, 06.25.74.81.24 37 Association des musulmans de Gironde Mr Tareq Oubrou, Imam Mosquée El Huda, 50 rue Jules Guesde (out of map), 05.56.91.99.33 38 Compagnons Bâtisseurs d'Aquitaine, building services run jointly by the Municipality, the CUB, the region (Aquitaine) and private fundings. Mme Adeline Brillet 28, cours du Médoc (out of map), 05.56.01.30.70, cbaquitaine@compagnonsbatisseurs.org

Union Bordeaux Nord Associations Prévention Spécialisées (UBAPS) 39 28, rue Ducau (outside map), 05.57.87.02.27 40 Collectif Bordonor Mme Isabelle Ballade , 129 Cours Edouard Vaillant (out of map) 05.56.43.53.08

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g r a n d pa r c g u i d e

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SAINT MICHEL BORDEAUX REPORT 2/3

text by F LO R I A N E A R R IJ U R I A m i n a b e r ry

7 185 in h a b ita n ts 34 h a s 211 .32 IN H A B/H A 1 . 56 IN H A B/dw ellin g 12% socia l h o usin g 3 5. 5% U N EM PLOY ED 15. 1% yo u n gs t er (0-19) 9.8% Eld er ly (+ 60)

Vie w o f t h e in fo r m al m ar ke t around the st michel church

48.3% m o n o pa r en ta l fa milie s

( l e f t, p h o t o b y a n n e - c é c i l e p a r e d e s )

TNBA

30% b elow pov ert National Theatre of y lin e

LO C AT I O N O F S T M I C H E L W I T H I N B O R D E AU X ( TO P) AN D AN OVERVIE W OF ITS MAIN

Pont de Pierre

F E AT U R E S A N D L A N D M A R K S ( B O T T O M ) .

Bordeaux in Aquitaine

Quais Waterfront

Bordeaux conservatory

F O R A M O R E D E T A I L E D L I S T, R E F E R t o t h e

St Michel

g u i d e at t h e e n d o f t h i s c h a p t e r .

Cours Victor Hugo

CROUS Regional University Centre Halle des Douves

École des Menuts Public primary school

Capucins market

Public library

Lycée professionel des Menuts Professional high school

Le Cap’U University restaurant

Mairie-Quartier Local representation of the Municipality

saint michel

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INTRODUCTION TO THE TERRITORY Saint M ich el is a n eig h bour hood located in Bor deaux’s historic cen t r e. It e x pa n ds ou t a roun d it s squa r e a n d t h e Sai n t-M ich el “spi r e” (a Got h ic tow er 115 m e t r es/3 80 fee t h ig h), ov er a n a r e a o f a b ou t 30 h ec ta r es/ 75 acr es. At it s ed g es, t h e em ba n km en t s str e tch away to th e east, an d b eyon d th e main thoroug h far es li es t h e r iv er. To t h e n o r t h a n d w es t, Cour s Vic to r H ugo a n d Rue du Mir ail h er ald Bordeaux’s lively downtown centre, with t h e sh o ps li n i n g Rue Sai n t e- C at h er i n e a n d t h e s t u d en t ba r s o n Place de la Vic toir e. Th e church of Sainte- Croix an d it s cob b led square lead to the southeast towards the station distric t. The C a puci n s M a r k e t d eli m it s t h e sou t h o f t h e n eig h b our h o o d. I n 1999 t h er e w er e 7,185 “Sai n t-M ich eloi s” 1 .

s a i n t m i c h e l i s n o t a n a d m i n i s t r at i v e u n i t i n i t s e l f; i t i s pa r t o f t h e n e i g h b o u r h o o d o f s t m i c h e l- n a n s o u t y - s t g e n é s . e v e n i f i t s i n h a b i t a n t s c h o o s e a l e f t w i n g g e n e r a l c h a n c e l lo r i n t h e c a n t o n a l e l e c t i o n s ( s a i n t m i c h e l- n a n s o u t y - s a i n t g e n è s i s t h e c a n t o n n u m b e r 5 ) , t h e l o c a l m ay o r ( f a b i e n r o b e r t ) i s a p p o i n t e d d i r e c t ly b y b o r d e a u x ' s m a y o r a n d i s a l s o r i g h t w i n g . s t m i c h e l' s d e f i n i t i o n a s a z u s ( s e n s i b l e u r b a n z o n e , t h e o n ly o n e in t h e his to ric al cen t r e) m akes it t h e focus o f s t a t e i n t e r e s t a n d i n v e s t m e n t, o v e r l a p p i n g f r o m 2 0 0 9 w i t h a n o t h e r r e c e n t s tata l p l a n , t h e p n r q a d ( n at i o n a l p l a n f o r t h e r e n o vat i o n o f deagraded neighbourhoods) P a g e

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ST JEAN-CAPUCINSSTE CROIX

ST MICHELNANSOUTY-ST GENÈS CENTRE

ST AGUSTINVICTOR HUGO

Fabien ROBERT Local mayor PNRQAD

Maire-adjoint du quartier Local mayor

Alain JUPPÉ (UMP) Mayor of Bordeaux

(ZUS) Sensitive Urban Zone

DSU Urban Redevelopment Matthieu Rouveyre (PS) Conseiller général General chancellor

Conseil General General council

Mairie de Bordeaux Municipality of Bordeaux

Departmental level: GIRONDE

Federal Government

This neighbourhood, together with two other neighbourhoods, Saint-Genès and Nansouty, form Canton no5 with 28,011 inhabitants. It has been hard to gather statistics specific to the neighbourhood because most of the existing data has to do with the Canton as a whole. The fact is that these three neighbourhoods are very heterogeneous, both in terms of the population groups living there and with regard to the services and amenities present in the area, the development of shops, etc. This administrative division involves cantonal elections - elections held to elect general councillors for a period of six years. Matthieu Rouveyre was elected with 52.70% of the vote in the whole Canton, against Fabien Robert (Modem). In 2008, this latter was appointed deputy mayor of the neighbourhood by the current mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé.

Saint-Michel has always been a haven for immigrants. At a very early stage, Saint-Michel was an area open to immigration because of the city’s commercial tradition (by way of its port). The first migrants in the 16th century were Spanish and Portuguese Jews fleeing the Inquisition. In the first quarter of the 19th century, Spaniards arrived in large numbers, followed by several waves of immigration. In 1936, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Spaniards arrived in ever greater numbers; the last wave of Spanish immigration is reckoned to have happened around the 1960s. So for a long time Spaniards were the best-represented foreign nationality in Bordeaux, just ahead of the Portuguese2. After the Second World War, immigration from North Africa (the Maghreb) and Sub-Saharan Africa rose, and underwent marked growth in the 1970s. This was mainly due to s a i n t m i c h e l i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e t e r r i to ry

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the fact that family immigration was growing, in addition to economic and political immigration. For some years now, the proportion of foreigners and immigrants has been constantly dropping in the neighbourhood, and in 1999 they accounted for 18.8%. The result has been a lot of ethnic mixing, which can be felt in the neighbourhood in terms of population, shops and lifestyles. There has been a real appropriation of the neighbourhood and its public space by local people. Julia tells us: “In Saint-Michel life takes place mostly out in the street”. This lends a real identity to the neighbourhood, which is regarded as a special one in central Bordeaux.

Saint-Michel is the working class neighbourhood of downtown Bordeaux, formed principally by a population of workers and employees (blue and white collar) (64.5%)3. In 1999 there were 35.5% unemployed, with 30%4 of households living below the poverty threshold, and 19%5 working poor.

At the present time Saint-Michel is a ‘sensitive urban zone’, with visible poverty, often assisted by many associations. In fact, the composition of this neighbourhood has prompted many associations to set up shop here, keen to create links between these residents and their neighbourhood. Many of the associations are of a social nature (Promo-femmes, the community grocery, the ASTI6), while others are cultural (the C.I.A.M., Mine de rien, Chahuts). Today there are about 80 associations in the neighbourhood. They all share the same aim, as it is very nicely described by a volunteer7: “We are active members of this neighbourhood. There are so many problems that the town hall cannot manage them all, and they affect us all. We have a day-to-day hands-on activity, even if we don’t have much money. This P a g e

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e v e r y d ay i m a g e s o f s t m i c h e l ( p h oto s b y a n n e- c éc i l e pa r e d e s ).

d i f f e r e n t wav e s o f i m m i g r at i o n h av e s e t t l e d i n s t m i c h e l , d at i n g b a c k t o t h e 1 6 t h c e n t u r y, w h i c h c r e a t e s a n ' e f f e c t i v e c u lt u r a l m i x ' 1 //.t h e c o m m e r c i a l a c t i v i t y i s r e p r e s e n tat i v e o f t h e n e i g h b o u r h o o d , kn ow n fo r its t wo mar ke ts. st mich el also hosts an e x tensive ne t work of small shops ('épiceries') which defines a distinctive u r b a n r y t h m 2 // a n d 3 //.

forces us to come up with alternative programmes, because, in the end of the day, our goal is to improve living conditions in this neighbourhood”. Many programmes are accordingly organized giving glimpses of a mobilized, not to say “resistant” neighbourhood. As one resident sums it up for us: “This is the very archetype of the Gallic village in a France invaded by the Romans”.

Another distinctive feature of this neighbourhood is that Saint-Michel is largely made up of small households. In 1999, 64.4% of households were one-person units, largely due to the arrival of many students. The average number of persons per housing unit was 1.56. It is also worth noting an over-representation of single-parent families (48.3%). It should be said that the neighbourhood is essentially made up of small housing units (68.5% of T1/T2 – T stands for the apartment’s typology and the numeration stands for the number of rooms in the apartment) which represents a real difficulty for families when it comes to finding accommodation, often forcing them to move. Manon, age 42, puts it this way: “I have been in this neighbourhood since I started studying, I like it a lot, but while, with my first child, we were able to stay in the neighbourhood because we found a T3 which wasn’t expensive, 700 euros a month, with my second child it’s been impossible to find a T4, the only ones available were much too expensive for us. If I remember clearly, the lowest rents were 1000 euros”.

