Le 23 novembre 2009, Éric Russon et ses chroniqueurs recevaient entre autre Micha Wald et Jonathan Zaccaï dans 50 degrés Nord pour la sortie du film « Les Folles Aventures de Simon Konianski ». L’émission d’Arte-Belgique allait nous offrir ignorance et lieux communs, le tout sur un plateau de télévision. Ce n’était pas la première fois, ça ne sera surement pas la dernière.

Leur fiction ne connaît pas la crise

Pour commencer : Cédric Wautier. « Une comédie, il n’y a pas de problèmes sociaux, on n’est pas en noir et blanc. Et pourtant c’est un film belge. » « Ca fait du bien. De nouveau, en quelques semaines, c’est la deuxième vraie, belle, et bonne, comédie en Belgique. »

C’est drôle comme en temps de crise on préfère se voiler la face. Et on l’aura compris, Cédric Wautier aime regarder une vraie, belle, et bonne comédie belge entre deux visites de maison, d’appartement, ou de loft hors de prix pour l’émission « Une brique dans le ventre ».

Ensuite, une constante chez les « critiques » de cinéma et autres chroniqueurs culturels, cette tendance à confondre le film et la réalité. La fiction mise en scène et le fait qu’elle n’ait pas nécessairement grand-chose à voir avec la réalité.

Barbara Abel – l’une des nouvelles collaboratrices de l’émission –  « On le voit dans d’autres films, il y a cette transmission de la religion et on a l’impression que cela se fait tout le temps dans la culpabilité. Est-ce que les vieilles générations transmettent ça en essayant de culpabiliser les jeunes qui n’ont pas connu les camps et la souffrance ? »

Cédric Wautier : « Ca arrive encore d’en entendre parler [des camps de concentration et/ou d’extermination] dans les familles comme ça tout le temps tout le temps tout le temps, en tout cas pour cette génération là ? » Réponse du réalisateur Micha Wald : « Ben, ça dépend des personnes ». Et Éric Russon de prendre le relais : « Oui mais dans la vie réelle, si vous faites ce film là…C’est qu’il y a un truc qui se passe dans la vie ».

Mais vu que la réponse ne convient pas encore Jean-Marie Wynants rajoute une nouvelle couche. « Mais vous, avez-vous vécu des situations de ce type là dans votre vie ? ». Oui parfois, mais cela dépend de chaque individu. Certains en parlent parfois, d’autres pas, répond en substance Micha Wald.

Le meilleur pour la fin

Mais la cerise sur le gâteau c’est l’identité juive version Cinquante degrés Nord.

« Simon Konianski, interprété par Jonathan Zaccaï, rejette son identité juive. Il s’estime non pratiquant de la religion hébraïque, contre la circoncision, pro palestinien et, comble de tout, amoureux d’une danseuse goy… » Le blog de l’émission annonce la couleur.

Pour de nombreuses et diverses raisons, « l’identité juive » décrite  en plateau est grotesque, et grossière.  Et vu la tendance des chroniqueurs à mélanger fiction et réalité, cette représentation est dangereusement bien ancrée.

Dans le cas présent, « rejeter son identité juive » est associé à ne pas pratiquer le judaïsme, à ne pas suivre les rituels et préceptes religieux, à ne pas soutenir Israël, et comble de tout, ne pas être amoureux de « l’un ou l’une des siens ».

A contrario, selon ce raisonnement, « l’identité juive » se doit d’être associée à la pratique du judaïsme, au suivi des rituels et préceptes religieux, au soutien d’Israël, et surtout, au fait d’être amoureux de « l’un ou l’une des siens ».

Mais quant est-il de ces citoyens qui s’identifient en tant que juifs laïcs ? Ils ne croient pas ou plus en Dieu, ne pratiquent pas ou plus, mais s’identifient néanmoins toujours à une certaine « identité juive ».  Ils sont nombreux aux Etats-Unis, en France, en Belgique, en Israël, de par le monde.

Selon le Centre Communautaire Laïc Juif de Belgique (CCLJ) : « Le judaïsme laïque perpétue les traditions du peuple juif sans se référer à la croyance en Dieu ou à une pratique religieuse. Le judaïsme laïque développe une approche humaniste et libre-exaministe de la religion, de la culture et de l’histoire juives.»

Pour l’Union des Progressistes Juifs de Belgique (UPJB), il peut être question d’un « judaïsme contemporain, laïque et progressiste, nourri par une histoire porteuse de culture et de valeurs particulières parmi lesquelles la responsabilité de l’Homme face à son destin, la prééminence de l’Homme sur les choses, de la pensée critique sur l’idéologie de pouvoir, l’esprit de solidarité et de justice, le devoir de mémoire… »

Comme la plus part des chrétiens ou des musulmans, en Belgique, en Europe, de par le monde, il est possible de s’identifier à une religion sans en être pratiquant. Il est possible d’adhérer à un certains nombres de valeurs « universelles » sans pour autant devoir en référer à une quelconque divinité.

Une scène à mourir de rire…

« Il y a une scène à mourir de rire, s’exclame Russon, c’est la scène lorsqu’on présente à Simon une femme à marier. La première question qu’il lui pose lors de ce petit souper familial c’est « qu’est-ce que vous pensez du conflit israélo-palestinien ? ». Et Russon de s’interroger « Est-ce qu’à un moment donné, avec cet héritage là [l’Holocauste], c’est difficile de parler, en famille, de certaines choses ? »

Est-ce que la mémoire de l’Holocauste, qui n’est pas et ne peut être l’apanage de ladite « identité juive », doit être synonyme de soutien inconditionnel à Israël ? Est-ce qu’identité juive doit forcément rimer avec sympathie israélienne ?

Là encore, des hommes et des femmes d’horizons divers, des juifs croyants et des juifs laïcs, s’élèvent contre cette équation, dénoncent les crimes perpétrés par l’État israélien et expriment leur solidarité avec la cause du peuple palestinien.

« Fidèle à ces valeurs, l’UPJB rejette l’israélo-centrisme et le « patriotisme » pro-israélien de la plupart des institutions communautaires  […] Les gouvernements israéliens s’étant de tout temps arrogé le droit de parler au nom de l’ensemble du peuple juif, l’UPJB a depuis toujours eu le souci de faire entendre une autre voix juive dans le conflit israélo-palestinien dont l’origine remonte au plan de partage de novembre 1947, qui portait déjà en lui le déni des droits nationaux du peuple palestinien. Depuis 1967, l’UPJB dénonce la politique d’occupation et de colonisation des territoires annexés après la naissance de l’Etat hébreu. Elle se prononce en faveur d’un règlement juste du conflit israéalo-palestinien, qui garantisse la sécurité des deux peuples tout en prenant en compte la dramatique question des réfugiés palestiniens. »

L’UPJB n’est la seule à associer identité juive et soutien à la cause palestinienne. De l’autre côté de l’atlantique, au Canada, Les Voix indépendantes juives (JIV) ou encore Not In Our Name (NION) se font tout doucement entendre.

