La rénovation de l’habiter dans le grand ensemble de la Duchère. Pour en finir avec la figure des « nouveaux habitants »

Abstract

Since 2003, the Duchère quarter has been the subject of a major city project among fifty national sites classified as “sensitive urban zones”. Based on a programme of demolition and rebuilding, the plan seeks to reduce the part apportioned to social housing and diversify the property offer within these marginalized areas, in order to encou­rage “social diversity” therein. If urban renovation presupposes the introduction of a novel mode of habitat and leads to the fabrication of a new category of inhabitants, how is the living environment to be recomposed in such a context of change ? Despite the political intention of struggle against processes of exclusion affecting populations living on the city’s fringes, in a perspective that is as much synchronic as diachronic, our understanding of the local context of La Duchère has allowed us to reveal the reconstitution of symbolic borders through complex forms of reinterpretation and resis­tance. This article intends to show how anthropological expertise can contribute to cla­rifying or anticipating potentially conflictual situations, particularly with the urban project’s implementation.

Keywords

• large complex
• urban renovation
• new inhabitants
• symbolic borders
• reshaping the living environment