Rescaling(s) of the State(s) in housing production :: Inter-state conflicts in the development of the Grand Paris Express station areas

Inter-state conflicts in the development of the Grand Paris Express station areas

Abstract

Since the launch of a metropolitan underground’s network project in the Paris region in 2010, the stations districts, newly invested by metropolitan logics and becoming levers of growth and attraction of private capital (Halbert and Attuyer 2016), are subject to State-led housing productions. This article focuses on the reconfigurations of housing policies in the suburban municipalities soonly served by the future subway network.

Mobilizing eighty semi-directive interviews[1], we question the State's attempts to regulate the affordable housing’s production within the areas. These national regulations are based on several control vehicles addressed to municipalities to develop social diversity within their station's district.

Nevertheless, despite national public action guidelines and models of good practice for the development of station districts, the survey highlights an ambiguous role played by the State. Through several state-owned public institutions exercing land value capture strategies, some State agencies actually relies on real estate developers to build housing programs fully dedicated to home ownership (Aalbers 2016) within the station districts. The central State - understood in this doctoral study as State services (Préfectures) public planning establishments, national housing agencies, public bank - appears to provide a framework for and regulate decentralised local public action in an unequal manner. The degree to which the « State » intervenes in local housing policy seems to be directly correlated with the dynamics of metropolisation brought about by the arrival of the metro in the district.

Approvals for the construction of social housing are rarer, and strategies to financialize the state-owned-land (Christophers 2017), disregarding the first-time residents needs, reinforce the affordable housing access’ tensions. This ambivalent positioning of the State may lead to a widening of socio-spatial inequalities due to contradictory and coercive national measures (Rodriguez-Pose and Storper 2020) in a context of metropolisation of the Paris periphery invested by metropolitan facilities.

[1] Conducted with deconcentrated State services (Préfectures) Public Planning Establishments, National Housing Agencies, local authorities, social landlords and real estate developers.