From the city perimeters to the centre of the political arena: deprived neighbourhoods and urban policies in postwar France

Abstract

The outbreak of violence in one of Lyon's suburbs in the early 1980s prompted the French government to launch a political programme for deprived urban neighbourhoods in the outskirts of French cities. Called ‘social development of urban neighbourhood’, the new programme marked a political shift in how the Parisian government dealt with French cities. Not only had there been a shift of responsibility to the local level but there was also a public–private partnership in which residents' participation became essential. This article takes a closer look at this political turning point by focusing, on the one hand, on the local context in Lyon which steered the new way of governing the city in the 1980s and, on the other hand, on the link between juvenile violence and political actions on urban borders.