“The main feature of the Saint-Michel neighbourhood is its square”, we were told by many people we questioned. It is in fact built around the Basilica of Saint-Michel which has been listed in the UNESCO World Heritage since 1998. Place Meynard, commonly known as Place Saint-Michel, is the nerve s a i n t m i c h e l i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e t e r r i to ry

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st michel is a working cl ass neighbourhood l o c a t e d i n t h e c e n t r e o f t h e c i t y, w h i c h c r e at e s a n e n o r m o u s u r b a n p r e s s u r e . I n S t. M i c h e l t h e r e i s 1 2 % o f s o c i a l h o u s i n g c o n c e n t r at i n g a l o n g t h e wat e r f r o n t a n d n e a r t h e C a p u c i n s m a r k e t. T h e a r e a a r o u n d t h e S t. M i c h e l s q a u r e h o s t s a m u lt i g e n e r a t i o n a l p o p u l a t i o n , a n e x c e p t i o n i f w e c o n s i d e r t h at t h e n e i g h b o u r h o o d i s p r e d o m i n a n t ly i n h a b i t e d b y y o u n g p e o p l e .

I t i s a l s o e x t r a o r d i n a r y t h at s o m e a r e a s o f S t. M i c h e l p r e s e n t a h i g h p e r c e n t a g e o f r e s i d e n t fa m i l i e s ,

told by many people we questioned. It is in fact built around the Basilica of Saint-Michel which has been listed in the UNESCO World Heritage since 1998. Place Meynard, commonly known as Place Saint-Michel, is the nerve centre of the neighbourhood because of its market, and its terraces, cafés and restaurants all around. There is a vegetable market on Saturdays. Bric-abrac dealers take over the square on Sundays, and on Mondays it’s the turn of the cloth market. For the rest of the week there is a flea market, where residents come and often use the ground itself to display all their “wares”, priced at a few euros. At the end of this square stands the Capucins Market.

This market is not within the neighbourhood’s geographical boundaries but its position just a few minutes from Place Saint-Michel makes it a must venue for the neighbourhood. Originally nicknamed the “belly of Bordeaux”, this historic market contributes to the neighbourhood’s commercial atmosphere.

In fact Saint-Michel lives around a local commercial life, which contributes to the very marked local nature of people’s purchasing and consumerist patterns (‘locavore’ behaviour).

So Saint-Michel is a place where you can find housing, food and clothing at reasonable prices. It is a quarter where people carry on business, but above all a place appreciated by its inhabitants who are proud to belong to it. To them, what creates the principal charm of their neighbourhood is the make-up of its population, a successful mixture, and a social and ethnic patchwork, which displays the many different origins and backgrounds in the neighbourhood. There is also the possibility of new encounters and P a g e

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2 500-3 500 €/m²

> 1 500 €/m²

area with a majority of young dwellers; 15-29 years old. (most of the centre) area of intergenerational mix

DENSER BLOCKS (< 350 dwellings/ha)

BLOCKS WITH HIGHEST AMOUNT OF VACANCY (< 30%)

PRESENCE OF HLM (SOCIAL HOUSING)

1 500-2 000 €/m²

areas with higher number of families and retired persons (above average for the centre)

centre of the neighbourhood because of its market, and its terraces, cafés and restaurants all around. There is a vegetable market on Saturdays. Bric-abrac dealers take over the square on Sundays, and on Mondays it’s the turn of the cloth market. For the rest of the week there is a flea market, where residents come and often use the ground itself to display all their “wares”, priced at a few euros. At the end of this square stands the Capucins Market.

This market is not within the neighbourhood’s geographical boundaries but its position just a few minutes from Place Saint-Michel makes it a must venue for the neighbourhood. Originally nicknamed the “belly of Bordeaux”, this historic market contributes to the neighbourhood’s commercial atmosphere.

In fact Saint-Michel lives around a local commercial life, which contributes to the very marked local nature of people’s purchasing and consumerist patterns (‘locavore’ behaviour).

So Saint-Michel is a place where you can find housing, food and clothing at reasonable prices. It is a quarter where people carry on business, but above all a place appreciated by its inhabitants who are proud to belong to it. To them, what creates the principal charm of their neighbourhood is the make-up of its population, a successful mixture, and a social and ethnic patchwork, which displays the many different origins and backgrounds in the neighbourhood. There is also the possibility of new encounters and discoveries which break down racial and social divisions, and lie at the root of a warm convivial atmosphere regarded as very peculiar to SaintMichel. The Saint-Michel neighbourhood, discovered, used, and loved, often becomes for its residents a homeland which they lay claim to: they are from P a g e

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here, from “Saint-Mich”. There is a sense of belonging which is helped by the quite distinctive character of Saint-Michel as compared to the rest of Bordeaux, typically described as a cold, bourgeois, haughty city, quite the opposite of Saint-Michel, which is working class, warm and lively. Some people however are annoyed by a certain idealization of the neighbourhood asserted by a part of the local population (the “bobos”8 are often pointed at) because the situation of economic insecurity relativizes the attractions of Saint-Michel, which often hides its poverty, and shows just its picturesque qualities, inventiveness, and authenticity. Nevertheless this idealization is also a form of protection against the stigmatization and self-centredness of the communities present in the neighbourhood.

Urbandevelopmentandthemanydecisionstakenbythecitypromptustoquestion the permanence of this working class neighbourhood. The rehabilitation operation, embarked upon in 1984 as part of the national policy of Social Neighbourhood Development has left behind modest, tepid results. The housing has been undeniably improved, but this has entailed a considerable increase in rents, it has not always served the neighbourhood’s less privileged people, and it has readily protected the financial interests of private management companies (lessors). What is more, alterations made to the urban framework have usually been regretted by residents, while renovation work has failed to stem the departure of small traditional shops and businesses, and given rise to a renewal of the population regarded by Saint-Michel’s senior residents as harmful to the neighbourhood’s working class identity. Mainly involved is a young and better-off population. In 1999, there were 35.7% of people aged between 25 and 39, s a i n t m i c h e l i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h e t e r r i to ry

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as compared with 29.3% in 1990. In addition, while all the socio-professional categories are on the rise with regard to the reference household person between 1990 and 19999, only the number of workers is on the decrease (it has dropped from 20% to 16.2%).

Today, the neighbourhood is undergoing another re-definition of the public space around Place Saint-Michel, accompanied by a programme to redefine the old rundown neighbourhoods where housing is concerned (PNRQAD), a State programme for which Bordeaux has been admitted. If the first rehabilitation operation gave an inkling of the initial transformations of the Saint-Michel neighbourhood, with the launch of new works, inhabitants were beset by uncertainty and worried about the future of their neighbourhood.

In everybody’s thoughts is the gentrification10 of the nearby Saint-Pierre neighbourhood, and above all, they don’t want “this to happen in SaintMichel”.

The neighbourhood nowadays does still have a considerable proportion of poor households, but it is quite hard to determine whether the arrival of the new better-off population is the source of a more harmonious social “equilibrium”, or the sign of an increased exclusion of underprivileged categories of people outside the downtown area. For all this, everybody seems to be agreed on one point: “Change the aesthetics, but not the ethics”.

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SOCIAL R E L AT I O N S

N e i g h b o u r h o o d m e m o r i e s a r e li n k e d t o Sa i n t- M i c h e l’s lo n g h i s t o ry. T h e r e w e r e ac t ua lly at le a s t t wo Sa i n t- M i ch e l s: a r elig i ous a n d so m e w h at rur a l Sai n t-M ich el a roun d n u m erous m o n a s t e r i e s, a n d a n u r b a n Sa i n t- M i c h e l a lo n g t h e r i v e r , a d en sely po pul ated, busy an d th riving n eig h bour h oo d, h ousing cr a f t speo ple, lot s o f sh o pk eeper s, a n d day l a b ou r er s i n t h e p o r t. U p u n t i l t h e e a r ly 1 8 t h ce n t u ry, Sa i n t- M i ch e l’s s o ci a l m a k eu p r em ai n ed v ery h e t erog en eous: so m e sh o pkeeper s lef t t h e n eig h b ou r h o o d w it h t h ei r n e w fou n d w e a lt h, b u t m a n y stayed, faithful to the narrow lanes running along b eside th e r iv er Ga ro n n e, w h er e t h e y rub b ed sh ou ld er s wit h t h e “low er cl a sses”.

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s a i n t m i c h e l s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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FRENCH NATIONALITY

81.2%

FOREIGN (drop 10% from 1982 to 1990)

18.8%

BELOW POVERTY LINE

30%

SINGLE PARENT

48.3%

FAMILIES, ROOMMATES AND SINGLES

51.7%

POPULATION CITIZENSHIP AND ORIGIN

7,185 INHABITANTS

100%

HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION

>25<39 YEARS OLD

35.7%

EMPLOYED (1999)

64.5%

TURKS (slight increment during the same period)

2%

NORTH AFRICANS (Algerias drop 34% from 1982 to 1990 and Moroccans 29%)

19%

PORTUGUESE (drop 26% from 1982 to 1990)

34%

SPANISH (drop 61% from 1982 to 1990)

35%

35.5%

UNEMPLOYED (1999)

OTHER

10.5%

INTERMEDIATE OCCUPATIONS

24.6%

MANAGERIAL CLASS

12%

EMPLOYEES

29.4%

WORKERS

23.5%

T6+

1.2%

1.5% 5+ HOUSEHOLD

T5

2.4%

4 HOUSEHOLD

3.5%

6.7%

T3

21.2% T4

HOUSING TYPE

T1/T2

68.5%

3 HOUSEHOLD

6.8%

ECONOMICALLY ACTIVE POPULATION

50.7%

HOUSEHOLD AVERAGE NUMBER 1.56

23.6%

2 HOUSEHOLD

64.4%

1 HOUSEHOLD

SOCIAL HOUSING

12%

families

haran nts s

sans-papiers illegal immigrants

pockets of informality

families

ser

e lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Y

rs d

Cou

impoversihed neighbours forced to move south

cheap appartments

students

young proffesionals

Spanish migrants 19th century

Spanish and Portuguese jews 16th century

INQUISITION

bigger appartments in periphery

HISTORICAL MIGRATION

V CI

PRESENT MIGRATION

Spanish exile 1936-39

Immigrants for eastern Europe

W AR

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IL

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Maghreb migrants families 1970s

families

Sub-Saharan migrants 1970s

sans-papi illegal immigran

PRESENT

o p e n s pac e s u r r o u n d i n g

m ich el t h e " fi r s t s to p " fo r i lleg a l i m m ig r a n t s

t h e b u i l d i n g s i s a c t u a l ly o w n e d b y t h e

w h i l e t h e y t r y t o r e g u l a r i z e t h e i r s i t u at i o n .

