By Maëlle Lions
Mayor Marie-Hélène Amiable and promoters inaugurate the new O'Mathurins eco district together
BAGNEUX, Oct 19 2023, (Sciences Po) - In 2014, the French Defence Procurement Agency packed up and left Bagneux’s ‘Mathurins hill’, suggesting an economic disaster for this working class suburb town south of Paris. Nine years later, the town has transformed this disaffected land into the new heart of the city.
Municipal councilors, real estate promoters, architects, town planners, landscapers and residents all met on Wednesday October 18 on the hill of Mathurins, in the south of Bagneux, to inaugurate its brand new eco-district O’Mathurins on this 16 hectares site.
“The goal was to transform this place that's been historically closed to residents to a sustainable neighborhood” said Laurent Mourey, executive chief of Linkcity, one of the main leaders of the project.
They are not the first tenants to invest in the hill. Formerly owned by a qatar bank, Mathurins had been hosting technology company Thomson since 1957 before it was home to aerospace, defense and security company Thalès, which was then replaced by the French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) in 2007.
Because of the DGA activities ongoing there, the hill remained an unknown place to inhabitants, and was even wiped off Google maps.
But it remained an important source of profits for a city that has a 15% unemployment rate.
Like other communes of the “Red Belt” - the name given to historical strongholds of the Communist Party in Paris suburbs -, Bagneux has been for a long time a traditionally working-class area whose residents were employed in the heavy and light industries.
So, when she found out in 2009 that the DGA was going to move its 3,000 civil et military workers back to Paris in four years - burying the premise of another 2,000 jobs that were supposed to be created in Bagneux -, communist mayor Marie-Hélène Amiable was extremely worried.
“This led me to two potential reactions: either crying, or thinking: ‘I was elected to face such challenges’. I went with the second” said the mayor, who’s been at the head of the city for 20 years now.
The town hall decided to turn it into an opportunity for its inhabitants and called on real estate developers, architects and landscapers to build an eco-district to respond to heavy housing demand, and welcome new business premises.
Promoters like LBO France, Nexcity, Linkcity, BNP Paribas estate, but also social landlords like Sequens responded positive, as city hall is pushing for diversity.
A decade later, brand-new green buildings with green rooftops and greenhouses have flourished all around the central garden, the latter promising to be a new green lung for the city. Even the biodiversity is welcomed: hedgehogs and bats also get their own wooden shelters.
“What we’re doing is building a new city on a city,” said mayor Marie-Hélène Amiable, while the O’Mathurins new district will soon turn into a student campus as well.
Future highschool
In two years’ time, the Mathurins hill will also welcome the first bricks of Bagneux’s very first general high school.
As a third of its inhabitants are under the age of 25, the working-class town only has a vocational high school, forcing teenagers who want to pursue a classic education to go study in neighboring town Montrouge.
Inhabitants have been letting their frustration out, before the Ile-de-France region - in charge of educational facilities - approved the high school project in 2017.
"We've all been fighting to have this school for 30 years," says Florence, a 59-year-old inhabitant, who’s also happy that she can cross through the area now without having to walk around.
The "Smallest Circus in the World" has already settled wooden cabins and a food truck on the land of the future high school, where inhabitants can now gather
The high school is due to open before 2030, but its future ground has already been invested by two temporary wooden huts on stilts, one serving as a reception office, and a food truck.
The Smallest Circus in the world, Bagneux’s cultural association and host of the huts, hope to make inhabitants feel acquainted with the site.
“We want them to feel legitimate to be here now”, explains Julia Desfour, architect and head of the project.
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