« Nous sommes des juifs et des juives canadiennes partageant au delà de nos différences d’origines, d’activités et d’appartenances, un même engagement envers la justice sociale et les droits humains universels. Nous nous sommes réunis, car les organisations institutionnelles juives ne représentent pas tels qu’elles prétendent, les idées et les opinions d’une grande partie de la population juive de ce pays. De plus, nous soutenons que tout individu ou groupe au sein de nos communautés, doit jouir de la liberté d’expression sur toutes les questions d’intérêt public, et ce, sans crainte de censure, de représailles ou d’accusations de déloyauté. »

« Pour accomplir ce but, il nous incombe de promouvoir la libre expression de voix juives alternatives, surtout en ce qui concerne la situation critique du Moyen-Orient, qui menace l’avenir, non seulement, des Israéliennes et des Palestiniennes mais aussi, la stabilité de toute la région. »

Un vrai racisme

Enfin pour compléter le tableau, Éric Russon commente la situation suivante « Il a fait un enfant avec une goy. Ce qui est terrible pour ces gens là ». Ces gens là ? Qui sont ces gens là ? La communauté juive mise en scène dans le film ? Les différentes communautés juives en général ?

On ne sait pas trop, vu qu’encore une fois fiction et réalité sont entremêlées dans la tête de certains. Mais le concept de « ces gens là » et celui de « goy » qui lui est opposé sont dangereux. Et profondément racistes. Il y a en effet dans cette conception de la judaïcité un côté racial, ethnique, tribal.

Être juif, c’est faire partie d’une « nation », d’une « ethnie », d’un « peuple » différent des autres. Différents mythes comme ceux du peuple élu, de l’inexistence de conversion massive au judaïsme (comme celle des Khazars), ou de la diaspora entretiennent cette illusion.

Arthur Koestler, dans son livre « La Treizième Tribu » dans lequel il démontre que la majorité des juifs Ashkénazes d’Europe de l’Est n’étaient pas d’origine sémite mais bien les descendants de tribus turco-mongoles qui s’étaient converties au judaïsme, évoque les dangers de ces mythes et de ce message racial en ces termes : « L’influence persistante du message racial et historique du judaïsme, bien qu’il soit fondé sur des illusions, sert de frein affectif puissant en faisant appel au loyalisme tribal »

Le judaïsme est avant tout une religion pour les croyants. Un ensemble de valeurs auxquelles nous pouvons adhérer sans référer à Dieu pour les laïcs. Mais ce n’est surtout pas l’appartenance à une tribu. Et encore moins un soutien inconditionnel à un pays.

L’« identité juive » telle qu’évoquée par l’émission d’Arte-Belgique, est fortement restreinte et contraignante. Elle oublie les différences. Elle correspond grosso-modo au carcan dans lequel conservateurs, néoconservateurs, sionistes, amis d’Israël, et parfois même antisémites, aimeraient l’enfermer. Elle est ignorance.

L’identité juive au singulier n’existe pas. Il faut parler d’identités au pluriel.

Après les prépensions et les restrictions légales pour y avoir droit, les patrons s’attaquent à nouveau aux fins de carrières en demandant simultanément un énième allongement du temps de carrière ainsi qu’une activation des chômeurs de plus de 50 ans.

Il y a quelques années, et encore aujourd’hui, la mise à la retraite anticipée, la prépension, lors d’une restructuration c’était la panacée.

Une entreprise pharmaceutique licencie. Résultat : quelques licenciements secs et beaucoup de mises à la retraite anticipée.

VW Forest ferme ses portes il y a trois ans. Résultat : beaucoup de licenciements secs et de mises à la retraite anticipée.

Sauf que depuis lors, il y a eu le fameux pacte des générations à l’aide duquel libéraux et patrons, entre autres, s’attaquaient aux fameuses prépensions si souvent utilisées. Leur but était d’en réduire le nombre de bénéficiaires en modifiant et augmentant le nombre d’années requises pour y avoir droit.

Maintenant que nous avons aujourd’hui des restrictions sur ces prépensions, le patronat demande le rallongement du temps de travail en général, de la carrière en particulier, tout en exigeant une activation des chômeurs de plus de 50 ans.

Dans dix ans lorsque l’entreprise pharmaceutique licenciera et qu’Audi Forest fermera une nouvelle fois ses portes, il faudra lire. « Résultat : licenciements secs et mises…en activation anticipée pour les travailleurs âgés.

Le but ultime : renforcer la concurrence entre les travailleurs et donc forcer les salaires à la baisse.

Car entre un jeune malléable, interchangeable, activable, jetable et un travailleur âgé auquel colle l’étiquette « périssable ». Je choisis le jeune et la flexibilité qui va avec. Le vieux ? Il sera sur le côté mais activé !

“Only to speak about the banlieues, for us, I think it is a little bit improper. It’s hellish there, it is really the shit. Something has to be done, otherwise it will burst. Everybody knows that”.

We are in 1995; Vincent Cassel reacts after the end of the film-shoot of “Hate” (La Haine) – a Mathieu Kassovitz movie that takes place in a banlieue in riots. The French actor expresses what he feels after living, sleeping, eating in the banlieue while shooting. He understands the “malaise des banlieues”. Since then, nothing has really changed. It is maybe even worse today.

In 2005, ten years after this cult film was released, the banlieues are burning. “France is facing a revolution,” reports the media. Thousands of cars and busses, schools, and libraries are destroyed. However, this was not the first time that the banlieues were in ebullition.

Every time a banlieue uprises, a confirmed police blunder or the death of some neighborhood inhabitants – seen as a police blunder – is the trigger that initiates the revolts. The loss of “one of them” is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. But in November, what struck the external observers in 2005 was the propagation and the length – more than three weeks – of these riots.

“La crise des banlieues” (the suburbs’ crisis) was total, all over France.

But, “speaking about a “crise des banlieues” is meaningless, it does not say anything,” reacts Hervé Marchal – an urban sociologist at the University of Nancy 2 who worked on the identity of the city-dweller and the processes of fragmentation in the city. “There are very well-to-do residential suburbs which are not in crisis. There are social housing areas which are absolutely not in crisis,” he says.

“In fact when we speak about a crisis of the suburbs,” Marchal goes on “we speak of certain sensitive type of suburbs. Those are great collectives (grands ensembles) of social housing made of high-rise and horizontal building rods, mostly built in the sixties and seventies, and which aggregate lacking job security and destitute populations.”

A 400m long horizontal building rod in France

Those neighborhoods, referred to as banlieues, are technically called Zones Urbaines Sensibles (ZUS – Sensitive Urban Areas). There are 751 ZUS listed in France in which – according to the French National Institute of Statistics (INSEE) – 4.5 million people reside.

Poverty, a functionalist architecture, and a lake of insertion: the main handicaps

For the social workers, inhabitants, or sociologists, 2005’s eruption of violence in the banlieues was not a surprise. They all knew about the social conditions in which those 4.5 million inhabitants have been living for years.

“The first cause [for these violent eruptions] is effectively the social and living conditions of the inhabitants. These living conditions are marked by seals of the precariousness and economic difficulties,” Marchal says. According to French national statistics, unemployment rates in the 751 Zones Urbaines Sensibles (26.1 percent) is twice as big as the average French unemployment rate, while 60 percent of the 4.5 millions inhabitants depend on social housing.