' b a i l l e u r s ' ( s o c i a l h o u s i n g a d m i n i s t r at o r s ) ,

due to th e scarcit y of bigger housing

u n l i k e t h e p u b l i c s pac e o f t h e g a r d e n s , w h i c h

t y p o l o g i e s m a n y fa m i l i e s n e e d t o m o v e o u t

i s a r e s p o n s a b i l i t y o f t h e m u n i c i p a l i t y. E V E n

o f t h e c e n t r e , a n d t h e r a i s e o f r e n ta l s

t h o u g h t h e r e h a s b e e n at t e m p t s t o f e n c e

d e s p l a c e s t h e p o o r e r n e i g h b o u r s towa r d s

a n d ' p r i vat i z e ' t h i s s pa c e , a q u i ta n i s , t h e m a i n

t h e t r a i n s tat i o n a n d d o w n t h e ' c o u r s d e

' b a i l l e u r ' i n v o lv e d i n g r a n d p a r c h a s r e f u s e d

l' y s e r ' , t h e b a c k s i d e o f t h e c a p u c i n s m a r k e t.

t h e p l a n s p r o p o s e d b y s o m e n A s o f t o d ay

urban pressure is thus pushing urban povert y

d i f f e r e n t k i n d o f p eo p l e f lows i n a n o u t t h e

s o u t h wa r d s . e i g h b o u r s . t h e ' g a r d i a n ' i s a

n eig h b o r h oo d: n e w co m ers fro m t h e r est o f

n ei g h b o u r e m p loy e d by t h e ' ba i l l e u r ' w h i c h

F r a n c e a n d f r o m t h e E U ( s t u d e n t s a n d yo u n g

ta k e s c a r e o f c e r ta i n b u i l d i n g s a n d t h e i r

p r o f e s s i o n a l s ) at t r a c t e d b y c h e a p r e n ta l

surrounding areas. there are 12 'gardians'

p r i c e s a n d a l i v e ly a t m o s p h e r e . A t t h e s a m e

i n g r a n d p a r c , w h o k n o w a l l t h e f i r s t- h a n d

t i m e , a b l a c k m a r k e t o f r e n ta l m a k e s s a i n t

i n f o r m at i o n o f t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e b u i l d i n g s .

This mixity would nevertheless undergo changes: in the mid-18th century, in a city enjoying its golden age thanks to maritime trade with the Caribbean colonies, Saint-Michel became more and more working class.

Essentially, the neighbourhood embraced people practicing wood and timber crafts and all the professions associated with port activities: ropemakers, net-makers, fishermen, lightermen, barge skippers, and carters.

On the other hand, it was a neighbourhood of poverty: richer folk had gradually abandoned it for the north of the city, while less skilled migrants often settled in very run-down dwellings in Saint-Michel and in the nearby neighbourhoods, where there was much criminal activity.

With the abrupt halt in Bordeaux’s prosperity, and the waning activities of maritime commerce in the late 18th century, the precarious situation would spread to an ever-greater horde of dock labourers. In the early 19th century, the port of Bordeaux was thus reduced to the role of a national importer of products distributed by neutral countries, and to its old function involving exporting wine and products from the hinterland.

Saint-Michel had remained untouched by Tourny’s11 developments and greatly affected by the port’s decline, and then numbered among the city’s poorest neighbourhoods.

Ship’s carpenters, coopers and joiners were all in the process of disappearing and if Bordeaux workers owned small échoppes (typical small homes) in the neighbourhood, new migrants, usually building and railway labourers, crowded into sordid slums and boarding houses12. The works embarked s a i n t m i c h e l s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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upon under the Empire to drain and clean the place were short-lived, and at the end of the 19th century, because none of the projects to develop the centre had come to anything, Saint-Michel and the neighbouring districts were still regarded as an island of insalubriousness in the city’s heart.

It was not until the end of the 20th century that these neighbourhoods underwent major transformation.

Up until the early 1980s, however, Saint-Michel had a building stock that was very obviously run down and even partly abandoned. Its dwellings were degraded: a quarter of the principal residences did not have hot water, half did not have indoor WCs, and less than 20% met with the customary definition of “all mod cons”13. Exposure of living conditions that were especially precarious for certain foreign labourers and workers in the neighbourhood, triggered by the denunciation of the activities of “slumlords”, as well as the discovery of cases of tuberculosis, all helped to emphasize the urgency of a huge rehabilitation operation, embarked upon in 1984 as part of the national policy of Social Neighbourhood Development. Today, new operations to redefine these areas are underway.

Saint-Michel is thus a neighbourhood undergoing a full change, as Philippe, who has always lived in the downtown area, tells us: “The downtown area has changed a lot. It had to change, what’s more, because it was really not fun to be in. People avoided those neighbourhoods, like Saint-Pierre. Now they have actually renovated Saint-Michel, and it was high time”.

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Ethnic Assemblages

With its particular features, Saint-Michel quickly became a haven for immigrants. The origins of this occupation seem to have been the attraction represented, for poor people, in terms of access to housing and appropriation of space, by a somewhat rundown neighbourhood, where rents were quite low and it was easy to occupy and organize the premises on a community basis.

Spanish and Portuguese Jews, fleeing the Inquisition, were the first migrants in the 16th century. Following a major regional and extra-regional migration, Spaniards arrived in Saint-Michel in large numbers in the 19th century and several waves of immigration followed. They became more and more numerous from 1936 onwards and up until the 1960s, when Portuguese and North African workers arrived, followed by their families in the 1970s.

For a long time, the Spanish were the best represented foreign nationality in Bordeaux14.

This marked presence of foreign minorities sets the neighbourhood apart from zthe rest of the city. It is, furthermore, an essential ingredient of the neighbourhood’s identity, in the view of its residents: “Without these communities, Saint-Michel would not be Saint-Michel any more”15, “SaintMichel reminds me of Spain, Italy, and even Morocco”16.

In the 1982 census, Saint-Michel’s population was 27% foreigners. In 1999 they only represented 18.8% of residents, a drop of some 10%, whereas Bordeaux recorded a drop of just 1% between 1990 and 1999, decreasing s a i n t m i c h e l s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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from 7.3% of foreigners to 6.3%.Âś Some of the foreigners have left the neighbourhood: the total number of Spaniards living in the Saint-Michel area dropped by 61% between 1982 and 1990, the Portuguese by 26%, and the number of Algerians and Moroccans dropped from 34% to 29%.

Only the Tunisian and Turkish populations have increased, but they are still very much in a minority17.

Immigration has not, however, made up for the overall population decline in the neighbourhood. Between 1968 and 1982, in which year it numbered 6,400 inhabitants, the Saint-Michel neighbourhood lost almost 40% of its population. As in all large cities, however, a reappropriation of the downtown area by the inhabitants has been observed. For some years, Saint-Michel gained in population, reaching 7,185 inhabitants in 1999.

Saint-Michel still accommodates a foreign population, which makes this neighbourhood a hub for integration in the city, especially for the newly arrived. There may be tensions between certain communities (African vs.

North African/Maghreb), but the system nevertheless makes it possible to assist new comers to set up home, and organize their daily lives, in a way that breaks the borders of segregation that happens in other districts.

Family Structure(s)

For the most part, Saint-Michel is made up of small households. In 1999, 64.4% of households were one-person units, largely due to the arrival of many students. The average number of persons per housing unit was 1.56.

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The neighbourhood population includes a large proportion of single people, especially among new comers, who are essentially young people and students. There is an over representation of single parent families who account for 48.3%18 of the neighbourhood population. Conversely, the share of households with six people and more is 1.7%.

There is a real housing problem for families wishing to live in SaintMichel; T1 and T2 units are in the majority at 68.5%, and the stock of social housing units is insufficient (12%19). As a result, many families have to move to the Garonne Heights and Grand Parc. Schools confirm this trend, and one class may even be done away with in the Rue des Menuts School, for lack of students.

Class Structure

Saint-Michel is a working class neighbourhood in downtown Bordeaux.

Figures show that it has an over-representation of workers (23.5%) and employees (29.4%)20 and an under-represented managerial class (12%)21.

Saint-Michel is still a poor neighbourhood. The average income (703 euros22) is half that of the average income in the city of Bordeaux. In addition, this ZUS23 is experiencing difficulties when compared with the average of priority neighbourhoods in Aquitaine with regard to levels of activity (74.4% vs. 77.6%), unemployment (32.2% vs. 14.8%), the proportion of people living in low-income households (40.1% vs. 21.6%), the proportion of CAF persons entitled to State benefits, more than 50% s a i n t m i c h e l s o c i a l r e l at i o n s

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dependent on social allowances (20.9% vs. 11.8%)24. Dependency and economic constraints are thus clearly present in the neighbourhood.

So Saint-Michel still seems to be one of the underprivileged downtown neighbourhoods. There is a real sense of (visible) material restriction, with the introduction of individual strategies to counter such restrictions, in the relationship to social assistance or because of the resources of the underground economy. On the contrary this social stigmatization of a working class neighbourhood goes together with a more elitist vision of a picturesque neighbourhood. New comers emphasize the attractions of cultural and social mix of people, which, judging from statistics, is far from being effective.

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MEANS OF ECONOMIC E X C H A N G E and production Sai n t-M ich el i s a n eig h b our h o o d ba sed o n a t r a ditio n o f loc a l co m m erce, a n d t h i s h a s b een so fo r se v er a l cen t ur i es b ec ause o f t h e p r e s e n c e o f t h e m a r k e t s i n P l ac e S a i n t- M i c h e l a n d t h e C a pu ci n s, a s w e ll a s a w h o le h o s t o f cr a f t s peo ple a n d sh o pk eeper s wo r ki n g a roun d t h e Po r t d e l a Lu n e. So fro m t h e mid-19th century onward the first tr ading families set up home a n d h a n d ed d ow n, fro m g en er atio n to g en er atio n, t h e kn owh ow o f h er balist s, co b b lers, roo fers, car penters, b l acksm ith s, d r a per s, e tc.

