Involving Residents in the Design of Urban Renewal Projects Based upon a Generative Analysis of Social Processes

Abstract

This chapter presents a “generative analysis” of ways of residing that, through close cooperation between sociologists and urban planners, has been used to design urban renewal projects of public housing estates through a collaborative process involving the decision makers and the residents. This approach is aimed at restructuring and regenerating housing estates, and also improving urban management so as to facilitate new social practices, reduce social conflicts and develop “urban identity potential”. Through this process, the residents are invited to express their opinions and expectations regarding the improvement of the design of their estate. Urban planners and sociologists are responsible for finding the best design solutions which can fulfil these expectations, knowing that they also have to be suitable for the decision makers. Then residents are invited to criticize the diverse scenarios which are proposed to them in order to make adaptations and define the final project.

We have used and monitored this kind of approach in several urban renewal projects in public housing estates for deprived people in many large French city suburbs, such as Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, and Reims. This chapter discusses the design process that was carried out as an urban renewal scheme in a Belleville Hill estate in a northern district of Paris. The approach, in which urban areas restructuring is based upon an analysis of ways of residing, shows that sociological research is not necessarily restricted to an analysis of urban dynamics or an assessment of the social impact of urban projects. It can also be a guide to the very design of these projects. For us, this kind of approach and professional practice is truly a clinical sociology approach, as the design of urban space and the way public authorities maintain it may lead to degradation processes, which in their turn, lead to the development of social conflicts and delinquency. We assume that clinical sociology should mainly aim at changing social processes in which people are embedded.