The second reason that can explain the suburbs’ illness is the functionalist architecture of the fifties and sixties which characterizes those great collectives. Each portion of the territory received a single function. The city was divided in different “organs” like a body: the sleeping, the working, the learning; the banlieues were dormitories isolated from the city centres.

“The problem,” Marchal explains, “is that when you reduce a district, or a building, to a single function it does not make sense for the inhabitants. To appropriate the monotonous architecture of the great collectives is not evident. It is not evident to project your own identity, your own stories on it. When a space does not make sense, when it is impersonal,” he goes on, “you don’t necessarily take care of it.”

Another recurring problem of those constructions is the lake of noise insulation regarding the neighbours’ activities. “It is like the intimacy of the other one came to violate your intimacy and vice versa,” Marchal says.

The third problem faced by the banlieues and pointed out by Marchal is the lake of insertion (not integration) of the suburbs’ young people. Representing 40 percent of the ZUS’ population, the suburbs’ under-25 population carry a lot of stereotypes: boys, Muslims, Arabs, Blacks, violent, delinquents.

“The statement which is often realized about them is that these young people are de-socialized,” Marchal says. “But, they are not de-socialized regarding their own districts. They are maybe regarding to the dominant standard, and still not completely. These young people are socialized in a micro-culture which is not reflected in the school institution, for example.”

According to Marchal, the problem lies in the republicanism of the school institution itself. The school republicanism “is very well, but it stands on a rather rigid and normative register and is not ready to listen to the other cultural codes,” he says. “A republican school: yes. A school which gives the chance to everybody: yes. But also a republican school which has to respect certain differences, otherwise it means denying the collective stories relative to certain minorities. And to deny them creates identical tensions and amplifies them.”

And Marchal adds: “Now in France by reason of force, you have to notice that there are people who live in cultural forms which are a little bit different from the ‘dominant culture.‘”

They feel French, they are proud of France

“They still don’t have their place,” Marc Hatzfeld, an ethnologist, agrees in a Le Monde newspaper article. “They are not recognized by the institutional system yet. I believe that there was, in the fact of burning certain schools, an effect of powerless fury towards an educational system in which many had not managed to find their place.”

In his Le Monde opinion piece, Hatzfeld goes on: “The very great majority of the French banlieues’ inhabitants, young and less young, women and men from any origin, are faithful to the so-called republican order, profoundly in love and proud of France. Many of the actors who work in these towns – elected locals, teachers, policemen, judges or educators – know the determination of their inhabitants perfectly and in particular the young boys, at the bottom of their heart, to be a part of this France which, they regret, doesn’t know how to speak to them and, more by cowardice than by cynicism, doesn’t consider them.”

In a 2006 report from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, a French male testifies that “the French mentality still finds it difficult to accept that society has changed, that it has diversified. People still haven’t accepted others. You have to be like them. But what does ‘being like them’ mean…? History weighs heavy in this situation. The relationship between France and its former colonies still plays an important part. There’s still a superiority complex, despite the fact that we’ve lived together, we’ve grown up together, we’ve been to the same schools and lived on the same estates. But there’s still a difference between them and us. They still look at us as if we’re foreign rather than French.”

In the same report, another man sounds similar. “We’ve been asked more than others to integrate, to succeed, to have all that others have, and I don’t know why we’re always asked for more, why young people from the Maghreb in particular are always asked for more. We can’t do more than others. Why us, rather than the others? If they want more, they won’t get it. But the whole of French society needs to understand this unease… which unfortunately is passed on from one generation to the next. My parents were honest and faithful to France. We had to accept a certain way of life, and to think like the French. What are the next generations going to be asked? To be more French than the French? That’s not possible. I advise young people not to accept that challenge, because it will never end. They’ll always be asked for more.”

Hatzeld can only agree: “If I was one of them, I would have the anger too, I would share their revolt in front of this uninterrupted injustice.”

Is “La crise des banlieues” another May 68? It is not according to Dany Cohn-Bendit – French iconic figure of the May 68: “To be a youngster in the banlieues today is far more difficult than to be a youngster in the sixties”

A powerful boomerang effect

“Those youngsters don’t want to secede. They want to become French, they want to integrate into French society and live as everybody else, have success, have a job,” Marchal says. “If they do, it is because they completely feel rejected by the society. And it is necessary to try to understand why. That does not come like that by chance.”  But he adds: “the more you put your hopes in the Republic, the more you have chances to be disappointed. The hatred [expressed sometimes by youngsters or normal inhabitants from the banlieues] towards French society is as high as the hope that they had put in the Republic. It is a powerful boomerang effect.”

“I tell you: it is some shit. It is not a neighbourhood, it is absolutely nothing,” nervously yells an elderly woman. Raja, a 25-year-old student at the University of Nancy, calls it Alcatraz. “When we were there, we had only one urge: to escape,” she says.

“If I had to associate a word with it,” explains Zakkaria, a Nancy resident. “It is a word which disturbs me, a word rather negatively connoted, it would be “ghetto”. It is a cliché. You can go there whenever; it is no more dangerous than somewhere else.”

“It” does not leave one indifferent. It is the Haut du Lièvre, the banlieue (suburb or outskirt) of Nancy – a French city of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants, where about ten thousand people of fifty-six different nationalities live.

What really characterizes the Haut du Lièvre the most for a Nancy University Professor is “its gigantic size. The horizontal rod of building (barres d’immeubles) are really the first things which come to my mind because they are the biggest of Europe.”

Indeed in the late fifties, to face the Baby-Boom and welcome the refugees from Algeria, the city of Nancy launched a gigantic urban project. The architect Bernard Zehrfuss – who also realized, among other projects, the “Palais de l’Unesco” in Paris – is in charge. He thinks big, he thinks “great collectives” (grands ensembles). The Cèdre Bleu will be 400m long and 15 storeys high; the Tilleul Argenté will be 300m long and 17 storeys high. Other buildings would come later on.

View of the Haut du Lièvre from the University of Nancy

Sky. When Didier Houppy – a photographer and inhabitant of Nancy – thinks about the Haut du Lièvre, he thinks ‘sky’. “It is the memory of climbing it by bike. I was looking at the sky to see if I was soon arriving at the top. It is true that at the top you are in the highest point of Nancy.”

In opposition to the historical Nancy which is in a basin, the Haut du Lièvre is on a hill. Due to its geographical position and not helped by its bad reputation, the neighbourhood seems to be disconnected from the city center of Nancy.

The Sunday Market: a bridge, a place to meet

Nonetheless, each Sunday between 9AM and 1PM, lots of people from Nancy take their car or the single bus-line that connects the center to the Haut du Lièvre. They all go to the Sunday Market.

“When you are from Nancy and you go to Haudul’s market… It’s like you were in France and then using the Stargate. It is another world. It is great! It is eclectic; it is a mix of all the cultures: from the Maghreb, Africa, Asia, mixed with French people,” explains Zakkaria.

“Salam Alaykoum; Alaykoum Salam”. “Bonjour”. A lot of languages are spoken: Arabic, French, Turkish, and Polish – according to their origin but also to their age. Mainly, older people speak a foreign language; young people speak in French.

“When you attend moments like that, you wonder how the National Front or Sarkozy manage to make big scores for the presidential elections,” Zakkaria adds.

