Abstract
Celebrated as “Montpellier the gifted” and “the most creative French city”, Montpellier is a paradoxical ordinary city. Ranked second in the country for population growth and first for attracting knowledge workers, Montpellier is also one of the French poorest cities in which unemployment and social inequalities reach high levels. Much more than a rhetorical device, the creative city relies on two embedded processes: the implementation of a political imaginary of a creative and a non-stop innovative city built since the 1980s on a narrative urbanism; and a process of “urbanization by its pieces” designed as the “neighbourhoods fabric strategy”: an institutionalized way of urban fragmentation and residential inequalities in the city.
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Notes
- 1.
Council of Europe and CEC 2008.
- 2.
It is 14 percent for cities with similar characteristics.
- 3.
The national average housing cost is about 2500 euros per square meter.
- 4.
“Maisons pour tous” are multipurpose institutions offering cultural, social, sports, and leisure services to adjacent neighborhoods.
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City as a product.
- 6.
“Montpellier, the city where architects never sleep”.
- 7.
“Bourgeois Bohème” (Marchal and Stébe 2014; Brooks, 2001).
- 8.
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Giband, D. (2017). “Creative Urbanism” in the French South: Constructing the (Unequal) Creative City in Montpellier. In: Gerhard, U., Hoelscher, M., Wilson, D. (eds) Inequalities in Creative Cities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95115-4_7
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