The history of the Capucins Market clearly shows the significance of local commerce in this neighbourhood and its development, reflecting the changes it has undergone. The Capucins Market derives its name from a congregation of mendicant monks. They owe their name to the brown robe ending in a “capuce”, a sort of pointed hood. They strove to evangelize and transform this neighbourhood of “dissolute people” into gardens and terraces. The first weekly market was held on 2 October 1749, but it was only at the time of the Revolution that the market was set up in 1797, in Place des Capucins where livestock were sold once a week and then on a daily basis. The neighbourhood became more and more foodoriented, and the Capucins would gradually become Bordeaux’s number one marketplace. In 1863, the city of Bordeaux launched the project to build covered markets. But it was only after the World Fair held in Paris P a g e

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in 1878 that the city purchased the “remains” of metal structures, which would be used for the construction of two pavilions on either side of the square. In 1881 these pavilions were joined together by a large iron and glass gallery, which is the symbol of Bordeaux’s great market. The history of the Capucins Market thus began with this construction, which owes a great deal to Baltard—a market brimming with activity, spilling over into the nearby streets and neighbourhoods.

In the early 19th century and up until the beginning of the 1970s, the Capucins Market was a place of meetings and exchanges, a place where people exchanged words, informed by the particular spirit of this villagelike neighbourhood, where shopkeepers and merchants were proud to live and work: it became the “belly of Bordeaux”.

The year 1953 saw the introduction of a new distribution system, with the creation of “markets of national interest”25, designed to rationalize the circuits by grouping wholesalers together on the outskirts of cities and create retail markets in city centres. Bordeaux was the first city to introduce this difficult reform.

At the end of the 1960s, with the arrival of supermarkets and malls, activities in markets dropped off, despite the new works embarked upon by the municipal authorities (an extra car park in 1975, and, in 1985, developments in terms of health and hygiene standards).

In 1999, the Capucins Market underwent a new transformation with the rehabilitation of the hall A, which was entirely renovated. The Capucins Market is still Bordeaux’s most important market, offering for retail sale s a i n t m i c h e l m e a n s o f e c o n o m i c e xc h a n g e a n d p ro d u c t i o n

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a wide choice of fresh products. The market is made up of some 60 food stands installed in a two-part hall, plus a certain number of market holders at weekends in the central aisle. In addition, “the carts” of Rue Elie-Gintrac are now to be seen around the market. We are a long way, however, from the time when the Capucins represented Bordeaux’s “belly”, a village within the city, with its rules, its families, and its festivals.

Just like this market, the commercial tradition seems to have been considerably diminished in the Saint-Michel neighbourhood. An eloquent example of this is Rue Camille-Sauvageau, once nicknamed “little SainteCatherine”. Once boasting a large number of shops, craftspeople, and merchants, today they have all left, and many of those premises have been converted to garages or replaced by dwellings. The same goes for Place Saint-Michel, where shops have given way to lots of cafés and snack bars.

The neighbourhood’s “elders” lament the departure of these businesses, which has greatly reduced the diversity of neighbourhood shop signs. A long-time resident thus tells us: “Previously, on the square, there was watchmaker, a photographer, a butcher and an ironmonger, and nowadays, even if there are still plenty of businesses, there are a lot less”26.

Economic Factors

The Saint-Michel neighbourhood has a large number of ethnic businesses.

The installation of numerous foreign shops in Saint-Michel represents an essential resource for the North African population and, to a certain extent, P a g e

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MUNICIPALITY OF BORDEAUX

St Michel market

‘bobo’ bohemian bourgeois

alternative commerce

public interest

SOCIETÉ GÉRAUD

private company students

Capucins market

(Victor Hugo market) microcredit

migrant population épiceries small commerces

supermarket

vegetables

brocanterie antiquities

textile

some clients resell goods in their countries of origin

informal market

migrant population

atrraction of wealthier classes

SATURDAY

‘bobo’ bohemian bourgeois

cheaper vegetables

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAYFRIDAY

‘charrettes’ temporary stalls

students food and vegetables

s a i n t m i c h e l m e a n s o f e c o n o m i c e xc h a n g e a n d p ro d u c t i o n

(closed)

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for Sub-SaharanAfrican residents27. These businesses offer certain job opportunities, and they also enable many foreigners to purchase traditional products at better prices, and above all to enjoy advantageous payment conditions, i.e., credit: in Saint-Michel shops owned by foreigners, the practice of offering credit is common, and overall payments are authorized at the end of each month. “When people know you in Saint-Michel, you can do your shopping with nothing in your pocket”. Similarly, North African, Portuguese and Turkish restaurants offer really affordable prices, which at the same time attract French customers who appreciate foreign specialities; but they also enable immigrants in the neighbourhood and in particular people living on their own, to eat according to their tastes and for less money.

The Market: A Microcosm – Where Solidarity and Competition Intermingle The Capucins Market

Since January 1996, the management of the Capucins Market has been in the hands of the company Géraud, represented by Lionel Level. The concession signed between the city and the company allows the company to choose the stallholders, to deal with the upkeep of the hall and the cleaning and security of the market. At the time, this management by the company Géraud was far from being unanimously approved: “It’s a business like all the others, its only goal is to renew its clientele and guarantee its profitability. To do this, it’s going to introduce a strategy where the Capucins Market becomes a brand”. Since then shopkeepers seem to have “come to an arrangement”

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with this management. At the present time, the Capucins Market has 86 members who must be present five days running over the 7-day period.

The market is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m., except at weekends, when it closes at 2:30 p.m. The market may be managed by a private company, but it is still the property of the Bordeaux City Hall. So as for all markets in the public sector, traders are issued with just a precarious authorization, which can be revoked, and not a lease, which is a commercial contract. Involved here is an authorization that is automatically renewed at the end of the month unless the trader wishes otherwise. The company Géraud is keen to mix different types of businesses and distribute them over the whole hall so that customers can walk around and discover all the products present. But certain tensions between the company Géraud and the shopkeepers come to the surface when it is a matter of choosing new stall-holders, placing stands, setting their rates, and in a more general way, dealing with the development of the market. In order to tackle these issues, three-part committees are organized with the presence of the city hall, the company Géraud and business representatives (volunteers elected by all the shopkeepers). There is also an association of Capucins Market shopkeepers with which Lionel Level tells me he has: “cordial relationships – I wouldn’t say that our relationships are always tip top, but dialogue does exist”.

These tensions are also to be found among shopkeepers themselves, between those who are permanent and those who have moveable stands, those who have been installed for a while and new comers, and those in the left hall versus the right. One woman shopkeeper explained it to me thus: “For s a i n t m i c h e l m e a n s o f e c o n o m i c e xc h a n g e a n d p ro d u c t i o n

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some time now, we with our permanent stands have been grumbling about those on the central aisle, they only come at weekends, and that’s the most profitable moment, they have an ideal situation, they pay less than we do, and we are in a situation where we, with our permanent stands, have to take a second stall in the central aisle, because if we don’t, they take the clientele”. If the shopkeepers are in competition and if certain tensions do exist, everybody prefers to maintain “a good atmosphere” and a very present sense of solidarity”. Karine28 explains that: “Each shop has its regular customers, they all have their specificity and they arrange things between each other so as not to enter in competition with each other, and as soon as they can, they mutually help one another”.

60-70% of the market’s clientele comes from the city centre, but 20% also comes from the CUB and 10% from outside29. The good name of the Capucins Market is firmly anchored in the minds of Bordeaux citizens.

This is one of the reasons often mentioned when traders express a wish to be at the market. “The Capu is a must in Bordeaux”30. The weekly clientele is essentially a local clientele of a certain age. Weekends also see middle and upper class customers—“In any event, the weekend is more diversified than the week in terms of CSP, age and neighbourhood”31.

The “carts”, for their part, have a special place in the history of the Capucins Market. Usually set up in Rue Elie-Gintrac, some 50 people, mostly women, used to sell fruit and vegetables every morning. They were called “four season merchants” or “cart vendors”. They offered Bordeaux’s lowest prices, and were skilled at selling and displaying their products. They bought P a g e

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T h e m a r k e t o f C a p u c i n s 1 // i s a p o l e o f c o m m e r c i a l a c t i v i t y w h e r e f i x e d s ta l l s c o e x i s t with temporal structures in its central hall and surroundings, the so-called charret tes ( c a r t s ) 2 //. t h e p e r m i t s t o s e l l a r e r e n t e d d a i ly a n d o f f e r a l o w - p r i c e a lt e r n at i v e f o r f r u i t s a n d v e g e ta b l e s . t h e m a r k e t o f s a i n t m i c h e l 3 // h o s t s d i f f e r e n t a c t i v i t i e s : v e g e ta b l e s , t e x t i l e , a n t i q u i t i e s a n d a n i n fo r m a l f l e a m a r k e t w h e n o n e o f t h e s pa c e i s va c a n t 3 //. ( p h o t o s b y a n n e c é c i l e pa r e d e s ) .

back everything unsold by the wholesalers and made their selections. Their business was aimed at small budgets and large families. In 1900 there were 400 of them in Bordeaux; their style was free and easy, on the borderline of the rules and regulations and they didn’t put up with anyone who saw the city as just a clean and civilized world. One often heard contemptuous words about them, as we are told by Nicole Lucas32. In 1954, the city hall introduced a draw by lots made with old family medals to attribute the places for the week. Nowadays, they have moved to the area by the car park, and there are just a dozen vendors left.

The Saint-Michel Market

The Saint-Michel Market is a public market managed by the city of Bordeaux.

The vegetable market is held on Saturday. Most of the stall holders are North African shopkeepers who sell fruit and vegetables, which they have purchased wholesale at the Brienne Market, at retail prices. The Monday market is the fabric and textiles market, and for the rest of the week there is a flea market where clothes, books, and all sorts of other objects are sold, often displayed on the ground, for a few euros. These three markets all look alike because of the trading population involved and their clientele. The people who buy and sell are essentially Saint-Michelois. For less well-off people, these markets represent a way of feeding and clothing themselves cheaply. The markets also offer a chance to “do some business”, as Hassan explains to me: “Here, every foreign or immigrant family has its own truck s a i n t m i c h e l m e a n s o f e c o n o m i c e xc h a n g e a n d p ro d u c t i o n

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which is filled with odds and ends bought at the market. They’re probably not worth anything here, but back home people can sell them for much more money, so when the truck is full, they drive out and sell all that back home”. And Ali also tells me that: “The concept of sustainable development might well be written for Saint-Michel. I have a buddy who every week goes round the trash cans, he retrieves lots of things that he will resell back home, when you don’t have any money, you find a way of making some, and don’t worry, with this system people get by quite well, so you see, we haven’t had to wait for Juppé to start recycling”. The Saint-Michel market is above all an important social vector in the neighbourhood, where residents cross paths, get together and talk. Fatima tells me: “For us, the market is really important because we’re not too into supermarkets, and above all it reminds me of home, when people went to the souk, it’s less to buy things than to talk, bicker about the prices, and meet people I know”.