It smells of mint, olives, roasted chicken, a little of everything. Prices are competitive yet rather cheap, especially when we know that France has problems of purchasing power. €1 for a kilo of bananas or onions; €1.50 for tomatoes.

Women warmly embrace each other numerous times; so do men. They see old friends again Young people come in groups. More than a selling point, the Sunday Market is a meeting place on the Haut du Lièvre.

The Sunday Market with the Cèdre Bleu in the background

André, out for his groceries, has been living on the Haut du Lièvre for 24 years. “With the market on Sundays, it makes a little animation. It’s good. But except that…” the neighbourhood still faces a bad reputation.

A living and complex melting-pot

For Hervé Marchal – an urban sociologist at the University of Nancy 2 who worked on the identity of the city-dweller and the processes of fragmentation in the city – “it works globally well on Nancy. The Haut du Lièvre is heterogeneous; it is a cultural melting-pot – melting-pot which implies that it works.”

If the neighbourhood is associated to negative representations, it’s mostly due to fantasies. “Those people do not live there,” bitterly explains Élise who has been living on the Haut du Lièvre since 1960. “I also think that you can find worthless people everywhere. And so can you with good people. The problem is that as soon as there is something, a random outcome, it is amplified and you have gossip; while a good action will never be shown. Never, never. The media coverage is in question. Then, you obtain a district which has a certain reputation, but people are wrong,” she says.

“The less you know about the other one, different from you, far from you, the more you categorize him,” adds Marchal. “You confine him into labels, stereotypes, fantasies. These processes are more or less racist.” It is called “to other somebody”.

“It is a neighbourhood,” he goes on, “but it is much more complex than that. The Haut du Lièvre has micro-districts which make sense for their inhabitants; it is not a completely homogeneous area.” People living in a building, the Tilleul Argenté for example, don’t feel the same as people living in another building, he explains.

A bad reputation? “It can be on the side of the Cèdre Bleu. But we have lived in the Tilleul Argenté for four years, and we find that it is quiet,” says Binda, with her son Junior. Gossip also appears within the neighbourhood itself. It is parochialism, a typical French distinctiveness.

Met at the market with his 2-year-old daughter, Saïd Merzouk has been living on the Haut du Lièvre for almost three years and has already adopted the neighbourhood. “It is mutual. You adopt it, it adopts you,” he says. “This neighbourhood has a soul. The Haut du Lièvre is my second “home”, as Kabylia”.

“The inhabitants are attached to their neighbourhood, some feel well there,” explains Marchal. “What we notice is that the neighbourhood is more and more an identical support which is going to count in their life and to intervene in their definition when those inhabitants have no work or not many identical resources.”

Not “la vie en rose”

Everyday life on the Haut du Lièvre is not paradisiacal. “It is neither an El Dorado nor the Champs Élysées,” concedes Saïd Merzouk. “If I say that I like the district it is also because there are problems, and people surpass themselves to reach a certain level.”

The most important problems, which the Haut du Lièvre faces, like many banlieues, are unemployment, inactivity, and precariousness. “There is a concentration of people who have big problems,” says Vincent Delprior, director of the Local Mission for Employment on the Haut du Lièvre. “All the social indicators are in the red in this district”. It’s no wonder then that the Haut du Lièvre is considered as a Sensitive Urban Zone (Zone Urbaine Sensible – ZUS).

“There is an important unemployment rate here, nearly the double of what we can notice on the rest of the town. Indicators of poverty and inactivity – there are a lot of non-working population, in job-search, people which are not registered – are also in the red; we are not in the orange anymore,” explains Delprior.

According to the last official statistics on the neighbourhoods compiled by the Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques (INSEE) in 1999, the proportion of non-high school graduates in the neighbourhood reaches 27%, while only 15% on the whole of Nancy; the unemployment on the Haut du Lièvre is above 24%, while on the whole city this rate is under 14%. The middle income per inhabitant on the Haut du Lièvre is € 8,330 a year, while this same middle income is € 15,627 a year for an inhabitant from the city centre.

The Local Mission for Employment, for which Vincent Delprior works, focuses on young people. Its aim:  bring youngsters to the durable employment and the creation of activities. The unemployment rate among young people from the banlieues always flirts with the 30-40%.  On the Haut du Lièvre, 35% of the active people between 16 and 26 years old are unemployed.

“We have young people today who have never seen their parents working,” says Delprior. “There are thus a certain number of customs which are not acquired yet. These young people, consequently, are very far from the behaviour companies require with regard to delays, vocabulary, or clothing code.” How competent the young people can be on the technical point of view doesn’t matter, “if the “how to behave” is not there they don’t have any chance to end in a situation of stable employment,” he concludes.

To inculcate some habits, to work on the youngsters’ social skills, the Local Mission used the driving licence as an incentive to put the young people in a situation in which they were mobilized and motivated. The experiment was tried on five young people with big problems of justice, big problems of behaviour. And according to Delprior, “It gave unhoped-for results”

Associations present on the field: Nancy’s political will

Besides the Local Mission for Employment, and another public organism called “L’Atelier de Pédagogie Personnalisée”, the Haut du Lièvre Association welcomes a number of non-profit organizations: the Maison de la Jeunesse et de la Culture (MJC), Le Buisson Ardent, La Clairrière, La Baleine Bleue, Les Francas, among others.

The Haut du Lièvre “is a neighbourhood where there is a strong associative tissue. Many associations have their seats at the feet of two big rods of buildings. It works rather well,” affirms Hervé Marchal. “What it is necessary to say, it is that there is money [from the city of Nancy] for those associations. There are also schools. It is important, it is not a ghetto.”

“That has always been a great surprise for me since I have been here,” says Aurore Thiebaut who works for the “Buisson Ardent” – a non-profit organization that was almost born with the neighbourhood, as it was created in 1965. “The city generally finances almost more than a half of the operating budget of the numerous associations. The city is also very present on projects of social cohesion. A lot of money has been invested; it is surprising – you could say – for a right-wing city.” A right-wing-owned municipality which does a great job? Indeed, a banlieue can also be a showcase; and no one at the Haut du Lièvre will question if it is an end or a means in itself.

A little Marshall Plan on the Haut du Lièvre

For Martial Delavis, holdings’ director of the OPAC of Nancy – the public owner of the social housing, in which seventy-seven percents of the inhabitants of the Haut du Lièvre live – “it is a political will to occupy the field.”

Recently, this political will has been translated into a large-scale urban renewal project (€ 220.5 million for the period 2007-2011) on the Haut du Lièvre. “There is a will to change the neighbourhood image while doing at the same time a useful rehabilitation of the apartments,” says the OPAC holding’s director.

Some construction sites, the Tilleul Argenté in renovation, the Haut du Lièvre is being face-lifted

The two long horizontal blocks of buildings – the Cèdre Bleu and the Tilleul Argenté – will be refurbished: woodworks, windows with double glazing to improve the insulation and the thermal exchanges. Electric installations are redone, toilets and bathrooms are changed where needed. The façade is also being cleaned.  “And there will be no repercussions on the rents,” Delavis specifies.

“If you disregard their massive size, their density, and finally their completely uniform side, you have accommodations built in the ’50s within the framework of the modern movement (read: functionalist movement), very well distributed, and ordered. Plus, you have an impregnable view on Nancy,” he says.

