The separation of housing between rich and poor is stronger in Lille than in Lyon, according to a report by Insee, the national statistics institute. This segregation is explained by various factors including urban development and strong income inequalities, analyze two experts.
In Lille, “as early as the 19th century, the bourgeoisie, which did not wish to live in working-class neighborhoods so as not to suffer from pollution or for fear of social unrest, created its own residential neighborhoods like Barbieux in Roubaix, around the racecourse in Lambersart or Marcq-en-Barœul”, recalls Yoann Miot, lecturer at Gustave Eiffel University.
Concentration of the popular classes
But the collapse of the textile industry from the 1960s and the tertiarization of the economy led to a “casualization of the working classes, especially workers, and ended up excluding the poorest from the traditional housing market to concentrate them in the social park”, continues the researcher.
The key is a concentration of the working classes “in the only place where the market remains accessible, that is to say around Roubaix”. At the same time, the concentration of populations in the richest neighborhoods is “much stronger than that of the poor in the poorest neighborhoods”, with in the suburbs, “housing estates of executives structured around golf courses”.
When social housing is built in affluent municipalities such as Bondues, “it is rather households located in the most affluent eligible fringes who will live there, insofar as part of the allocation of social housing remains the prerogative of the municipality “, assures Yoann Miot.
Income gaps are lower in Lyon
Conversely, the Lyon metropolitan area is one of the most homogeneous large cities in terms of the distribution of housing, according to INSEE. “One of the reasons is that the income gaps are lower in Lyon than in Paris or Marseille”, explains Jean-Yves Authier, professor of sociology at the University Lumière Lyon-2.
Similarly, the Lyon real estate market is “certainly tense” but “much less than the Parisian market”, continues Jean-Yves Authier. Third mitigating factor, the presence “undoubtedly more important social housing in the city center of Lyon” and an urban renewal policy “in the districts of La Duchère, Mermoz or in the popular communes of the East which brings to reduce the share of social housing.
However, the agglomeration presents “extremely significant social contrasts, both inside Lyon and in the inner suburbs”, he recalls, with a “very clear opposition between the municipalities of the west and the north-west , very bourgeois, and those of the east, much more popular”.