Urban renewal, yes, but no longer without taking into account global warming.
The Minister Delegate for Cities and Housing Olivier Klein announced on Monday that all urban renewal projects will have to be reviewed next year to include the adaptation of popular neighborhoods to global warming.
“I want a project review, of all the existing projects, in 2023, under the aegis of the prefects”, declared Minister Olivier Klein during the days of the National Agency for Urban Renewal (Anru) in Paris.
“They will have to re-examine all the projects, because sometimes, it is not enough, to ask the right questions: can the schoolyard that we are renovating be less paved?
Will the color of the building being rehabilitated reflect or absorb less or more of the sun's rays?
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Called “Resilient Neighborhoods”, the approach will be accompanied by investments in around fifty “pilot territories”.
“I want these neighborhoods to have the best innovations in terms of greening, waste water recovery, efficient heating…” stated the minister.
These investments, amounting to 100 million euros, will be taken from the 12 billion already allocated by ANRU to the New National Urban Renewal Program (NPNRU) which covers the period 2014-2030.
“They will make it possible to direct part of the remaining appropriations (…) to innovate and experiment”, specifies one in the entourage of the minister.
Residents on the front line
The scorching summer, the second hottest ever recorded according to Météo France, particularly affected the inhabitants of priority neighborhoods Urban policy, according to a Harris Interactive poll commissioned by Anru and published on Monday.
The inhabitants of priority neighborhoods are more likely than the rest of the French to declare having suffered from the heat this summer (76% against 70%), to have slept badly because of the heat (74% against 69%), and significantly more many had difficulty finding a place to cool down (62% vs. 48%).
The urban planning of these neighborhoods often leaves little room for nature and causes heat islands;
and housing there is sometimes less well protected against the heat than elsewhere.
"I therefore express the wish that this approach will only be the first stage of a larger and more ambitious project, a larger project that we would call Quartiers 2030", added Olivier Klein, echoing the plan of investments promised by Emmanuel Macron between the two rounds of the presidential election.
