Youths running wild on suburban streets, police cracking down, violence, poverty, despair - not a scene from La Haine but real-life France last autumn. To stop this happening again, the French government is trying to revive the banlieues. Will it succeed and what can we learn from its efforts?
A decade ago when the French film La Haine was released, audiences worldwide discovered director Mathieu Kassovitz's bleak vision of life in the banlieues. The French suburbs were depicted as a sea of concrete blocks where violence and hopelessness reigned. Forget Le Corbusier's ideal of the banlieue as a "radiant city"; the film's young anti-heroes lived in grim ghettos.
Fast forward 10 years to October and November 2005 and news images had replaced fiction. France was beset by riots that originated in the Paris suburbs and quickly spread across the country. The images of burned-out cars and riot-wrecked streets revealed to the world the deep-rooted desperation and anger of banlieue dwellers. The causes of the unrest and potential solutions have now become a subject of much debate. The effect that regeneration can have on urban violence will be the subject of a talk by Sophy Body-Gendrot, director of the centre of urban studies at the Sorbonne, as part of a debate for the London Architecture Biennale next month.
The French government is already working on its solutions. It has to tackle two big problems: high unemployment and a desperate shortage of decent affordable housing - an issue that E E housing professionals on this side of the Channel are also grappling with. What lessons can the UK housing sector draw from France? Regenerate looks at five key issues to find out.
Planning
President Jacques Chirac's government is painfully aware that emergency measures are needed, so it is facilitating the release of redundant council land for development. About 400,000 homes will be built this year - about double the British target. This includes 80,000 social housing units, of which 20,000 will be in Ile-de-France (the region that contains Paris). The shortage of social housing is acute: France has just 4 million social units and more than 1 million on the waiting list for a place in an HLM - habitations 脿 loyer mod茅r茅, or homes for moderate rent.
In 2000, the socialist government of the day passed a law called Solidarit茅 et Renouveau Urbain, which required 20% of all new housing to be social homes by 2020 in towns of more than 3500 inhabitants. This does not include low-cost home ownership projects.
Chirac's centre-right majority has reinforced this policy, requiring local authorities to justify their case if they say they are short of building land. If the claims are proved to be false, councils face a hefty fine.
Proving that Nimbyism isn't just a UK phenomenon, some communities have been reluctant to accept the quota. Last month in La Norville, a town in the southern suburbs of Paris, a resident group's petition to stop the construction of 181 social housing units made national headlines because of their resistance to a new population, understood to comprise immigrants, moving into the town. The campaigners claimed that they would rather pay the penalty for failing to comply with the law than see a change in their social landscape.
Meanwhile the Borloo Plan, named after Jean-Louis Borloo, the minister for employment, housing and social cohesion, is set to demolish 250,000 homes and refurbish 400,000 by 2011 in 750 areas identified as having a housing shortage. Exactly the same number of homes will be built in their place, under the French rule of one down, one up. However, this will increase overall housing stock as some older homes are unpopular and unoccupied.
The ANRU (National Agency for Urban Renewal) was set up in 2004 to oversee the programme. Powers are devolved from central government to the "maires b芒tisseurs" (building mayors) on where and what to demolish - a move that might interest the government as it considers increasing the powers of civic leaders (see "Pride and power", left). By the end of last year, ANRU had signed 91 agreements with local authorities, but it was revealed that a quarter of them are not replacing demolished stock with the same number of units.
In January, a report from housing charity Fondation Abb茅-Pierre found that of 70,000 demolitions, only 66,000 new homes were planned. The charity denounced this flouting of the one down, one up rule. The report said it seemed mayors wanted "to get rid of an urban as well as social and ethnic burden".
The government's contribution
The French government uses tax incentives to boost construction of social housing, as well as investing *9bn a year in HLM developments. More than 800 HLM associations also benefit from land tax exemptions.
To encourage developers to acquire homes that will be rented to low-income households, a law called Engagement National pour le Logement was passed last month by the French parliament. This enables property developers to get a 30% tax rebate if the rent is 30% lower than the market average and a rebate of up to 45% if the rent is even lower.
