In search of attractiveness
Urban renewal by major project in the metropolises of Lille and Hamburg
New book by Clément Barbier published by Presses Universitaires de Rennes
In tracing the process by which two "problem districts" have been elevated to emblems of metropolitan influence, this book aims to decipher the origins and workings of attractiveness policies. Through an original comparative approach involving the intersecting sociology of the Union project in the north-east of the Lille conurbation and the International Architecture Exhibition (Internationale Bauausstellung - IBA) in Hamburg, it plunges us into the administrations and development companies responsible for transforming the image, population and economic fabric of two declining territories that everything seems to oppose.
The survey sheds light on the public authorities' contribution to the deindustrialization of these areas, and their inability to attract the innovative companies, graduate workers and international investors they so earnestly desire. Figures of economic, architectural and environmental excellence thus appear as signs of the same myth of public action in the name of which elected officials, technicians and experts work to manufacture exemplary gentrification policies.