The objective of the urban renewal is on one hand to renew the buildings, and on the other hand to fight the problems connected to the functionalist movement which generated outside spaces without legibility of usage. “We don’t know much about what that is, as soon as we go out of the building there is nothing more,” Delavis says. “The idea it is to make of Residentialisation”.

“Residentialisation” is a French neologism.

“The idea it is to create a visible space with a defined usage,” Delavis explains. “That can be a walk, or trees, or whatever (at the feet and along the buildings). We want to have a qualitative treatment, so that the inhabitants can appropriate the external space. We want to improve the spatial appropriation by the inhabitants in the purpose of fighting incivilities and the other-one waste. When people appropriate a territory, they respect it.”

Beside the residentialisation, the Cèdre Bleu – from entrance 1 to entrance 9, or 337 apartments – and two other star-buildings will also be destroyed within the urban renewal plan. New apartments will have to be built because “within the framework of the urban renewal, we have the obligation to reconstruct an accommodation when we destroyed one,” Delavis explains.

A prison that blurs the message

30 new accommodations are built just at the foot of the Tilleul Argenté, but most of the new constructions will be built on the other side of the neighbourhood’s main road. There, on the former Solvay Quarries, 2200 accommodations will be built – 700 public housing, 1500 private. The aim is to re-enforce the social and economic diversity, which as of yet does not really exist, of the neighbourhood.

Globally, inhabitants are quite satisfied about the work going on – except the ones who have to be relocated to the center of Nancy during the refurbishments. Companies, which want to settle on the Haut du Lièvre, are happy too: business estate will be created by the urban project and the area already benefits from tax-cuts (Zone Franche Urbaine).

Still, there is a fly in the ointment: the construction of a prison in the middle of the neighbourhood. For inhabitants and social workers, it is a strong and rather negative message.

“I do not find it is very logical,” says an upset Aurore Thiebaut. “What do they want to say through that to the local residents? Usually, the city pays at lot of attention to the messages it delivers.”

But more than a symbol, the prison can have some concrete consequences on the neighbourhood. According to a scholastic work about the Haut du Lièvre conducted by Zahra Ait el Hanafi, a sociology student, inhabitants who lean on the district to define themselves reject the construction of the prison violently. Other inhabitants, who are in the beginning of their urbanistic career, are going to move.

The Haut du Lièvre, is a stop-and-go for somewhere else. The construction of the prison will just accelerate their departure.

Children, the future and hope of the Haut du Lièvre

The Haut du Lièvre: a field of possibilities

Is the Haut du Lièvre a half full or half empty glass? Most of the inhabitants, workers, sociologists, cultural or political actors here see the glass as half full. People who know the Haut du Lièvre are rather optimistic.

When asked to associate a single word with the Haut du Lièvre, Vincent Delprior from the Local Mission for Employment says: “a fallow. Because there is a great deal of talents and skills on this district which are slightly neglected or underestimated. Or worse, which suffer from a negative image. As in any community, any social group, there are individuals who exhibit deviant behaviour, or even delinquency. But the big error is to associate the local residents to these few individuals who can be counted on the fingers of one hand,” he concludes.  The Haut du Lièvre is not worse, nor better. It just needs to recover.

Slam poetry, classical poetry, improvisation theatre, and music were performed around one theme: the speech.  From April 28th to May 2nd 2008, the Festival “Sur un Plateau” had been taking place at the MJC of the “Haut du Lièvre” – Nancy’s local banlieue.

MJC’s (Maisons de la Jeunesse et de la Culture – Youth and Culture Centers) were created to bring youth and culture together.  On its side, the Festival “Sur un Plateau” (On a Plateau – due to the up-hill position of the neighborhood) was created and organized by students from the University of Nancy to bring the people from the city and its banlieue together, to build bridges, to help the city speak with its suburb and vice versa.

“The purpose of this festival was to promote a maximum of culture and to brew the several populations,” explains Penelope Lange, student at the University of Nancy and Chief organizer of the festival.

“Concretely on the ground, it was a lot of communication and public relations. But the promotion of culture also passes by price rates,” she says. For example, the slam and poetry evening were free; while the two other evenings cost € 2-3. “The access to culture is also a question of money” she adds.

Fighting stereotypes

But why on the Haut du Lièvre? Why there, when you know it was the fourth time that students, helped by their Professor Gilles Losseroy, were organizing a festival taking place on the Haut du Lièvre?

“It is a district which is considered as sensitive in the city of Nancy,” Lange explains. “But because of this bad reputation, there are no events taking place there. So we wanted to implant the festival on the Haut du Lièvre to bring down prejudices.”

Gilles Losseroy, mostly teaching performing arts at the University of Nancy, adds to the thought. “It is a district already geographically isolated, and constituted of a population largely stemming from immigration. Consequently, it is a district where we meet a certain number of social difficulties; it is what we call a ‘cité’,” he says. “There are cultural infrastructures which exist, but it is not if people would frequent those cultural structures. Now I am persuaded that culture that remains an essential cement of communication and thus understanding between the individuals.”

A cultural demand difficult to determine

Losseroy’s involvement on the Haut du Lièvre is nothing new. He arrived to the district, almost 20 years ago, well before being involved in its cultural aspect. He worked in a formation and training center called “L’Atelier de Pédagogique Personalisée” (the Personalized Pedagogical Workshop).

Later, he says, “I went on the stage and decided to implant my theatrical company (La Mazurka du Sang Noir) more strongly on the district and to have a cultural impact on it. Not by bringing pre-formatted and quite made things, but to see how with the theater I could answer and meet a certain demand.”

That demand is not evident to determine for Losseroy. “I meet people of the neighborhood, the associations, the inhabitants,” he says, adding that  “this demand is not still formulated in clear terms. We see that there is a need on behalf of the local residents, a demand of animation, meeting,…”

Author of a book called “La culture des cités”, the French ethnologist Marc Hatzfeld shares this point of view. “The people of the banlieues, in particular young people, are extremely eager for cultural meetings,” he said in the French newspaper Le Monde.

“With the theatrical company I try to answer that eagerness, to impulse a dynamic and in the end to make myself useless,” responds Losseroy. His aim: to set up practices which continue without him.

One of the actions Losseroy and his company took, helped by other organizations, was to introduce children from schools of the Haut du Lièvre to the magic of Opera. Hard work on the field was necessary to sensitize children. In the end, the goal was to make these children to their take relatives with them to see the performance. “And it worked,” says Losseroy enthusiastically. “We had more or less 170 people for the representation.” Afterward, one of the schools involved signed an educational contract with the Opera. “Since then, children assist repetitions, go to premieres, musicians and singers come in the classes,” Losseroy adds.

“La Liberté Guidant les Peuples”, a Humanity masterpiece, appropriated by the banlieues

Without locally-based work: you’ll face a failure

Sometimes intentions are good, yet they raise questions. Losseroy’s intentions are to “bring up the level”. Almost fifty years ago, in the same vain, the famous French writer and Minister of Culture André Malraux was creating the Maisons de la Culture (Culture Centers, which are different from the MJC) to bring Paris’ culture to the country side or as Malraux said himself: “To make masterpieces of Humanity accessible to everybody.”

