And in the middle flows a… fountain! Welcome to Epinay-sur-Seine, a charming town of 57,000 souls, right in the heart of Seine-Saint-Denis… We leave the rest of the pitch to Stéphane Plazza and we go to the middle of the towers to discover Place René-Clair and its dry fountain. “We say dry but in fact, it’s wet! », Slips into a laugh, Eugénie Ponthier, deputy mayor, delegate for urban ecology.
In fact, this name is due to the very architecture of the place: “unlike the Bartholdi fountain on the Place des Terreaux in Lyon, for example, ours in Epinay has no structure. When the water is turned off in winter, it becomes a usable public space, with no visible structure. »
“It’s a friendly, lively, self-sufficient place”
In Epinay-sur-Seine, Eugénie Ponthier tells the story of this new centrality of the city: “it’s like in the South, on a village square next to the Church. Except we’re surrounded by concrete towers. “Before the dry fountain, Place René-Clair was a space” anxiety-provoking, crossed by cars “. Today, the dilapidated market has given way to a media library which, when summer comes, “installs deckchairs near the fountain to enjoy a good book”, poetizes the elected official.
“Now, with its multiplicity of uses, it is a friendly, lively place that is self-sufficient. No need to create entertainment, the different populations of Epinay rub shoulders there, meet there and have invested in it for moments of relaxation, she adds. In summer, it’s Epinay-plage, the children come with their towel, enjoy the water and the freshness while the parents watch over them from the benches and the shaded areas. »
“On the cobblestones, the beach”
“In Epinay, as in many places in France, a majority of the population does not have a second home and does not go on vacation at all”, slips Raphaël Ruegger, at the initiative of the French federation of things that work, who spent his summer on the roads of France, “looking for islands of freshness” as well as little-known local initiatives that have proven themselves and can be duplicated elsewhere. How did he know that the dry Epinay fountain was a nugget? “The intuition already, he slips smiling, because I came during the winter, the fountain was stopped. But Eugénie Ponthier told me to close my eyes and imagine…” And the magic happened. “On the cobblestones, the beach,” he blurts out.
Raphaël Ruegger also emphasizes the particularly beneficial and immediate impact of such urban renewal: “With the heat that we now experience in summer, such an installation is a godsend for the population, allowing children to wade for free. He knows that the project can spread elsewhere, that elected officials have already expressed their desire to duplicate this place of life. “For the time being, we are not close to supporting the heat in concrete frames, we have rather focused on energy renovation for the winter,” adds Eugénie Ponthier. But with global warming in constant progression, public policies will have to delve into this thorny issue, which Epinay-sur-Seine could well symbolize.