Pauline Gali – Diversifying the housing supply as part of urban regeneration: shaping the market and transforming the housing stock in neighbourhoods undergoing urban regeneration

This thesis sets out to examine the urban regeneration currently taking place in France through the lens of urban political economy approaches. The central idea of this work is to understand urban regeneration insofar as it forms part of the commodification of neighbourhoods housing the large social housing estates inherited from the Trente Glorieuses. These large-scale social housing estates can be regarded as spaces which, since their construction, have been characterised by public and quasi-public ownership of land and a housing stock built using public and quasi-public capital, operating under an administered rather than a purely market-driven system. Originally designed for the intermediate segments of the housing market, these housing estates and the neighbourhoods in which they are located have undergone processes of devaluation which this study aims to characterise, emphasising their effects on the positioning of these spaces and rental housing stock within residential markets. Through the large-scale demolition and reconstruction policy it introduces, urban regeneration brings an end to the absence of major land and property transactions that has characterised neighbourhoods comprising large social housing estates since their creation. It situates these areas within a new cycle of urban development, characterised by the involvement of private property developers, as part of the diversification of the housing supply sought by the National Agency for Urban Regeneration, with a view to diversifying the demographic composition of these neighbourhoods. The thesis will examine all the changes made to the housing supply in large-scale housing estate neighbourhoods, focusing both on the restructuring of their social housing stock and on the introduction of non-social housing in various forms. In particular, it will document the strategies and practices implemented by public and quasi-public bodies involved in urban regeneration projects to bring about such diversification of the housing supply, and specifically to encourage the involvement of private urban developers in these areas, which were initially considered unattractive. The concept of urban rents will be useful for understanding the mechanisms put in place by public actors to safeguard and ensure the profitability of private property developments. The thesis will therefore examine how urban regeneration contributes to the expansion of market-driven modes of urban production, as well as the social and spatial effects of these processes. Finally, it will explore the links between the mechanisms governing settlement patterns and the various ways in which property markets are structured and private property developments are designed, as these operate within the context of urban regeneration. In order to better understand all these transformations, the thesis seeks to situate the urban regeneration carried out since 2003 within the history of urban policy and the trajectory of the ‘grands ensembles’ under study, particularly through the lens of their positioning within property markets. This part of the study is based on archival research, which has enabled the collection of documents detailing the construction conditions of large housing estates and the interventions carried out on their housing stock as part of urban policy, as well as information relating to the implementation of urban regeneration in these neighbourhoods. The survey on urban regeneration carried out under the National Urban Regeneration Programme and the New National Urban Renewal Programme is based on interviews with stakeholders involved in urban regeneration projects, the collection of documents and the conduct of quantitative analyses.