The toll is rather light: a disused neighborhood house and burnt out cars. Despite the scorched smell, the Parc aux Hares has not been totally swept away by the riots of the last few days. This set of fifteen-storey greyish towers, once one of the most sensitive areas of Evry-Courcouronnes, 40 minutes from Paris, is nevertheless flammable. The sector has many times been consumed by urban violence.
In 2005, not far from the central square, a workshop for making Molotov cocktails was flushed out. From here, on this concrete slab cast above a secondary road, it’s impossible to miss the police. It must pass underneath to circulate. In 2006, at the same place, a patrol came under rifle fire. Inspired by the configuration of the place and its history, the director Romain Gavras recently made it the burning fire of the uprising of the suburbs that he imagines in Athenaits urban dystopia.
A picture taken on October 12, 2022 shows the “Parc aux Lievres”, a public housing area in Evry, outside Paris. The Parc aux Lievre public housing, erected in the early 70’s has been the scenes of urban guerilla while it was used as the filming location of “Athena” by director Romain Gavras presented during the last Venice film festival. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
© / AFP
Too favorable to the rioters in the film as in life, the slab will be destroyed, and with it, a good part of the dwellings. Built in the 1970s, populated by 2,000 inhabitants in 2018, more than a third of whom were under the age of 25, the district is a compendium of everything that is no longer done in terms of urban planning. It is filled with overhangs, flat roofs, crenellated walkways and cul-de-sacs. A maze, impassable by car. In these places, police intervention is difficult.
Highlighted with each riot, this type of development is now tracked down by the authorities. A practice called “situational prevention”, or “prevention through environmental design”, adapted from the theories of American sociologists and criminologists like Ronald V. Clarke, or Oscar Newman. They were the first to think, in the 1970s, that acting on the environment, and more specifically urban planning, could reduce incidents in cities.
Prevent crime, and facilitate police intervention
In the same way that schools have their fire extinguishers and child safety devices at the windows, the sensitive neighborhoods have therefore seen their benches welded together, arranged far from the walls to prevent them from being used as steps, their access to roofs and cellars locked, their streets widened to facilitate access and to prevent, as in 2005, the Renault Megane of the police from being wedged between two low walls, at the mercy of projectiles. What make them less “criminogenic”, according to the authorities.
A “cultural revolution”, considers one of the executives of the National Police, Philippe Tireloque, deputy director of public security. This former adviser to the Minister of the Interior pushed for the generalization of these solutions throughout his career. In its early days, it was marked by the endless rounds in the districts of Île-de-France, where it was necessary to circulate on foot and learn to thwart architectural traps, in areas where its blue uniform was not all the welcome time.
In 2007, in the wake of the riots, the concept of “situational prevention” thus entered the crime prevention law. About 1,000 “security correspondents and referents” have been appointed, police officers trained for 5 weeks to identify risky projects, particularly in sensitive areas. Number of interventions: around a hundred urban renewal projects per year. “Security takes an important place in the construction of projects, in their implementation and in subsequent management”, details the cabinet of Olivier Klein, Minister Delegate for the City.
Numerous studies show that the configuration of a place influences the way in which incidents unfold. “The high concentration of youth groups, the rapid spread of rumours, the availability of escape routes and vantage points for confrontation, and the possibility of being ‘trapped’ increase the costs of maintaining the mobile and targeted order”, explains for example the political scientist Michalis Moutselos, in a study conducted for the German Max Planck Institute and relating to the 2005 riots.
For what effects?
However, the impact of the preventive measures has never been specified. And, in the age of social networks, rioters are more mobile and better informed. “Like any prevention, its effects are difficult to measure. A count of riots avoided does not exist,” said Elizabeth Johnston, president of the Forum for Urban Security, in favor of these initiatives. In France, no assessment of effectiveness, or even of the number and type of development carried out, has been undertaken.
These efforts in terms of town planning can all the same contribute to increasing the feeling of security. And if we exclude only sensitive neighborhoods, situational prevention seems to reduce cases of aggression or theft, according to several publications, including one published in 2011 in Journal of experimental criminology. A study of inmates imprisoned for sexual assault in Australiahas also shown that a well-designed and well-lit public space, with no blind spots, can be more of a deterrent than the beatings, screams and weapons of the victims.
According to the police, the rearrangement of the neighborhoods has at least reduced the ambushes. But the method does not convince everyone: “There are fewer dead ends and tricky areas that have not been designed for the police to intervene. But the facilities, at best, young people on scooters s At worst, they are destroyed, or modified”, nuances the sociologist at the CNRS Azouz Begag, who was minister delegate for the promotion of equal opportunities in 2005.
“To concrete everything would be deadly”
Especially since these urban planning policies are sometimes poorly received, accused of being repressive: “The urban renewal operations carried out in the working-class neighborhoods of French cities are said to be driven by hidden objectives of maintaining order”, noted in 2015 the sociologist Renaud Epstein, in the journal of sociology Movements. The text recalls that while situational prevention has largely infused renovations, these are secondary objectives.
Beware all the same not to create open-air prisons along the way and to participate in the ostracization of which the rioters claim to be victims. In some buildings, simple barbed wire condemns the roofs. In others, railings and concrete blocks adorn police stations and town halls. “To concrete everything would be deadly, warns Elizabeth Johnston, of the Forum for Urban Security. We must reconcile safety and attractiveness. Let’s make shared gardens on flat roofs, instead of condemning them! The fact that they are occupied and maintained by neighbors can already dissuade”
An opinion shared by Anne-Claire Boux, elected representative of Paris and specialist in working-class neighborhoods. In the capital, benches have been changed to prevent them from being used as a cache for traffic, and arcana have been removed to avoid stagnation, in particular at the Goutte d’Or, in the 18th arrondissement. “We must not feed insecurity, even if we cannot prevent anything. But safe furniture comes after the creation of spaces where life is good, and more broadly aid, work with associations, educators in street, etc.”. The human, before the urban.