ANITA
POUCHARD SERRA

BYE BYE RED BELT?
Urban transformation in a popular parisian suburb


The red belt is the nickname given in the 30's to the suburban cities surrounding Paris, ruled by the workers' parties. Bagneux, a small city part of the richest department in France, is one of them since 1935. With 65% of social housing (the deparment has average of 28%) and with a great cultural diversity, it’s now being disrupted by major urban changes such as the arrival of the Paris metro and a station of the "Grand Paris Express" network connecting it to the rest of the territory.  


With rising real estate prices in Paris and the possibility today of a greater connection to the territory, Bagneux started to appear on the map for young couples and families with purchase power, becoming a territory of attraction. The project "bye bye Red belt?" proposes to reflect on the large scale transformation of this city, and to intertwine the real changes of the territory, visible with the social changes that this implies for the inhabitants, those of always and those of tomorrow trying to answer the question : Who will really benefit from this transformation and how inhabitatns envision the future of the city.

Yves Philippe, 71
" I arrived in 1958 with my family.

When I arrived it was almost a small country town, there were still market gardeners and a farm. It was built up over time.
Today there are many transformations, we have to know how to evolve, to implement devices like the metro. "



Doukanse Fatoumata, 49

25 years in Bagneux.
"What I like in Bagneux is the conviviality and the sharing. I work in Bagneux, I've been in the maintenance department for 24 years.
I think that these transformations are an in-between. We are nostalgic of the past, of the 90s and 2000s. These transformations will bring new people, that's for sure. You have to reconcile the two, old and new, and it's not easy to manage.  "

" Abdellah AMEKRAZ
55 years old,

Owner of the restaurant "C'est mieux qu'ailleurs" a few meters from the new metro.
"I saw that in Bagneux there are few restaurants, there is everything that is fast food and pizza, but I noticed that there is no French gourmet restaurant.
Before I was in Moroccan specialties, I had my own restaurant. I wanted to open a couscous in Bagneux but because of the population we opted for French gastronomy. Most of the people in the neighborhood here, they have their own couscous at home. And I noticed that when people from Bagneux want to go to a restaurant, they go to another town, Arcueil, Sceaux. Once a month, we will do an international specialty.
My parents-in-law have a fruit store here, I've been coming here for a long time. In this neighborhood, with the arrival of the metro, there will be a lot of changes, more passers-by, that's what motivated me for the location. It's a lively city with a future."

Victor Vigoureux, 31.
Childhood referent in a cultural center in the south of the city.


"Bagneux is moving a lot, and we must have a real duty to remember. That's what we work on with the children. We walk around the city and we go to see the changes in the city, and what it becomes. We embark on a kind of journey, between the past and the future.
We see in the center the arrival of new families, very mixed families. As long as we manage to communicate and to go towards people, that will be the watchword, everything will go well. "

Marie-Hélène Amiable, Mayor PCF (French Communist Party) of the city of Bagneux since 2004.

"The arrival of the metro line 4 and then line 15 in a few years will be good for the economic attractiveness of the city, it is good for employment and commercial activity, and also for the mix of the population. Newcomers find the city friendly, with many cultural, sports and community activities, and I think that integration will go well, and it's my job to ensure that old and new residents live together in the city. Our objective is that the arrival of the metro will not drive out the inhabitants of a working-class town like Bagneux. We are fighting for the social housing of the 60s and 70s to be rehabilitated so that the people who live there can live comfortably. This is the great challenge. We can be a popular city, have the metro and be 3 kilometers from Paris.
Bagneux is a city of encounters, a city of passion, we don't have stars but generous people full of talent. There is an energy between people, different cultures, between citizens of different origins and different social conditions, and that is important at a time when racism is on the rise as well as the extreme right."
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