On Sundays, the square is taken over by bric-a-brac dealers. The population is more diversified – people coming from outside Saint-Michel are often better off than the local people. But the bric-a-brac dealers are extremely critical: “The bric-a-brac market wouldn’t pay without the people from outside the neighbourhood. Fifteen years ago, there were still about 30 permanent dealers on the square, and 17 bric-a-brac shops around it. Now there are just six of us. The dealers have left massively for the Notre Dame neighbourhood (Chartrons), which is understandable, because it’s a more chic neighbourhood, and people in Bordeaux aren’t afraid of going there”.

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African people in the neighbourhood and on square Saint-Michel as stallholders, tarnishing the market’s traditional image”.

“You have to make the difference between a market and what the square Saint-Michel is in the process of becoming: a souk”. Some people are even going so far as to suspect the deliberate absence of any intervention by the city, especially where rules and regulations are concerned (because on week days several traders do not have any authorization), with the sole aim of exacerbating the situation of ill-feeling, in order to give their approval for moving the market and/or carrying out a stricter selection of vendors. The fact remains that an absence of inspection in square Saint-Michel tends to accentuate certain tensions, one example being the Saint-Michel bicycles.

Julia explains for us: “The whole city was in the know, and people laughed about it, if you had your bike stolen you would find it next week at SaintMichel Market, the cops, the residents, and everybody knew it, but nobody did anything about it, they waited for years before banning the sale of bikes in the square, which fuels a “lower class white” racism, as the expression goes, because who automatically gets the blame are the immigrants.”

So the Saint-Michel market is symptomatic of the neighbourhood’s challenges: on the one hand a poor and/or foreign population living around this market and deriving an important resource from it, and on the other a better-off population for whom the market nurtures the neighbourhood through its picturesque appearance, but whose traditional character is tending to fade.

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to the embankments? It would seem that the displacement of the market is inevitable much to the chagrin of the vendors who are worried about the possibility of their re-inclusion. â&#x20AC;&#x153;People suspect that once the square has been renovated, stall-holders will be strictly selected, and there is a risk of never getting back in, the Saint-Mich Market will no longer be the Saint-Mich Market, but will look like all the other markets in the city of Bordeauxâ&#x20AC;?.

s a i n t m i c h e l m e a n s o f e c o n o m i c e xc h a n g e a n d p ro d u c t i o n

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E V E R Y D AY LIFE

Sa i n t- M i c h e l i s a m u c h a p p r eci at e d p l ac e w h e r e “ t h e r e i s a r e a l li v i n g s pac e” 3 3 . I n t h i s n e i g h b o u r h o o d t h e r e i s a r e a l a p pr o p r i at i o n o f t h e pu b li c s pace , yo u c a n i m m e d i at e fe e l i t jus t wa lki n g a roun d t h er e. “Peo ple liv e ou t si d e” 3 4 , “ t h er e i s a real street culture, undoub tedly the influence of people from t h e sou t h w h o a r e i n t h e n eig h b ou r h oo d” 3 5 .

Spatial Occupation and Relation to Public Space

The neighbourhood’s charm is an important factor, and inhabitants describe a neighbourhood that is nice for wandering around, discovering things and meeting people. There is a preference for non-motorized traffic, and people essentially move around on foot or by bike. Despite the neighbourhood is part of the city centre – “la Ville de Pierre” – it locates close to the river and the redeveloped riverbanks. Everybody talks about “the Sunday excursion on the embankments” and “the possibility of making the most of a bit of greenery”. But this invitation to stroll around and the use of public space are confined to the neighbourhood. Most of the residents do not go outside the neighbourhood, or very rarely. Saint-Michel seems to function like a village within a city, whose population is turned away from the rest of the city, as one inhabitant jokingly puts it: “Going out Saint-Mich, what for?36”. This confinement to the neighbourhood is to be found in the very distinct character of Saint-Michel in relation to P a g e

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the rest of the city, typically described as a cold, bourgeois and haughty city, the very opposite of an area like Saint-Michel, which is felt to be working class, hospitable and lively. The way some people put it is eloquent: “I do go out to the city from time to time 37”, “here we are outside the city, we feel in another world38”, or, “I don’t live in Bordeaux, I live in Saint-Mich39”.

Housing Space

Saint-Michel is essentially made up of private housing, because there is just 12% of social housing. And 86.1% of the units date to before 1949. What is more, most of the apartments are small, 68.5% are T1 and T2. With the massive arrival of young people and students in particular, one can well understand the approach adopted by private owners to divide large dwellings into several smaller ones. Furthermore, most landlords do not live in these apartments, the percentage of resident landlords amounts to 8.1%. The apartments are essentially for rent. This explains the fairly low desire of owners to maintain these apartments and to refurbish them.

One inhabitant confided in me: “In any event, whether it’s up to standard or not, it doesn’t matter much, they know they’re going to rent, look at my apartment, the toilet is in the corridor, or rather in a cupboard, and I share it with my three neighbours”. All the tenants met complained about the state of their apartments: problems with heat insulation, sound, insalubriousness, mildew in the bathrooms, etc. One can however note s a i n t m i c h e l e v e r y d ay l i f e

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i n s a i n t m i c h e l m a n y d i f f e r e n t h o u s i n g s i t u at i o n s c o e x i s t [ l e f t ] . p r i c e s a l s o f l u c t u at e : w h i l e a s t u d i o fo r a si n g l e p e r s o n o f 24 m 2 co s t s a r o u n d € 4 0 0 , a s h a r e d a p pa r t m e n t f o r s t u d e n t s o f 6 0 m 2 c a n b e o n ly € 5 5 0 . w i t h b i g g e r t y p o l o g i e s , p r i c e s r a i s e : a fa m i ly c a n pay € 1 1 8 0 f o r 7 8 m 2 . t h e l i v e ly at m o s p h e r e at t r a c t s w e a lt h i e r y o u n g c l a s s e s l i k e s t u d e n t s a n d y o u n g p r o f f e s i o n a l s , w h i c h o n t h e lo n g r u n c au s e s t h e i n c r e a s e o f r e n ta l p r i c e s a n d p u t at s ta k e t h e e v e r y d ay l i f e o f t h e d i s t r i c t 1 //, 2 //, ( p h o t o s b y a n n e - c é c i l e pa r e d e s ) .

a significant drop in housing units without mod cons40, because in 1990 there were 12.3%, as opposed to just 2.9% today. The quarter has some squats occupied in particular by a Romanian and Bulgarian population, often illegal. Housing is still a black spot in this neighbourhood which the city hall is trying to do something about, especially with the signing of the PNRQAD41 on 21 January 2011. The main aim for the neighbourhood is the renovation of insalubrious apartments, the creation of social housing units and larger T3/T4 homes in order to give underprivileged families and populations a chance to remain in the neighbourhood.

Everyday Activities

The square represents the neighbourhood’s main attraction and an unavoidable place which people pass through and meet friends in. “The square is a real antidepressant”42. The markets provide its daily life, as do the café terraces installed in the afternoon. Inhabitants thus say: “I often go to the square, sometimes every day”, “I really like spending my afternoons in the square drinking mint tea”. The ethnic shops are also very sought-after by the immigrant population. They all do their shopping in Saint-Michel, as Sofia explains to us: “For shopping, there are shops and the cloth market, for food there’s the market, Arab butchers and ethnic shops.”

Small businesses and shops play a crucial role, forging habits and making it possible to strike up acquaintances because of the daily renewed contacts.

Residents have their haunts in the neighbourhood –“Go down there to the P a g e

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squatters

family

‘bobo’ bohemian bourgeois

squatting of vacant houses out of necessity

There is a 17,5% of vacant housing in St Michel. Only 8,1% of the owners actually live in their dwellings.

9% of dwellings are four rooms or more.

bigger typologies (scarce)

33% of dwellings are one-room typologies (14% in the CUB). The average dwelling has 1,56 inhabitants.

one room appartments, small studios, subdivision of bigger typologies.

marchand de sommeil: illegally rented flats to people with no other possibility: overcrowding, lack of services.

illegal immigrants

monoparental family (elegible to social housing)

There is a 12% of social housing in St Michel, (16,9% average in Bordaux).

HLM social housing

In’cité private social housing company

2.9% of dwellings do not have their own toilet.

colocation: shared appartment (two, three rooms)

students

corner café”. Over and above their “practical” side, because everything is close to hand, “right outside the door”, the small businesses create, through their regular use, a firm footing in the neighbourhood, because of the daily repetition of the same journeys and gradual familiarization with faces encountered almost every day. Ali tells us: “When I arrived in Saint-Mich, I didn’t know anybody and by going to the same kebab house, the same grocery, the same vegetable vendor, in fact there’s a neighbourhood routine which sets in and because people are quite friendly, it’s true that after three years I have the impression that I know everyone here and this encourages you to keep on doing your shopping in Saint-Mich, and having a drink in Saint-Mich, etc.”.

So the residents’ daily activities are focused around the market and the shops, thus lending a real local feel to the neighbourhood, which is much appreciated by its residents.

Family Structures/ Friends’ Structures/Networks

The social network is a network focused on the neighbourhood. Most of the people questioned have their friends living in the neighbourhood and their movements, often limited to the neighbourhood, play a large part in this. Julia also explains to us “that the people who live here share more or less the same ideological, political and social values, they tend to be leftwing, we are simple people, you can’t say as much for the rest of the people of Bordeaux, every neighbourhood has its own identity and population”.

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images of different housing interiors of g r a n d pa r c ( p h oto s b y a n n e- c éc i l e pa r e d e s ). e v e n i f t h e b u i l d i n g s m ay l o o k u n i f o r m from outside, many different social classes, a g e s a n d c u lt u r e s c o e x i s t i n g r a n d p a r c .

M a n y p eo p l e g ot o l d i n G r a n d - Pa r c a n d t h e y s t i l l l i v e i n t h e s a m e b i g a pa r t m e n t s , w h i l e p a r a d o x i c a l ly f a m i l i e s o f n e w c o m e r s a r e hosted in smaller ones.

Saint-Michel seems to be a neighbourhood where it is easy to form a network of relations. A neighbourhood with a crowded feeling which encourages meetings, dialogues and exchanges. What emerges is a feeling of a “rural” area, due to an absence of anonymity, contrasting with the values of the city of Bordeaux (anonymity, superficiality, middle class-ness).

