La gentrification comme politique(s) : ambivalences et (in)capacités du renouvellement urbain par grand projet dans les agglomérations de Lille et Hambourg

Abstract

Built on a cross-national sociological research that retraces the genesis of two large-scale urban renewal projects in the urban areas of Lille and Hamburg, this article shows to what extent they might be considered as gentrification policies and as a way to question this analytical category. Even if both—Union and IBA Hamburg—projects imply the social and symbolic triage of firms and populations that are legitimate to occupy the targeted neighbourhoods, the coalitions of actors who try to turn these “problem areas” into symbols of “metropolitan attractiveness” are far from acting in a coherent, omnipotent and unequivocal way. The processes of eviction and of real estate value-creation or -destruction throughout the design and implementation of these large-scale urban projects are the result of the action of these public-private coalitions as well as the consequence of their inaction and their (relative) incapacity to actually govern people and capital flows. Therefore, the (in)capacities of local governments to remove populations and businesses from these districts or to enhance the market and symbolic value of these spaces depends on the social and economic embeddedness of these policies.

Keywords

• urban renewal
• metropolitan attractiveness
• capacity to govern
• Lille
• Hamburg