Renewed neighbourhoods: requalified and dignified neighbourhoods? Examples of districts in region Auvergne Rhône Alpes (France)

Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017In France, for 40 years, a public policy called policy “of the City” has been implemented to act globally on the social and urban exclusion. Since 2003, this policy has knew an important change and tries through actions of urban renewal to transform profoundly the neighbourhoods of social housing. By improving social housing, public places, facilities, by demolishing and building housing and by attracting private investments to diversify housing and population and by diversifying the functions of these neighbourhoods, it is a question of making of these stigmatized districts, "banal" districts. After more than ten years of urban renewal, we can wonder about the effects of this policy on these areas in terms of requalification and dignity. Are these neighbourhoods less stigmatized, really requalified? Did they acquire a better image? Are they dignified to be inhabited for the inhabitants of these neighbourhoods and for the inhabitants or the citizens generally? If the first evaluations of the policy of urban renewal show that the living environment was improved, that the inhabitants feel better, and that they consider these neighbourhoods as "banal" neighbourhoods, dignified to living there, they also suggest, with regard to the difficulties met in certain neighbourhoods to attract private investments and actors, and new inhabitants, that these neighbourhoods are still far from being requalified in the public opinion. After having presented the policy of urban renewal, its emergence and its objectives, we shall return on the results of evaluations of the urban transformations led on all the concerned neighbourhoods, and we shall show, by analyses led in renewed neighbourhoods of the region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, that it is advisable to be very careful as for the requalification of these neighbourhoods.Published versio