But when the public is not responding, you might see a form of new paternalism.

“It is true. There is sometimes a paternalistic side, what was used to be called “patronage”, to propose things which do not come along with an educational or educational approach, with grassroots work,” responds Losseroy. “You cannot do anything in this district without a deep work on the field. Otherwise, you take the risk that there will be nobody.”

In the end, the fact is that at the Festival “Sur un Plateau”, inhabitants from the banlieue did not show up. “It was my biggest regret. Finally, the only persons from the neighborhood who came stayed outside of the MJC rather than inside. They did not participate. It is a pity,” concedes Lange. “I think that we should have been able to improve the communication on the Haut du Lièvre.”

“The work on the ground was not made in the same way as usual,” recognizes Losseroy.

As opposed to previous editions, no students from this year’s festival’s organizing team live in the Haut du Lièvre. Before the festival, Lange – the President herself – didn’t know anything about the neighbourhood; she hadn’t even been there once.

For Gérard Tien, an artist who came to the Haut du Lièvre for the festival, “the solution comes from the field. The difficulty is not to play, but rather to fill the theatre.”

Working as a cultural animator in Vandoeuvre – another “sensitive” neighbourhood of Nancy -, Gérard knows what he is talking about. “If you work on a local basis,” he says, “if you integrate the youngsters in projects which interest them – in improvisation, theatre, sport, etc. – it creates emulation. They say “Dude, I did that this week. Come to see”. There will be an effect on the group, a snowball effect. The young people are going to be more and more interested.”

The festival didn’t achieve its good-will goals because it did not work on the Haut du Lièvre itself. The MJC succeeds in its every day missions thanks to that local work. That’s the difference.

Most of the time, urban forms of art come from US inner city areas better known as the ghettos. It develops there, it crosses the Atlantic Ocean, and then it settles in Europe. Hip Hop, Rap, Graffiti, name it. But each time, these forms of art are modified and tamed by European artists. It is especially true for slam poetry.

“In the people’s slam, we bind ourselves and we rhyme because here we love where that rhymes and that lies. But if we splendidly lie to it, this is because we look there for a brightness of diamond verb. The people’s slam is a tiny and alive treasure with sight on the invisible. Simple.” Mourad, the master of ceremonies or MC, gives the start of the local slam session in Nancy (France) with these few rhymes.

This time, the session takes place at the “Haut du Lièvre” – the local banlieue, city outskirts, or as it’s more regularly called: poor suburb.

Several slammers came to the MJC (Maison de la Jeunesse et de la Culture – Youth and Culture Centre) tonight; their aim is to tell you a story, to share some rhymes. Slam is modern poetry and Rap’s little brother. The French Hip Hop movement has always been a strong message carrier, and political or not, those messages come from the most disadvantaged French citizens – most of whom live in banlieues.

A popular means of expression

It’s no coincidence if, in a banlieue like the “Haut du Lièvre”, local non-profit organizations propose Hip Hop dance lessons, graffiti lessons, or open studio sessions. It helps people – especially children and teenagers – to express their feelings, and release both anger and happiness. In other words, these activities help them channel their energy.

Aurore Thiebaut, working for the “Buisson Ardent” – a non-profit organization that was almost born with the neighbourhood -, explains that a tremendous work of assertion is done in those workshops. The youngsters “express many things in their songs,” she says. “These are songs which carry a lot, which tell not to get discouraged, which give advice. It is there that you realize that they are proud and motivated to fight against the problems met in everyday life.”

Tonight at the MJC, Zakkaria – a social working student and young father – is ironic in his slam. “I’m a racist”. He, the French citizen with Maghrebi roots, is a racist. “I hate the Italian, the Spaniard, the Pole, but I love the Frenchman. He is like I”. The public laughs. Salomon pays a tribute to Rap music for all it has been giving to the people who live in the banlieues. “Our art, engraved in the cement, is invincible to the Karcher”.

French slam is not playing by the rules

In the last five years, Slam has become more and more popular in France. Two major artists have emerged from the underground slam scene: Fabien Marsaud, under the alias Grand Corps Malade, and Régis Fayette-Mikano, under the alias Abd al Malik – the name of the 5th Umayyad Caliph who built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Both developed their art in the banlieues; both have a message of hope that fights stereotypes.

On the first song of his first record, Grand Corps Malade says: “If we are there today, it is just that we didn’t give up. We looked for the light of dawn by knowing that it had the colour of hope. We armed ourselves with our pens to write our own continuation of all these stories. We have beautiful ones to tell you, even if I imagine that it will be certainly far from your TV news.”

“Even if one of these days in Neuhof [the banlieue of Strasbourg], I become again an emcee at the MJC, criticizing the society, my soil, my feeder country; exceeded to find neither work, nor profession because of a pigment in my skin which I would have, is saying, in excess. Even if it is true that it is strange to feel as a foreigner at home, to feel burning on you the cold of indifference or hatred, to the choice; that all the city’s alleys become again the Stations of the Cross, kinda “Sir: your papers! Sir, what do you want?” Regardless, I know that in the apartment’s room of my tower I would continue to call upon Love…” claims Abd al Malik in one of his most powerful song, “M’effacer” – Erase Myself.

Though, French Slam is not playing by the rules. Slam poetry is supposed to be a cappella, it is supposed to be organized as clashes and competitions with a jury, declamations have to be three minutes long. French artists are breaking the rules by introducing instruments, choruses, or even background noises.

But who cares?

Words that make sense and develop serenity

There is no obligation: a bass, a drum, and a rather funky guitar in accompaniment, or a cappella… Fewer “bitches” or “bling bling” in French Hip Hop and fewer battles or clashes in the French Slam.

A story-teller, a speech that softly lies down, words which make sense. A text shared, a glass offered. An artistic form coming from the urban underworld and adapted by French performers, the Slam performed in Nancy in particular, in France in general, is like that. Simple.

A Compromise to Manage Noise Pollution

In these times when most people equate environment with climate change and global warming, noise pollution around airports is a hot-button issue. Unfortunately – like in most cases – people only care when they are touched by the problem. In the case of Hamburg, about 80 000 households, or almost 200 000 inhabitants, are directly affected by noise pollution generated by its airport.

More and more often – because of security reasons, the cleaning of the aircraft, or any common delay – we are led to wait quite a long time in airport terminals. While waiting, we take a look at the windows.

Is it sunny, cloudy, or rainy? We notice some people working on the runways. Some are helping the pilots with signals left-right, front-rear. Others are taking care of our precious luggage, while the last ones are refuelling the aircrafts.

But have you ever noticed, behind the thick windows of the terminal, that all these people working on the ground wear huge red or yellow headphone sets? They are compelled to do so for security reasons. Or let’s rephrase it: for health reasons.

Inhabitants living around the same airport don’t wear those headphones…even though they are almost touched by the noise as much the runways workers themselves.

For any comparison, the noise level of a jet plane taking off is around 125 decibels (dB), while a horn is 120 dB, a dance club 105 dB, hair hammer is 100 dB, a truck is 80 dB, or a conversation is 60 dB.