Hassan sums things up thus: “I like Saint-Michel because there’s a real neighbourhood life here, people know each other and acknowledge each other in the street. I find there’s a really nice atmosphere, it’s a bit like being at home, and it’s cool, there’s not the feeling of anonymity that you may find in Saint-Pierre, Sainte-Cath, or Gambetta, you’re always meeting someone to say hello to, and I really like that, it’s a working class neighbourhood, full of contact and ordinary life. Here you can come to rest and be away from the city, it’s really a little village far away from everything else. It’s actually an island”.

The “bobos”43 of Saint-Michel

Saint-Michel is attracting a new population including a lot of artists, often described as the neighbourhood’s “bobos”. The picturesque and working class aspect of Saint-Michel draws this better-off population. These recent arrivals – from the middle and upper classes – are contributing to keep this image of a picturesque neighbourhood alive, by boasting about the charms and authenticity of the place and its inhabitants. It cannot be denied that they are part and parcel of the neighbourhood’s symbolic

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promotion and development. ¶ For these middle-class categories, living in Saint-Michel is both symbol and proof of a great deal of tolerance and presupposes a form of open-mindedness among its residents. SaintMichel is thus becoming a kind of political banner for a certain “left wing intelligentsia”44 residing here. “Middle class people don’t come here”45, “you’re in good company in Saint-Michel, among open people who hate racism, among simple people, even for the better-off fringe, living in Saint-Michel is not an insignificant or neutral thing”46 – it represents a certain way of being meant to be at once aesthetic, tolerant and authentic, and perhaps a tad naïve?

They are, however, well aware of being in the middle of the process of gentrification, as Vincent, a professor at the university and a member of the Tête à clap collective, explains to us: “We destroy what we love by squeezing it in our arms, people are thoroughly aware that this gentrification is going ahead”. Many of them asked me questions about the Evento Festival: “And don’t you think that Evento is contributing to the neighbourhood’s gentrification, it will be a good advertisement for it, a guaranteed postcard effect”47, “Who goes to shows, concerts and so on, not those who have to struggle at the end of the month to buy enough to eat, Evento is going to bring all the bobos in the area here”47.

So Saint-Michel functions like a village within the city where its activities are focused around a market and local businesses. “The neighbourhood is self-sufficient.” Its population, through its particular characteristics, thus readily defines itself as Saint-Michelois rather than from Bordeaux, P a g e

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with which it does not seem to share the same political and social values.

Because of its size and its sunshine, the square Saint-Michel is the place in town for drinking a mint tea, sitting down and chatting with friends, or eating a kebab. The artistic, not to say underground and bobo culture, is part and parcel of the development of this working-class neighbourhood.

Little by little the neighbourhood is assuming its sense and identity to the point where people can define it in a very affectionate and even possessive way, talking about “my hangouts”, “my habits”, and “my neighbourhood”.

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M E N TA L CONCEPTIONS

Saint-Michel may no longer present itself as a partly neglec ted neighbourhood, but it still has a bad reputation where securit y i s co n cer n ed i n B o r d e au x. So m e peo ple h av e to ld m e t h at t h ei r frien ds an d relatives who don’t live in th e n eigh bourhood ar e r eluc ta n t to co m e to Sai n t-M ich el. M os t r esi d en t s d o n ot fi n d t h i s jus ti fi ed a n d r ega r d it a s a n o b so le t e i m ag e. “ T h i s vi si o n, i n ci d en ta lly, co m pli es wit h t h at o f t h e po lice. Fo r t h e peo ple living in the neighbourhood, it’s r ather peaceful, ‘without any r e a l pr o b lem s’. So m e o f t h em, r ecen t ly r e t u r n ed fr o m Pa r i s su b u r b s, e v en see it a s n ot h i n g less t h a n a ‘pa r a di se’”49.

Security

There certainly is delinquency in Saint-Michel, but it does not appear to represent any great danger for the inhabitants. “In the square, there are plenty of young people offering you dope, but if it doesn’t interest you, you refuse, and they’re not aggressive if you do”. There is an acceptance of this delinquency, even though the residents are aware of the risks of certain trades – trafficking in soft drugs, which is very visible in the square and in certain streets – but the neighbourhood does not appear to be more violent or more dangerous than the rest of the city. “Needless to say, weird things happen, people are selling hash, etc., but I think they are also doing that in Saint-Pierre, Caudéran, and the like; they are less visible that’s all”50 P a g e

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halle des douves library

new space for associations

animation centre bar “le samovar” alternative meeting space

perceived solidarity from neighbours to newcomers/ persons in need.

80 associations in St Michel

MAIRIE DE BORDEAUX

However, an increasing amount of night-time vandalism (punctured tyres, broken windshields, rear-view mirrors ripped off) is starting to irritate inhabitants. “The problem is that Saint-Michel is becoming a no-go area”51.

Many people are speaking out against being too lax, and a lack of knowing how to deal with neighbours.

The fact remains that the older is the interviewed population, the more it shares a feeling of mistrust, and a need for vigilance. “I am 76, I am an easy prey, if I may put it like that, I’ve already been attacked once, they took my wallet afterwards, but it could have happened anywhere else”52. A doctor on Rue du Mirail tells us that he warns certain patients with good incomes, living outside the neighbourhood, to come and see him with only what is strictly necessary, and to “take off earrings and rings in particular, which might give people certain ideas”.

Solidarities

In Saint-Michel there is a dense associative fabric, be it social, cultural or political. There are about 80 associations in the neighbourhood. The community centre (‘centre d’animation’) is the nerve centre. Because of the characteristics of the population there are many people offering help to the less fortunate and to immigrants. Their desire is “to help people in this neighbourhood because despite those who depict it as a great neighbourhood, there are some people who really are in the shit, with no money, illegal, homeless, you find quite a lot of poverty and quite a lot of people still unfortunately needing help”53. s a i n t m i c h e l m e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n s

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There is also a more informal kind of solidarity created by the inhabitants themselves. Often, fellow countrymen who arrived some time ago and have opened businesses, create associations, and offer important help to foreign new comers. They are able to make use of the resources of large ethnic and family networks of sociability and mutual help. Thanks to family and friends living in the neighbourhood, the initial accommodation is usually provided, while older relations are called upon to quickly find work for people. Tigan was able to take over the small apartment of a friend and compatriot going back to Senegal, while Emiliano, who came to Bordeaux two years ago, lives with his brother and got a job as soon as he arrived in the building company where his brother is working.

There is also the already mentioned example of ethnic shops giving credit to their customers. Many North African people organize unofficial trips by offering places in trucks fitted out to carry several passengers and their baggage back to their original countries. For elderly North African immigrants, this manner of transport makes it possible for them to make temporary journeys back to their country, during Ramadan, in particular, trips which would otherwise be financially unaffordable. There is also a grocery which gives food to the homeless person begging outside the shop, “but because he doesn’t want it to be done out of pity, in exchange he helps us unpack goods, for example, I think it’s important for him to feel a bit useful as he puts it”54. Many inhabitants mention that they share their meals among neighbours. “My neighbour is bringing up her daughter alone, I know that she doesn’t necessarily have P a g e

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much money, and nor do I, but when I’ve made a big couscous or another dish for 10, I invite her and her daughter and all of a sudden we’ve ended up doing this at least once a week and it gives me a chance to see people too”55.

Identity Building

By encouraging the resources of ethnic togetherness while at the same time avoiding immigrant communities turning in on themselves, Saint-Michel is thus enabling the development of collective identities which are not akin to community inwardness but are part and parcel of the local space and are helping to construct its originality. The neighbourhood’s very old tradition of hospitality avoids community isolation. Extraneousness and foreignness are accepted, and the immigrant presence seems “normal”, and even sought-after. So immigrant communities are not rejected and relegated to any restricted, specific place: “I do not feel a foreigner here, I really feel at home”56, “I have more or less the same life here as in Morocco, the shops, tea on the square, and the mosque alongside”57.

Far from signifying deterioration and fuelling a bad reputation, like in the suburbs, the marked presence of foreigners in Saint-Michel can thus have an attractive side for middle-class categories who appreciate a cultural plurality which is a guarantee for feeling away from home, and something exotic. This positive representation of ethnic identity helps it to be enhanced and incorporated.

Despite the economic insecurity of immigrant people, it thus offers them an acceptable social identity. It is an integration threshold for immigrant s a i n t m i c h e l m e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n s

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bordelais

BORDEAUX

“degraded, insecure”

ST MICHEL

Place Meynard Place St Michel

renovation plan, Sept 2011

“welcoming, village, home”

IS

PA R

saintmichelois

Gare St Jean Central station

populations, and it is all the more necessary for first arrivals. However, this appears to involve an even greater social control for immigrant women.

Some girls tell us that they don’t go to the square Saint-Michel: “The old people would kill us if they saw us dressing like French people, they have remained stuck with the traditions of their country, it’s too painful, and some youngsters living in this neighbourhood are doing the same thing.”58.

From this viewpoint, a young person told me: “When I have a buddy who comes back to the neighbourhood, who had gone to Mériadeck, or I don’t know where in Bordeaux, people ask him: “So you’ve been in France, was it okay?”59 The fact remains that the promotion of group identities helps to encourage the social participation of the poorest people and represents a resource against stigmatization and isolation. A real identity for these inhabitants stems from this, Saint-Michelois who are proud of their neighbourhood, be it well-off groups laying claim to a colourful and lively Saint-Michel, or a less privileged population for whom the neighbourhood is a social, economic and symbolic resource.

Future Outlooks

Saint-Michel is an old neighbourhood undergoing considerable change.

Because of old changes undergone, Saint-Michel’s “village” look already seems less evident. Old people describe a neighbourhood “in distress”, “it’s no longer the neighbourhood I used to know, where solidarity, exchange and s a i n t m i c h e l m e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n s

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sai n t m ich el h a s a v ery s t ro n g i d en tit y ( to p) w h ich so m e ti m e s m a k e s t h e i m pr e ssio n to b e i n ' a d i f f e r e n t c i t y ' , e x a c t ly t h e o p p o s i t e o f t h e b o u r g e o i s B o r d e a u x . t h e r e n o vat i o n o f s a i n t pi e r r e a n d t h e co m i n g o f t h e h i g h s p e e d t r a i n f r o m pa r i s a n d t h e e u r at l a n t i q u e p r o j e c t a r e a l r e a dy a f f ec t i n g t h e n e i g h b o u r h o o d. m o r e o v e r a r e n o vat i o n p l a n i s a b o u t to m o d i f y t h e n e u r a lg i c c e n t r e o f t h e n e i g h b o u r g h o o d, t h e S q ua r e o f s a i n t m i c h e l 1 //, ( p h o t o m y a n n e - c é c i l e pa r e d e s ) .

