Policy arrangements Marseille

Ann-Caroll Werquin

Paper made available to the COST C11 Working party.

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Policy arrangements
Discussion	Concept	Challenges
Cases		Goteborg	Marseille	Munich	Sheffield	Utrecht	Warsaw

Policy arrangements Marseille France

Short title of the cases study: How to protect the Bastides area, different points of view.

In my case the most influential discourses in relation with the protecting of green heritage while planning the improvement of the city are: 

The municipality of Marseilles express its priority as being the growth of inhabitants and of employment "to made the wealth, the inhabitants and the firms coming back" (in discourse of the Mayor for his new mandate 2002-2007). The objective is to attempt more balance in social composition (to-day Marseille'municipality counts 44 % of the people of the regional sector and 58 % of the low incomes, and is missing of skilled in offices working people) and to attract quite rapidly more middle-class or well-being inhabitants to reinforce the role of the metropolis (the hope is for 4 to 5 000 new inhabitants each year, 3 500 new dwellings in which 700 social dwellings).

For this purpose, she is not trying to have a compact and clever development in the northern part of the city, which would be hazardous, difficult and long to organise, but is thinking of having low density and detached houses, which merchandising is easiest. Consumption of land in a sector containing lots of green spaces (agricultural land, canal) belonging to ancient bastides realm is to occur.

The overall discourse of the municipality is nonetheless of one's doing plenty for turning the dense city in a green one.

Looking backwards at the public policies driven by the municipality in the past three decades, we can see three periods:

o The transforming of sectors (pieces of urban canvas) to obtain an enlightened city was the priority. During the seventies, urban renewal and the aim of giving each inhabitant 10 m2 of public green space, coming from none. Ten parks were created then and the layout of the Prado beaches started.

o During the eighties, despite a programme of " thousand of green dots" to improve the quality of life of some neighbourhoods, priority was given to employment with business parks and industrial areas and the local plan was carried on,

o During the nineties a change of scale is to notice relating the question of green spaces: municipality set up space in the Calanques, ensured natural areas against fire and started acting against sea-water pollution, the desired economical growth needing to fit with a city valuing its blue patrimony and offering more green space within the urban canvas.

By now green projects concern urban regeneration areas and the lay out of an enlightened urban fabric showing more green features than the traditional dense urban centre.

A new park in the eastern part, significant, issued in june 2001 (parc du 26è centenaire, about ten hectares, replacing an ancient station) as the trend-setter for renewing the part of the city around (quartier de Menpenti), located quite close to the center, first built in the 19th century and mixing workshops, small factories and housing. The park have twelve access gates, is widely open to the urban canvas, is made visible by a belvedere from which you can also discover the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde.

The neighbourhood was not so populated and now, with the attractiveness of the park, private developers are densifying the canvas with some blocks of flats made one after another (no global layout, only private-sector led). A green chain will extend the park to join a recent business area in "La Capelette".

Some others projects are to be done to enlighten the urban canvas of the city. Regeneration is also at work for a large perimeter (300 ha) including the old docks and the surroundings of the station (gare St-Charles). State, because of the loss of industrial employment, is involved with the managing and the endowment of this huge programme with a special urban development corporation (Euroméditerrannée) and with a special budget. An important role is given to the renewing of urban spaces and urban canvas (place de la Joliette, waterfront, transforming of the motorway along the waterfront) jointed with the reuse of buildings and creation of new activities and the welcoming of students.

More green spaces are planned (parks), in relation with urbanisation schemes, but a valuing of some of the existing landscape features as the green areas left by the Bastides-period, are not the subject of a special management plan or strategic vision.

Key words in municipal discourses are nevertheless vision for the future, social balance, developing more green within the city, working for sustainability, improvement of the existing…

Others actors and their discourses. State operates on another time-scale than municipality and makes protection compulsory when the local representative of State, after expert-surveys, think it is necessary. The constraints and the guide lines State is bringing with laws are long to curb the trends at work and may have sometimes some effect, but not being enough respected other times. The protection of green spaces is effective but only appears when looking far behind. We said in this way (in paper 1) that forty years were needed to have the most of the Master plan (made compulsory by State and drawn in 1933) accepted by the municipality and appearing in the local plan of 1978. During that time some opportunities were missed. Municipalities are often acting in the present while State's action address the long-term vision. State discourse is mostly about long-term planning and preservation of the historical heritage.