A plane equals between 3 and 6 trucks

But these figures are meaningless if you forget that decibels are a relative scale and that a seemingly small increase of 3 dB really means that the noise level is doubling. So, to start the comparison again, a jet plane taking off is almost 2 horns at the same time, almost 7 dance clubs, 8 hair hammers, or the noise produced by 15 trucks at the same time.

Everyday, every 2, 3 or 5 minutes for about 20 – 30 seconds, inhabitants living in the vacinity of an airport suffer a noise pollution of between 80 and 90 dB, and in the worst cases – like in some Hamburg neighborhoods – around 100 dB. Only 80 dB to 100 dB? It is still between three and six trucks. Plus, an 80 dB noise level is considered as a hurtful noise, while 100 dB is a dangerous noise; 120 is the pain threshold.

According to the Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization (WHO) “aircraft noise is a specific type. The highest numbers of complaints of sleep disturbance and annoyance come from people living around airports.” Recent scientific or medical studies conducted by the WHO or the European Commission have shown how bad noise pollution generated by aircrafts was for the people living/studying/sleeping around airports.

Aircraft noise is harmful to health

In 2005, researchers at Queen Mary University of London – and from others European universities – published the largest study on the effects of long-term exposure to aircraft noise on children’s health to date, examining almost 3,000 children living in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands.

Professor Stansfeld, based at Queen Mary’s Wolfson Institute, said: “The study results suggest that long term aircraft noise exposure impairs children’s reading. Schools exposed to high levels of aircraft noise are not healthy educational environments.” Fellow researcher, Dr Charlotte Clark, added: “Noise exposure across childhood is an important public health issue. Finding similar effects of aircraft noise on reading across three European countries strengthens our conclusion that this is specific causal effect of aircraft noise on children’s school performance.”

Another study recently published in February 2008 by the European Heart Journal, Oxford, paid attention to the “acute effects of night-time noise exposure on blood pressure in populations living near airports”. Here again, the results showed that aircraft noise was responsible for an unhealthy environment. People living for at least five years near an airport and being affected by the night flights have a greater risk of developing chronic high blood pressure, also called hypertension, which can lead to a greater risk of heart attack.

Lars Jarup, an environmental health researcher at the University of Glasgow, said “We know that noise from air traffic can be a source of irritation, but our research shows that it can also be damaging for people’s health, which is particularly significant in light of plans to expand international airports”.

Hamburg’s situation

While Hamburg is known worldwide for its harbour and Reeperbahn street, Hamburg also has an economic tool with its airport. The airport has a turn-over of € 223 million and generates almost 14 000 jobs.

However, as Udo Bradersen – an engineer working for the environmental department at Hamburg Airport since 1999 – explains, “Many households are exposed to aircraft noise; the airport is very close to the city center. Additionally, the airport operates a runway system with an intersection. Consequently, 4 areas exposed to noise exist – instead of two”. About 80 000 households or 200 000 people around the airport are affected by the aircraft noise.

Like in any movie, you will find in Hamburg all the typical characters of a good story: the politicians of Hamburg City represented by Hans-Heinrich Wendland – the Fluglärmschutzbeauftragter or the airport noise commissioner; the airport represented by Udo Bradersen; the companies present at the airport; and finally the local population represented by the BIG Fluglärm e.V and its director Dr. Gabriele Hartl.

But strangely, they seem to work more or less together.

Hamburg does not suffer from night flights

If the airport is 8,5 km away from the city center and that many people are affected by its noise, inhabitants living close to Hamburg Airport still feel “quite” lucky in comparison to others airports residents. As expressed by an elderly woman who’s been living for 9 years in a retirement-home close to Hamburg Airport, “we have a fairly quiet night, because for Hamburg, planes are not allowed to come after 11PM.” Actually, planes are allowed to take off and land until midnight.

“We have flights restrictions during the night,” explains Hans-Heinrich Wendland – the airport noise commissioner for the city of Hamburg. “The regular operating time to fly is from six o’clock in the morning until eleven o’clock in the evening. But there are exceptions for planed flights until midnight, in this case landing or taking off fees are correlated to the noise level of the aircraft.”

Whenever a plane takes off or lands, the company has to pay some fees to the Airport because of the noise generated by the aircraft; that’s part of the taxes individuals pay on their plane tickets. But since 2001 in the case of Hamburg, Mr. Wendland goes on, “landing and taking off noise-fees have been doubled from 10 to 11 pm, and tripled from 11 pm to midnight.” Recently, in February 2008, the city of Hamburg voted a new law that further increases the fees between eleven in the evening and midnight.

The reason why Hamburg has developed such a tough aircraft noise regulation is due to the airport’s situation. “The special situation in Hamburg (the closeness of the airport) requires measures independently from the actual coalition having the reigns in their hands.” says Udo Bradersen. Hans-Heinrich Wendland agrees and goes on: “Hamburg regulation is tougher because its airport is directly situated close to densely populated urban areas. All responsible people are aware that noise reduction is essential for the acceptance of a downtown major airport.”

In a nutshell, the arrival of the Green Party to power in the city of Hamburg, in coalition with the Conservative Party, will not fundamentally change the situation around Hamburg Airport. There is already a night flights ban and it will remain. All parties in the Hamburg City parliament support the night flight restriction, but all parties also accept the airport as a major economic factor for Hamburg.

Hamburg’s action anchored in time

Hamburg’s action to reduce noise pollution generated by its airport is not new. Besides the night flights ban and the doubling-tripling of the fees for the landing or take off of planes, Hamburg has invested money in noise abatement programs. Since 1976, €37 million have been invested in eight voluntary and one compulsary noise abatement programs; half the money comes from the airport itself.

Representing the airport, Udo Bradersen says: “Those programs aim on improving the noise insulation properties of houses or flats by supplying for new noise insulating windows. More recent programs deal also with paying a compensation for not usable exterior property parts as gardens or balconies.”

It is true, in the summer these property parts cannot be used. If a young couple settles there because of the neighbourhood’s cheap rents – due mostly to the noise pollution –, as soon as they have children…they will have to move.

“These things are done,” concedes Gabriele Hartl from the neighbourhood association fighting against aircraft noise pollution. “The airport is paying from time to time for windows, but not regularly, or paying for ventilators. But we are really missing the regularly aspect of these programs. Not everybody can get these windows, and it’s not so easy to get it. It depends of a woman at the airport. The problem is that she likes you or she does not…”

Economic versus Environment: 2-1

Years ago, in the eighties, some rumours were reported that the airport could be relocated somewhere else. Hamburg authorities discussed the alternative to relocate the airport to Kaltenkirchen, a small town in another Bundeslander called Schleswig-Holstein, north of Hamburg.  Many people hoped the airport would be relocated close to that town, and bought houses near the airport because of the city expansion.

Nonetheless, the airport will not be relocated outside the city of Hamburg…Once again, it seems to be quite Manichean. It is environment against economics; and economics win. As confesses Udo Bradersen, the airport will never be relocated. “The airport’s closeness with the city center is a major plus for Hamburg. Moreover, the relocation of the airport would mean the loss of all the taxes paid by the companies to the airport”.

Indeed, like Berlin, Hamburg is a Bundeslander and a city at the same time. A relocation outside the city would mean a relocation outside the Bundeslander; which would mean the loss of a lot of money for Hamburg.