T h i s r e n o vat i o n i s s e e n b y s o m e i n h a b i ta n t s a s a ' c l e a n i n g o p e r at i o n ' 2 //, ( v i s u a l i z at i o n o f t h e s a i n t m i c h e l p r o j e c t, m a i r i e d e b o r d e au x ).

simplicity were what counted”60. The attraction of a new, younger, betteroff population is therefore not to everyone’s liking. The future redefinition of its public space and its housing is thus causing its residents to fear a “clean-up” of the neighbourhood, which will force poorer inhabitants to leave. The neighbourhood asserts its specific character more in the residents who live in it than through its architectural appearance. People are thus afraid of a gentrification process which “will strip Saint-Michel of what it is”. This fear is all the greater because people have “an impression of déjà vu”, as Joseph explains: “I grew up in Saint-Pierre, which was a neighbourhood like Saint-Michel, quite poor, with the same problems in terms of security and insalubriousness, I remember how my girlfriend at that time, who came from a Bordeaux family, was not allowed to cross the Cours Alsace-Lorraine, above all she could not venture into Saint-Pierre, Saint-Mich, etc. They carried out the renovation of Saint-Pierre with more or less the same argument at that time that I hear now from Fabien Robert during consultation meetings. The fact is that Saint-Pierre has become the super-trendy neighbourhood and you don’t see too many blacks, Arabs, Spaniards and so on in the streets, they’ve all left”. Many consultation meetings have nevertheless been organized by the neighbourhood town hall in the community centre to reply to the uncertainties of residents. The words of this inhabitant about consultation represent quite well what all those interviewed people have told me: “Consultation meetings maybe, but we have to see what they were asking us to consult about, not about the s a i n t m i c h e l m e n ta l c o n c e p t i o n s

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future of the poorest population groups, not about the financial speculation that this will give rise to, not about the housing renovation that InCité is in the process of undertaking, but about the size of streetlights, the choice of wood in the square, and so on. That’s all well and good, but we need to talk about more tangible things. And in addition to style, I would like to be able to talk about content. I questioned Fabien Robert and he told me quite clearly that the consultation was not about the execution of the project in itself (and thus of its consequences – I added that). He said that by electing Juppé, the people of Bordeaux had voted for this project, which was part of his programme”61.

Some “opponents” are trying to organize themselves so that their voice can be heard by both local people and the town hall. The Indymédia Collective and the Saint-Michel Collective are organizing “Information and Exchange meetings”. Matthieu Rouveyre, the neighbourhood representative, has set up a website online “Sauvons Saint-Michel/Let’s Save Saint-Michel”, and hands out tracts and posters, but nevertheless he seems pessimistic about the means at his disposal. “Even though I’ve been elected by the residents of this neighbourhood, because I don’t belong to the mayor’s political family, my wherewithal is considerably limited as compared with Fabien Robert. To date I haven’t been able to hold a single meeting in the community centre, which is directly connected to the town hall and which is the only place in the neighbourhood to have a large room”. Some people are questioning the “real intention” behind the establishment of Evento in Saint-Michel. “I wonder if it’s Pistoletto behind Evento, or rather the Bordeaux city hall, thus P a g e

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speeding up the changes happening in this neighbourhood”62. Most people, however, are pleased about this event happening in the neighbourhood, as Julia tells us: “It’s good that there’s something like this being organized in the neighbourhood”.

So residents are split between the need for an intervention in the neighbourhood and anxiety about the consequences it will entail. One thing is certain: all of them (apart from certain students whose future is still very unsure) want to stay in this neighbourhood, and if they had to leave it, it would not be out of choice but because they were forced to. For them, SaintMichel is the ideal Bordeaux neighbourhood. “Saint-Mich is the France I love, it’s Saint-Mich or nothing. I don’t see the point of continuing to live in Bordeaux in any other neighbourhood”63. “If I had to leave my SaintMichel village, it would be to live in another village, but not in Bordeaux: there aren’t two like this one”64.

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on an equal footing with the Portuguese at 34%. North Africans made up 19% of the 1 An expression used by many neighbourhood foreign population and Turks barely 2%. residents 15 Julia 2 In 1982: Spaniards were the largest minority at 16 Sébastien 35% of the neighbourhood population, almost 17 Villechaise-Dupont Agnès, Amère banlieue, on an equal footing with the Portuguese at Grasset, Paris, 2000 34%. North Africans made up 19% of the 18 CUCS Bordeaux 2009, figure for 2007 foreign population and Turks barely 2%.

19 Summary, document de travail DSU (Taken from the book by Agnès Villechaise20 According to INSEE statistics (1999) employed Dupont, Amère banlieue) people in St. Michel amounts to 64.5%: 3 According to INSEE statistics (1999) 23.5% workers, 29.4% employees, 4 Study report by the Agence d’Urbanisme, 12% managerial class, 24.6% intermediate December 2010 occupations, 10.5% other.

5 Territorial diagnosis for the analysis of social 21 According to INSEE the socio-professional requirements (May-June 2009) categories are the following: workers, 6 ASTI (Association de solidarité avec les employees, intermediate occupations, travailleurs immigrés) managerial class. Workers includes 7 Marie, aged 46, an association volunteer maintenance professionals, trade, unskilled 8 The expression “bobo”, is a contraction of the light industrial and agricultural workers, as oxymoron “bourgeois bohemian”, comes from well as industrial and craft-type occupations. a book by David Brooks titled Bobos in The boundary between workers and employees Paradise published in 2000; it describes a kind is not easy to trace. Employees includes a wide of social style, i.e. an attempt to characterize a variety of occupations, including secretaries, social group on the basis of the values shared office and hospital workers, vendors, fire and by its members, rather than socio-economic or domestic servants. Woman occupy the vast demographic features. The term is often used majority of these occupations except in the to describe well-off people, with a strong police and the military. This group brings cultural base and tendencies towards the many young people, particularly among ecological left. administrative employees of companies and 9 Managerial: 6,3%->7,8% commercial employees. Intermediate Intermediate professions: 12,5%->14,4% occupations includes in its vast majority (two Employees: 11,4%->15,1% thirds) intermediate positions between 10 The term gentrification, which appeared in the managers and enforcement officers, workers 1960s, describes the physical rehabilitation of and employees. The other part includes certain urban neighbourhoods and the workers in education, health and social work, replacement of their population by better-off among them teachers, nurses and social categories. workers. Woman is very limited, especially in 11 Louis-Urbain-Aubert de Tourny was an 18th technical professions. Managerial class century French administrator who worked in includes teachers and professional employees Bordeaux. First, he was “maître des requêtes” who directly apply scientific knowledge in the (high administrative and juridical function), fields of sciences or humanities, employees then in 1730 he was appointed intendant at active in research, education or health. Also, Limoges. In 1743, he became intendant of information professionals whose activity is Guyenne at Bordeaux. He embellished the related to the arts and media. In addition, embankments on the river, had squares made, administrative and commercial employees who opened up avenues and created the public have important responsibilities in the garden. He made a notable contribution to the management of enterprises. general embellishment of the city of Bordeaux.

Engineers and technical managers in business, 12 Etienne R., 1990 employees performing functions that require 13 Villechaise-Dupont Agnès, Amère banlieue, responsibility and scientific knowledge.

Edition Grasset, Paris, 2000 22 Summary, document de travail DSU 14 1982: Spaniards were the largest minority at 23 ZUS: zone urbaine sensible 35% of the neighbourhood population, almost 24 Summary, document de travail DSU

FOOTNOTES

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25 M.I.N. 26 Joseph, 72 year old 27 About one third of the shops owned by foreigners in Saint-Michel are ethnic businesses, i.e. shops whose clientele is almost exclusively made up of immigrant people. A North African (Maghreb) clientele (Islamic bookshop, halal butchers, general store, bars) to which we should add hair salons specializing in African hairstyles.

28 Manageress at Chez Jean-Mi 29 Figures given by Lionel Level 30 Pierre, cellarman 31 The speaker, Lionel Level, refers to CSP which stands for Catégorie socio-professionelle (Socio-professional categories).

32 Representative of the cart vendors 33 Nicolas, 32 year old 34 Caroline, 54 year old 35 Julia, 28 year old 36 Luis, 39 year old 37 Sergio 38 Ali, 31 year old 39 Sébastien 40 With no bathtub or shower, and WC either inside or outside.

41 PNRQAD stands for Programme National de Requalification des Quartiers Anciens

Dégradés (National programme to re-define run-down old neighbourhoods) 42 Sofia, 38 year old 43 See footnote nr. 8.