Citizen, stakeholders.

Demand or proposals made at the level of city-dwellers are varied and should be examined as a proper subject.

To contribute to highlight the question of the assessment of "green spaces" in urban planning , lets evoke two question in debate:

- In the northern part of the city the urbanisation planned by the municipality is viewed as a process entering in conflict with the goal of keeping greenstructure of the town as part of its identity , of keeping existing structure (paths, walls along small roads…)as a basis to regenerate typical landscape in urban development.

The debate is about the type of urban canvas and metropolis towards which Marseilles city region is evolving and which is concerning greenstructure issues within urban planning.

Some stakeholders living in Marseilles (social scientists, writers, planners...), in their contributions, are focusing of the special cultural features of this Mediterranean city. There is a shift between the "southern" way of life existing traditionally in Marseilles and some of the new ways of life, as the so called "American one" of the recent suburban settlements of individual homes.

- The actual relationships with external spaces prove to be very diverse, especially in a multi-cultural Mediterranean city. Some are through green spaces identified as parks and gardens (and play areas, local and districts parks are needed), others are through all sorts of open spaces, natural and agricultural ones, unused or derelict areas, allotments, streets or informal meeting places as in front of the supermarkets (and in the surroundings of coffee-shops), where to be during one's spare-time in order to belong to the very mixed social flows of passers-by.

The needs expressed are also for public spaces, where festive events can happen, in the city core or in the outskirts as commercial centres. Easy access from the housing areas to go to the open spaces is probably not enough taken into account to combat social separation. Such knowledge about greenstructure and about green spaces improving the quality of life is not much fetch when municipals are thinking of the urban planning.

Linking town and country is viewed as a necessity by some landscape architects and planners (strategies were studied by the municipal agency for urban planning and proposals were made in particular concerning the Marseilles canal, to offer opportunities for leisure-practise development, making it a green way between the city-core and the protected natural spaces of the surroundings, but with no result) and would probably be as much as useful as the garden festival on the item of fountains which is foreseen for the renewal of the Longchamp open space and park surrounding the museums.

Rules of the game, tools and resources are changing because of new laws on urban planning and inter-municipal co-operation.

An emerging topic in State position nowadays is for more co-ordination between general principles and the schemes elaborated at the different levels and to have local territories to associate (the units of life and work should act as a whole) for preparing some special large-scale frameworks and to conduct a common project (with increasing protection of the natural spaces) for spatial planning.

The objectives of such a shift are clearly stressed in the new policy framework drawn by three laws

o "SRU" : "urban regeneration and solidarity" issued in 2000, reforming most of the French physical planning disposals and regulation.

o law for including sustainability in spatial planning, (LOADDT, 25/06/1999).

o law enhancing inter-municipal co-operation (12/07/1999, often called Loi Chevènement, name of the Minister who issued it),

Law on inter-municipal co-operation contains a simplification in the rules related to co-operation structures (called EPCI, établissements publics de coopération intercommunale, already existing and managing the fiscal resources they collect). Municipality co-operating and stopping the fiscal competition (with the next ones, to attract business and commercial centres) gain a financial advantage. The endowment, when creating of inter-municipal structures, is about twice higher, so .

The urban planning documents are also to be different, the new documents are instruments to change the relationship between actors. The vision is clearly to promote, at the relevant level of metropolis and with a holistic approach, a spatial strategy for coherence, development and mixed uses of land. Physical development should be guided in the desired direction and include sustainability and environmental concerns. Iterative relationships in decision-making have to be fixed between the diverse places to live, places to work, places to go through, places for recreation, in order to take into account their mutual dependency.

The laws are too recent for an assessment of their effects.