ABSTRACT

In France, public housing centring now manifests in a specific urban space: the banlieue. This chapter chronicles that vast reform consists of a policy of settlement aiming to more deeply manage the poor population. Reform would facilitate the liberalization of the public housing system and land tenure in the banlieue; while the urban renewal programme would restructure and deregulate the national public housing policy in order to diversify the housing stock and to promote homeownership. Behind PNRU's numerical targets, three objectives were assigned to the urban renewal programme: residential diversification through social mix, mutability of land tenure and rehousing poor households outside the banlieue. Obviously, public housing restructurings are central in the neoliberal project of remaking cities in conforming poor neighbourhoods to neoliberal norms and values. Coercion is integrated into daily administrative routines, in participatory procedures, in the rehousing of inhabitants, in social programmes implemented, etc. Domination and power are also visible in the planning rhetoric used.