44 Expression to boast a certain way of thinking and of living in a neighbourhood 45 Kenny, 26 year old 46 Matar, 29 year old 47 Margaux, 33 year old 48 Kais, 46 year old 49 Villechaise-Dupont Agnès, Amère banlieue, Grasset, Paris, 2000 50 Kenny, 26 year old 51 Anita, 39 year old 52 Solange, 76 year old 53 Laure, 37 year old, volunteer with an association 54 Youssef, 42 year old 55 Anita, 39 year old 56 Ali, 31 year old 57 Hassan, 55 year old 58 Leïla, 22 year old 59 Saïd, 25 year old 60 Pierre, 63 year old 61 Jean, 32 year old 62 Matar, 29 year old 63 Marie, 46 year old 64 Kenny, 26 year old

W e wo u ld li k e to ack n ow led g e Pat rick To u r n ach e, M ich el

an d especially M r Moll at for providing us with a privileged

Duch èn e, E tien n e Parin, Gab i Far ag e an d Y van D e tr a z (B ruit

s pac e to wo r k a n d d e v e lo p o u r r e s e a r c h d u r i n g t h e s e

d u Frigo), O livi er D em a n g e at, B er n a r d B l a n c, A n n e G er s t lé,

t wo m o n t h s at t h ei r co n fer en ce ro o m “L a 91”, a s w ell a s

Pi e r r e B a m b o u a n d Ag n è s V i l l ec h a i s e fo r t h ei r t i m e s p e n t

providing a substantial part of our bib liogr aphy. Apart from

with us sharing th eir differ ent vie ws an d opinion s on

th e sources m ention ed b efore, th e rese arch te am used th e

t h e cit y o f B o r d e au x, a s w ell a s a ll t h e i n s tit u tio n s a n d

Archives Municipales de Borde aux, various lib r aries from th e

p e r s o n s f r o m G r a n d Pa r c a n d S a i n t M i c h e l w h o h e l p e d

Université de Borde aux an d th e docum entation centre open

us i n t h e r e se a rch pro ce ss. T h e diag r a m s r epro d u ced

to th e pub lic at th e Agence d' Urbanism e de Borde aux.

in

possible

We regre t if som e of th e data in this rese arch may appe ar not

w i t h o u t t h e h e l p o f t h e D i r ec t i o n d e l' I n f o r m at i o n

accur ate or current enough, but th e Municipalit y an d th eir

G éo g r a p h i q u e o f t h e B o r d e au x U r b a n Co m m u n i t y (C U B )

d ocu m en ta l sou rces failed to provid e m o r e suita b le o n es.

a n d s p ecia lly P. Da n d i eu, F r a n co i s F r e y n e t, Pat r i ck M a lle t,

A ll t h e data p r e s en t i n t h i s r e s e a r ch s t em s f r o m a lr e a dy

M i c h è l e Co r r e a n d J e a n Pi e r r e Sa b at i e r p r ov i d i n g su i ta b l e

p u b li s h ed r ep o r t s a n d d o cu m en t s. W e a l so a p o lo g iz e fo r

c a r to g r a p h i c r e s o u r c e s w h i c h s e r v e d a s a b a s e fo r t h e

any editorial mistake, as we didn 't count with th e services

visualizations (Source DGI PCI 2010, CUB SIG 2010). Arc en Rêve and

of a professional te x t editor or tr ansl ator of our choice.

this

p u b l i c at i o n

wou ld

n ot

h av e

been

especially Éric Troussicot were crucial in th e un derstan ding o f t h e B o r d e au x t er r ito ry t h r o u g h t h e m ee ti n g s, r o u n d

Bordeaux Report is a project of Cohabitation Strategies (Lucia

tab les an d urban visits th e y kin dly le t us take part in. We are

Ba b i n a , G u i l l e r m o D e lg a d o C a s ta n e da , E m i lia n o G a n d o l fi,

grateful for the research advise kindly offered by Mémoire de

Carlos Garcia-Sancho, Gabriela Rendon, Miguel Robles-Durán)

Borde aux an d in particul ar by Gen e viè ve Caill ab e t.

in co ll a b o r atio n wit h Flo ria n e A r rij u ria Min a b er ry, Fan ny

W e a r e a l s o t h a n k f u l to M i c h e l a n g e lo Pi s to l e t to, Lu i g i

Liatard, Anne-Cécile Paredes, Emmanuelle Roussilhes-Pouchet.

Co p p o l a a n d t h e t e a m o f E v e n to 2 01 1 fo r t h ei r s t r o n g

L ayout design: civic cit y (Darius Gon dor, Im ke Plinta). Photos

com mitm ent with th e rese arch projec t, an d th eir efficiency

by An n e-Cécile Paredes

so lvi n g pro b lem s a lo n g t h e way. W e wo u ld n ' t li k e to en d

Bordeaux Report is part of Evento 2011. Bordeaux, 2011. w w w.

without thanking very much the staff at the Mollat lib rary

cohstr a.org

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ADMINISTRATIONAL/ GOVERNAMENTAL SERVICES 01 Mairie de quartier Saint-Michel / Nansouty / Saint-Genès, Representation of the Municipality of Bordeaux in the neighbourhood, Mr. Fabien Robert, deputy mayor in the neighbourhood , 44 Cours Pasteur, 05.56.91.97.96 Monday to Friday 9h-12.30h and 14h-16.30h, 02 Conseil Général, General Council Matthieu Rouveyre, elected by the district Rue Claude Bonnier (out of map), 05.56.99.33.33 03 Développement Social Urbain, Central headquarters of the Social Urban Development, Municipality of Bordeaux . Katia Beyris, local development officer, 11 Rue Père Louis de Jabrun (out of map), 05.56.10.27.58

EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES 04 Ecole maternelles and primaire privée libre Saint-Michel/Private nursery and elementary school . 1 Rue Dasvin, 05.56.92.02.60 05 Ecole maternelle publique des Menuts/Public nursery Mr. Marty, principal and Ms. Nadine Coussyclavaud, arts teacher.

70 Rue des Menuts, 05.56.91.72.28 06 Ecole primaire publique des Menuts/Public elementary school 57 Rue des Menuts, 05.56.92.59.83 07 Lycée professionel des Menuts/Professional high school Ms. Sanmartin, principal 36 Rue des Douves, 05.56.33.09.10, http://www.lpmenuts.fr/ 08 Lycée privé Le Mirail/Private school Gérard Coucharrière, principal 36 Rue du Mirail, 05.56.92.27.83, www.lemirail.es.free.fr 09 Ecole des Beaux Art de Bordeaux/School of fine arts 7 Rue des Beaux-Arts, 05.56.33.49.10, ecole.bxarts@mairie-bordeaux.fr

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CULTURAL, SPORTS, RELIGIOUS AND OTHER FACILITIES 10 Bibliothèque Saint-Michel/Capucins, Public library run by the Municipality of Bordeaux. Ms.Marie, director , 10-12 Place des Capucins, 05.56.91.18.79. Tuesday and Friday 10h-12h and 14h-18h/Wednesday 10h-18h/Thursday 14h-18h/Saturday 10h-17h 11 Centre d'animation/Animation center run by the Municipality of Bordeaux 25 Rue Permentade, 05.56.91.32.08 www.centres-animation.asso.fr, ca.stmichel@centres-animation.asso.fr 12 Maison départementale de la solidarité et de l'insertion (MDSI) Department of solidarity and integration run by General Council 18 Rue du Cloître, 05.56.91.74.45, cms_bx-st-michel@cg33.fr 13 Bureau de police des Capucins, Police office Rue Marbotin, 05.56.91.34.88 14 Théâtre national de Bordeaux en Aquitaine (TNBA)/National theater 3 Place Renaudel, www.tnba.org 15 Théâtre l'Oeil La Lucarne/Theater Jean-Pierre Terracol, 49 Rue Carpenteyre, 05.56.92.25.06 www.theatre-la-lucarne.com, loeil.theatre@wanadoo.fr 16 Conservatoire de Bordeaux Jacques Thibaud/Bordeaux conservatory 22 Quai Sainte-Croix, 05.56.92.96.96 / 05.56.33.94.56

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SOCIAL HOUSING ADMINISTRATORS 17 In'cité, Private-public social housing company linked to the Municipality of Bordeaux Ms. Marie Dubois, communication, m.dubois@incite-bordeaux.fr,

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101 Cours Victor Hugo (out of map),05.57.19.05.94, incite@incite-bordeaux.fr, www.incite-bordeaux.fr

ASSOCIATIONS AND COLLECTIVES 18 Société Géraud-Marché des Capucins/Market association Lionel Level, commissioner of Capucins , Place des Capucins, 05.56.92.26.29, www.marchedescapucins.com, lionel.level@groupegeraud.fr 19 Einstein on the beach, Association Yan Beigbeder, artistic director/Anne Sorlin, production director 86 Rue de la Rousselle, www.einsteinonthebeach.net, info@einsteinonthebeach.net 20 Association des Musulmans de Gironde/Muslim association Mr Tareq Oubrou, Imam 50 Rue Jules Guesde, Mosquée El Huda, 05.56.91.99.33 21 Association du Lien Interculturel (ALIFS)/Intercultural Association Troufik Karbia 9 Cours Pasteur (out of map), 05.57.57.21.11, alifs.asso@orange.fr 22 Association de solidarité avec les travailleurs immigrés (ASTI)/migrant workers association. Fréderic ALFOS, president 10 Rue Causserouge, 05.56.92.65.98, www.astibordeaux.org 23 Promo-Femmes Alia Zaouali, director/Anne Conchou, founder 10 Rue Carpenteyre, 05.56.94.64.07, promofemmes.stmichel@wanadoo.fr 24 Boulevard des potes Ahmed Serraj, director , 29 Rue Bergeret, 05.56.31.94.62, www.boulevard-des-potes.org, ahmed.serraj@boulevard-des-potes.org 25 L'épicerie solidaire Nathalie Martin , 6 Rue Jules Guesde, 05.56.31.87.81, lepiceriesolidaire@yahoo.fr 26 CEID (comité d'étude et d'information sur la drogue) 16 Rue planterose, 05.56.91.07.23 27 Les p'tits gratteurs 3 Rue de Tauzia, 05.47.33.82.85, http://lesptitsgratteurs.blogspot.com, ptitgrats@hotmail.com 28 La halle des douves Olivier Demangeat, president, Rue des Douves (opening 2012), Olivier: 06.08.71.88.01 / Kirten: 06.42.63.72.79, www.douves.org, contact@douves.org 29 Association des arts de la parole/festival Chahut Caroline Melon , 25 Rue Permentade, 05.56.91.32.08/05.56.92.22.27 www.chahuts.net, contact@chahuts.net 30 Mine de rien Dupont Pinky/Mathieu Ducept, president 18 Rue Saumenude, Local Art Trock , 09.50.90.90.88/06.60.02.93.97, minederien@yahoo.fr 31 Têtes à Clap/Collectif de production cinématographique, collective film production Vincent Lefort, 75 Rue Camille Sauvageau, www.tetesaclap.org, vincent.lefort@ club-internet.fr 32 Association des Brocanteurs "Le Passage Saint-Michel" Ms. Abbadie, 10 Place Canteloup, 05.56.91.38.43, leshangarsdupassage@voila.fr 33 Association des Brocanteurs du Passage Saint-Michel Gérald Fortier, 14/15 Place Canteloup, 06.74.53.69.97, gerald.fortier@numericable.fr 34 Collectif Saint Michel. collectifsaintmichel@riseup.net 35 Association Promotion du Grand Saint-Michel Solange Marchives, president, 06.70.30.86.09, solange.marchives@wanadoo.fr 36 L'association Bordeaux caché/Artyshow Kirten Lecocq, 06.78.10.88.41, www.arty-show.org, artyshow@arty-show.org

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