Michel Amzallag, director of economics and financial studies at the Union Sociale pour l'Habitat, the representative body for HLM associations, says: "The HLM movement is welcoming the way financing is evolving as it gives more powers to housing associations." However, Amzallag doubts that these tax incentives will prove sufficient to reach the government's targets.
The government is ready to give away land for one euro
and let developers reuse empty housesLaure-Anne Forti, housing ministry
What to demolish/what to build
The extent to which concrete housing blocks from the 1960s and 1970s are responsible for social ills - and therefore deserve to be demolished - is an ongoing subject of debate in France as well as the UK. Dominique Montassut is an architect specialising in urban renewal who has been working with London practice John Thompson & Partners to design 39 social units in S茅nart, a Parisian suburb.
Montassut refuses to attribute the social crisis to the concrete blocks erected half a century ago. He says: "There is a political discourse blaming HLM as inherently bad and set to fail as sustainable buildings. It's wrong. Everything was going well in the first 20 years."
He acknowledges that too many HLM were thrown up in a hurry, but he opposes systematic demolition. He would prefer to see buildings rehabilitated: "We are demolishing as badly as we have been constructing." Some architects are refurbishing, however.
Meanwhile Paul Chemetov, an architect who has designed thousands of social housing units, criticises the new-build projects for standing out too boldly - in stark contrast to the UK, where mass market designs are slated for not being bold enough. He says: "They create Snow White and Alice in Wonderland kind of places - three storeys high, painted pink, prim and proper," he says. "This cosmetic solution has shown its limits because the difference between the new build and the old is far too conspicuous."
Access to home ownership
The Engagement National pour le Logement also aims to provide greater access to home ownership, especially in deprived areas.
Laure-Anne Forti, a spokeswoman for the ministry of employment, housing and social cohesion, explains that the law gives developers the tools to build more cheaply. These include a reduced VAT rate of 5.5% (down from 19.6%) when homes are sold to low-income households - a far cry from the approach of the UK Treasury, which imposes VAT on refurbishment, but not new build. Forti says: "The government is ready to give away land for one symbolic euro and let developers reuse empty houses."
France even has its own version of English Partnerships' 拢60k house: a *100,000, 75m2 house. If housebuilders meet the price tag, they get the VAT reduction, though this does not apply to Paris. Twenty mayors have committed to the scheme and 20,000 houses should start on site by the end of the year, substantially more than the 1000 homes being built under EP's initiative.
Social cohesion
Since 2004, employment, housing and social cohesion have been dealt with by a single ministry. However, it seems almost impossible to expand the social mix in French estates.
The country has not adopted the mixed-tenure approach that is common in the UK.
"There are more constraints to having social tenants and private owners in the same building," says Amzallag. "It is more difficult to learn to live together." He points out that local authorities are producing more small housing units, which means large families struggle to find suitable accommodation. He says: "Most of them are immigrants. Local authorities have a hidden reluctance to welcome larger families."
Attitudes to immigrants are very different in France and efforts to promote social cohesion - a big concern in the UK - appear non-existent across the Channel. George Maurios, one of the most prominent housing architects in France, puts it bluntly, in terms that would raise eyebrows in the UK: "One will never be able to prevent immigrant families from using a three-bedroom flat to house 15 with three wives, 10 children, the neighbours and the cousins 鈥� There is a real cultural problem."
For Maurios, the housing crisis is part of a larger malaise, where HLM residents suffer from physical isolation and lack of job prospects. Chemetov, who sits on a select committee on urban renewal, agrees: "The question is not whether you build high, in bricks or in colour, but whether you offer all the services around housing: education and transport." The French may have a different culture and housing stock, but they seem to be reaching a similar conclusion to the British regeneration industry: it's the infrastructure that really matters.
In La Haine one of the characters kept repeating, "so far, so good", hinting that the situation in the suburbs was about to explode. In the real world, it already has. Chirac's government is entering its last year and the first results of its housing initiatives will play a significant role in the election of his successor in 2007. With parallels and lessons emerging, they will be closely watched in the UK too.
Source
RegenerateLive
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