WISHES FOR A NEIGHBOURHOOD
For some years now in France, the ANRU (National Development for Urban Renewal) has been at work in our neighbourhoods demolishing and rebuilding to give these areas a new look. It seemed like a good idea to re-plan them so that they are more human.
Yet, it does not happen smoothly; people have the impression that their neighborhood is being taken from them: "They’re taking everything away from us!" "We want to stay in our neighborhood!"
Change is primarily the feeling of losingsomething. You lose your neighbours because of demolition; you lose the neighbourhood you have known and where your roots are. You lose the crèche that is only a 100 metres away.
How, with this sense of loss, can you be open to building a new life? Losing in order to gain is, for me, the way of any mutation. Our neighbourhood, which has become a ghetto, has everything to gain by opening itself to the outside, inventing new ways and another way of life.
For now, there is a reactionary movement, a defensive attitude being expressed and organised. To be involved in collaboration with the M.J.C. of the adjoining neighbourhood is seen as a danger: “We are going to disappear.”
To commit oneself to new ways is an Easter path. For me today, it means walking with the people of the neighbourhood. Losing what one knows so as to go towards another way of life, to a neighbourhood no longer turned in on itself but one that dares to share with other neighbourhoods, that dares to create another way of living together.
For us at Basseau, Easter is to awaken this desire to live in another way, to open ourselves to a wider life. In every demolition, there is a key to be discovered.
Françoise CHEDOZEAU
Angoulême Community