Varieties of right-sizing strategies: comparing degrowth coalitions in French shrinking cities

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to understand the varieties of “rightsizing” strategies in French shrinking cities. Empirically, the article examines the issue of “rightsizing” in France. It reveals that urban shrinkage is still considered as a minor issue nationally, and that “rightsizing” ideas have not gained momentum on urban agendas or within the planning community. Despite this lack of interest, local strategies aimed at adapting the built environment to a reduced population have been “silently” implemented in France’s shrinking cities, over the last 15 years. The article focuses on the strategies elaborated in two cities: Saint-Etienne and Vitry-le-François. These strategies are both emblematic of an acceptation of population decline and of a will to reduce the housing stock. However, these two strategies rely on different actors and rationalities: the first is based on a selective understanding of “rightsizing” which aims at replacing deprived social groups by a long-awaited middle-class; the second is fueled by the worsening financial situation of the main social housing landlords. By pinpointing the factors that explain varieties of “rightsizing” strategies, the article calls for a more careful use of the notion of austerity urbanism, based on case studies which are sensitive to contextual issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Rightsizing
• urban shrinkage
• demolition
• degrowth coalition
• French cities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Many French shrinking cities are former industrial cities where the share of social housing is rather high and the role of social housing institutions significant in local governance. Social housing landlords have experienced increasing difficulties in shrinking cities such as high vacancy rates and higher management costs due to the rising residential mobility of their tenants. The organizations federating the social housing institutions at the national level have been alerted of these growing issues by their local adherents.

2. The “national” data used in the first part had been collected through a mix-method approach: quantitative data analysis of the French national census had been made to understand the demographic trajectories of shrinking cities and 15 semi-structured interviews had been conducted (by the authors and Rémi Dormois) with central administration public servants, state agency officers, and representatives of housing and local governments’ federations. The two case studies – Saint-Etienne and Vitry-le-François – had been selected for their long history of population loss and for the presence of strategies aiming at addressing the issue of urban decline. For these cases, the empirical work had been based on documents analysis (local plans, reports, etc.) and interviews. In each city, about 20 semi-structured had been conducted with local elected officials, city officers, social housing landlords’ representatives, or urban developers. These interviews were conducted collectively and partially transcribed. Their analysis was made without coding software.

3. They were 354 urban areas in 1999 in France. An “urban area” is a statistical category defined by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). It comprises a group of municipalities which together make up an urban center, with a minimum number of jobs, and an urban periphery. At least 40% of the resident population in the periphery is employed in the urban center.

4. Only one French urban area experienced annual population loss greater than 1% in the period 1975–2007.

5. As a matter of fact, the Fédération Des Villes Moyennes – the lobbying association for medium-sized cities – seems to have a weaker access to Ministries and State agencies than the other local authorities lobbying groups, such as the Association Des Maires de France (AMF) or the Association Des Maires Des Grandes Villes de France (AMGVF).

6. The first incentive scheme for investment in rental housing was set up in 1984, by the Socialist government (the Quilès policy). Subsequently, such measures (Perissol, Robien, Borloo, Sellier, Duflot, and Pinel) have increased, and their cost to the government today far exceeds direct support for construction of social housing: 41% of public housing subsidies in 2012 went to tax incentives supporting private rental construction, compared to 16% spent directly on building social housing. The growing role of these measures reflects the changing role of the State, which now acts more to support the construction of private accommodation by market actors, rather than contributing to the building of social housing (Pollard, 2010). It also has strong impacts on local housing markets: The prevalence of small flats, increased vacancy rates, the creation of a “de-spatialised” regime of property, etc. (Vergriete, 2013).

7. The “no interest loans” that help low-income households become homeowners contribute to the new supply of housing in urban peripheries, while housing in town centers is being emptied out.

8. Large French cities were the main targets of this program. As a matter of the fact, the program introduced a new rule in urban planning: The “1 for 1” rule which considers that for each social housing unit demolished, a new one must be built. Negotiations on this “1 for 1” rule have been an important issue in declining cities such as Saint-Etienne or Vitry-le-François, where local actors wanted to rebuild less housing units.

9. During the 1980s and 1990s, the metropolitan area of Saint-Etienne gained population. It was only in the 2000s that the population of this area started to stabilize and then to decline. Due to long-lasting opposition between the central city and its surrounding towns, metropolitan institutions have always been weak in Saint-Etienne. As a result, the issue of urban decline – mainly experienced by Saint-Etienne and a few industrial medium-size towns of the metropolitan area – has always been very low on the metropolitan agenda, leading to unrealistic demographic forecasts in almost all metropolitan and city-regional planning documents: Local Housing Plan (PLH), Territorial Coherence Scheme (SCOT), etc.

10. Saint-Etienne has 23% of social housing, which is above the national threshold of the SRU law. However, its main specificity lies in the existence of a so-called “de facto social housing stock” constituted by poor quality private housing (mainly located in the city center), with lower rental prices than in social housing. While in most growing French cities, the city center is the area where housing prices are the highest, in Saint-Etienne it comprises a lot of deprived people and ethnic minorities, and housing prices are very weak: Around €1,000 per m², whereas in a city like Lyon housing prices in the city center are around €3,000 to €4,000 per m².

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of the research project Altergrowth, funded by the French national agency for research (ANR) for the period 2014–2018 (ANR-14-CE29-0004). We would like to thanks here Rémi Dormois, Christelle Morel Journel, Mathilde Rudolf, and Valérie Sala Pala, who helped collect the data used in the article. We would also like to dedicate this article to the memory of Matthieu Giroud (1977–2015), who was a member of our team.