The urban riots once again reveal the eruptive character of certain districts of our French cities. One of the components of the problem, well known but insufficiently taken into account, is the development of our urban and peri-urban territories.
Unlike the cities of Germany, Eastern and Northern Europe, we have piled up fragile populations from immigration in cities which are transformed into ghettos and powder kegs, if economic depressions, racism and violence are mixed in. We will not come out of this with the only recipes from successive suburban plans, including the stillborn Borloo plan of 2018. We need an in-depth overhaul of the housing model, which has led to inappropriate land development.
It is important to emphasize the need for human beings to have an active relationship with nature. Caged, some animals kill themselves or become depressed. Socialized in apartments, on concrete and asphalt, children are amputated from a part of what constitutes their humanity. On the basis of this type of observation, the World Health Organization had reintegrated gardening into the key determinants of health, and consequently invited the promotion of urban planning that could “help preserve and protect areas that will be used for collective projects and provide the possibility of local food production”.
An extraordinary shrinkage
Historically, the human habitat has included both housing and a corner of nature. This was the model of the house with a garden which, at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889, had been considered the best way to house the people. It was also the model of the double dwelling, namely the house or the apartment in town supplemented by the country house. A way of life that was favored by the aristocracy from antiquity, practiced throughout Europe by the wealthy classes from the 19th century, and democratized in the 20th century with the proliferation of second homes.
But the Athens Charter, drafted by Le Corbusier following the fourth international congress of modern architecture in 1933, popularized a habitat in collective buildings in which the garden was replaced by green spaces maintained by the municipalities, and where the children and adults were only allowed to watch and walk around without running too much. Extraordinary shrinkage of human habitation design.
You have 55.54% .. “”.