“The inclusive city that praises us little by little is dressing itself with other adjectives”

Hacène Belmessous is an independent researcher and writer. He focuses his research and social studies on the city. Latest published books: Paris is no longer a party (Urban Voices, 2024), A brief political history of the working-class suburbs. (Silepsis, 2022), The laboratories of hate. Research on the hidden side of the municipal front (Demópolis, 2019), The Greater Paris of social separatism (Posteditions, 2015).

In life practices, urbanity is a particular way of negotiating relationships with others and, consequently, a capacity for social and cultural integration. What remains of these ambitions today?

There is no shortage of good intentions, we see it in every electoral campaign. But on what scale do we place coexistence? On the scale of a building, a street, a neighborhood? It is not enough to build buildings or develop a public or private space to establish coexistence. However, what do we observe in reality? Today’s city only exists if it has economic production. Urban planning has become a matter co-constructed between public and private actors and no longer answers these central questions: what kind of relationships exist between individuals? What collective destiny do we want to establish to create a community? Furthermore, questioning urban planning means, incidentally, questioning the future of the public city.

Starting in 1940, the Vichy regime stripped the municipalities of their competence in urban planning and entrusted it to the general delegation for national equipment, the future ministry of equipment. What is the scope of this decision that turns institutions into guarantors of the general interest?

In this sense, I see a distrust in the ability of individuals to create a collective destiny at the local level. The State is guarantor of the national interest. It affirms a republican position by guaranteeing a form of equal access to the territory, of equality between cities. However, it is no longer the guarantor of the social contract. Let’s ask ourselves: can we make the city public when the lever of the economy is a capitalist spring? The answer is obviously no, the facts prove it. The State cannot guarantee the general interest when particular interests dominate the public space.

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