in Marseille, a third of the city's housing is now in residences and closed housing estates

This is an underlying trend in Marseille: more and more neighborhoods are becoming partitioned. A third of the city's housing is located in residences and closed developments: digital codes, gates, barriers, etc. The privatization of space began in the 1990s, in the most affluent southern neighborhoods, and it now affects all sectors, up to the northern districts. The city is fragmenting.

In this private housing estate in the 10th arrondissement of Marseille, Coin-Joli district, near the Vélodrome stadium, gates and signs “NO ENTRANCE” block the paths. “Most accesses have been closed by gates which are closed all day and which can only be opened by residents,” regrets Pierre Linossier. This resident fought against these closures because the subdivision is home to a primary school. Some local children now have to take a long detour to get there: “A much longer journey home to school. It can go from 5 to 15 minutes, or even twenty…”

Here, it is the anarchic parking which motivated the closure. But at the other end of the city, in the northern districts, near the city of Castellane, the Saint-Henri beaver housing estate also dreams of a large gate, for peace and quiet. Jean Dominique Tarifa is one of the co-owners of these charming houses, built by working families in the post-war period: “Daily, young people come to smoke cannabis or breathe laughing gas. They leave everything in the middle so it’s us who are forced to clean up every day.”

Gérard Clément, manages the voluntary trustee of the subdivision: “It's not because we live in the northern neighborhoods that we don't have the right to security. It's not to close in on ourselves, far from it. It's a form protection.” The closure could also allow homes to increase in value. 500 meters away, a new residence has just been built. It is completely fenced, like many new homes.

Elisabeth Dorier is a geographer, university professor and researcher in the Population-Environment-Development (LPED) laboratory at the University of Aix-Marseille. For fifteen years, she has documented the proliferation of closed residential complexes in Marseille, which are now being built near cities.

“The new normal is necessarily closureshe notices. There is practically no alternative offer left. We create enclaves and we call that social diversity. We have spatial proximity but social distance. And you are separated by barriers.” Real estate developers rely on barriers, explains the researcher, to attract the upper middle classes to poor neighborhoods where sea views, access to hills and parking spaces are privatized.