“Paris is no longer a city made for the people”

A fine connoisseur of urban issues, researcher Hacène Belmessous develops the idea of ​​“neoliberal urbanism” which has transformed the city into a temple of finance and consumption, to the detriment of the people. “We are now in a space where encounters occur through consumerism,” he explains. Urban planning is intended for a category of the population which has a certain type of income and which is expected to be depoliticized. »

Denouncing “ruthless urban policies for popular categories”, and the abandonment of the right to the city for all, the writer, author in particular of “Small political history of popular suburbs” (ed. Syllepse, 2022), believes that the urban development of Paris has had a direct impact on them. “In 60 years, we have gone from an open capital, with democratic urban planning, to a capital dominated by finance. There was a move away from the working classes, who had to leave Paris between the 70s and 90s, then the middle classes from the 2000s. The financialization of the city means that it is crushed by individualist collectives. It is no longer a city made for the people. It is …