Aircraft noise pollution: a broader debate

But, like described above, Hamburg is doing well regarding environment; and doing well especially when you look at other airports. In many ways, Brussels Airport looks like Hamburg. Its number of passengers is just a little bit bigger, and its closeness with the city center is comparable. However, Brussels has neither night flights interdiction, nor any serious noise regulation in general. Noise abatement programs are unknown for the residents in Brussels.

This comparison brings us to broader the debate: shouldn’t the airports compete with the same legal weapons and environmental norms? People in Hamburg do ask for European regulation, while the European Union, with the Directive 2002/30/EC, basically says “it is considered to be an issue of subsidiarity for the member states to fix the exact noise level. Nor do we prescribe noise abatement measures.”

While more and more decisions regarding our everyday life are made in Brussels, the European Commission decided to not decide about noise pollution around Community airports – those having more than 50 000 movements per year and city airports. The Directive 2002/30/EC is inspired by the subsidiarity principle: each decision has to be taken by the local/regional authorities. This is an approach to solving noise problems on an ‘airport-by-airport’ basis.

I met with Pierre Schellekens the Deputy Head of Cabinet at the European Commission, Environment Department.

Can you the EU regulations about noise pollution around airports?

We have a directive that dates back from 2002 which foresees that all member states have to provide us with noise maps – including with airports. I think we have something like 74 airports that fall within the category: meaning that they are big enough to be covered by the directive.

These noise maps will be evaluated by the commission. Out of the 74 airports, we have noise maps for 33 airports.  (Mid-March 2008)

Now the next step, on basis of these noise maps and on the basis of the commission assessment, is that member states should by July 2008 propose action plans to reduce noise level.

What is very important in that perspective is that we, in the European legislation, do not fix noise level. That is up to the member states to do so, it is considered to be an issue of subsidiarity for the member states to fix the exact noise level. Nor do we prescribe noise abatement measures.

But what the legislation does provide is the existence of these action plans.

It has also to be said that the directive will be reviewed in 2009, and when we do so we will evaluate to strengthen the directive. But no political decision has been made about it yet, we are more busy and worry about climate change.

Is noise pollution around airports a question of environment versus economics?

We should not put environment against economy…It is not a question of stopping flights…Those issues are locally…Take the example of the ban of night flights, that is a local issue to be decided by the local or the national government; not by the EU.

But some airports do better jobs than others. Take the example of Brussels that does not ban night flights, which is economically good for it; while Hamburg does.

There is a need for European action, for managing the evolution of noise level in general, but we also need to take into account very local/regional circumstances which are very different for an airport which is located close to a big city (like the case of Brussels, or Hamburg). Or some airports located in Scandinavia which are far from big cities (40-50 kilometers) – except for Copenhagen.

So we need to take into account local/regional situation; just being said, member states need to act on noise level. That’s the idea of the actual plan.

Is it possible to have different directive for airports being close to big cities and airports far from them?

No, I don’t think so. I think you will still come back to the situation that the exact level of noise and the exact specific measures to be carry out are regional/local issues.

What we prescribe is the general management of noise level rather than the exact same noise limitation.

What about the involvement of the local population mentioned in the EU Directive?

That’s an issue. But there is also other piece of legislation in this area. For instance, the construction or the extension, the construction of a new run-way (the case of Heathrow), falls under the directive for environment impact assessment. There are very detailed provisions on what kind of assessments that need to be carry out – including noise level, and also the need to consult the local population which is a very specific requirement of the environment impact assessment.

She goes and comes back from the desk to the computer like planes take off and land at an airport. “Do you know Leo?” she says. “It is my on-line translation “friend” from German to English.” She doesn’t master the English language but she tries to communicate her experience.

A plane loudly passes over the house. “Because of the rain, the noise produced by the planes is louder” she explains. Gabriele Hartl, Dr. Gabriele Hartl, lives close to Hamburg Airport where planes land most of the time. The noise monitoring station in her neighbourhood regularly registering noise level picks above 100 dB. It is a Calvary.

But Gabriele Hartl, who usually takes care of gifted children or children in difficulties, is not just a normal Hamburg resident suffering from noise pollution. For a year, she has been the director of the BIG Fluglärm e.V – “a NGO fighting against the noise from the airplanes, especially the noise pollution between 10 o’clock in the evening and 6-7 o’clock in the morning” in her own words.

Gabriele Hartl’s fights against the airport are multiple

As she explains it, for her and the residents living close to the airport, there is something wrong with Hamburg Airport – even tough she recognizes that it does a better job than other airports.

“Night is defined between 10 o’clock in the evening until 7 o’clock in the morning. That’s the German law. But every airport has the right to let take off and land airplanes until midnight, and to start again at 6 o’clock in the morning. So it is technically and legally in the time defined as night. It is disturbing and it makes the night shorter.” That’s her first concern.

Another one might be more spectacular. “I don’t know if you have heard about the landing of a plane at Hamburg Airport during the storm of March 2008?” she asks.

It is extraordinary, funny, it has been watched so many times on youtube.com, but “it was nearly a crash. It showed that an inner city airport is very dangerous for its neighbourhood.”

A successful fight from the inside: change the association approach

Beside her struggle with Hamburg Airport itself, Gabriele Hartl’s most difficult fight was to change the BIG Fluglärm approach. “We used to suit the airport in some law cases – which we all lost.” she declares. Gabriele Hartl had to change the NGO from the inside. The association acts now on a more political plan, and it seems to work.

“We had meetings about aircraft noise pollution after 10 p.m. with politicians from the four big parties,” she explains all excited. “As a result, the Greens made a petition about it and wrote down the issue of noise pollution at night in their program. Before, they had nothing about the noise pollution generated by airplanes. They were quite ashamed,” she laughs.

The recap: the meetings were in November, the Greens did their petition in December, and the different political parties voted the law in February. Now, the fees between ten and eleven o’clock in the evening have been increase of €800. That’s a success for her.

Would the arrival of the Greens to power in collation with the Conservatives of the CDU accelerate the latest progresses? “Yes, I hope so. The greens are interested in our themes concerning noise pollution and so on. It will change something, not a lot but something. For us, it is a very good base for more discussions,” she concludes while a plane flies over her house.

Lundi 3 juillet 2006
Quartier Léopold, des parcelles à l’abandon depuis vingt ans. L’Association du Quartier Léopold accule la commune d’Ixelles, propriétaire. L’AQL va demander un permis.

Ça y est, c’est fait ! L’Association du Quartier Léopold (AQL) et la « Fondation Ateliers d’Artistes sans Frontières » ont signalé leur intention de déposer une demande conjointe de certificat d’urbanisme auprès de la commune d’Ixelles. Au plus tard pour le 15 août. Cette demande concernera les dernières parcelles à l’abandon de l’îlot Vautier – Wiertz. Les numéros 21, 23 et 23A. Le but recherché est de mettre la commune face à ses responsabilités.

Les deux associations entendent revitaliser les 1.555 m2 de terrain délaissés par Ixelles (le propriétaire) depuis près de vingt ans. « Aucun investissement n’a jamais été fait », précise-t-on à l’AQL. « S’il s’agissait d’un particulier, ça ferait déjà longtemps que celui-ci serait lourdement taxé », renchérit Marco Schmitt, architecte qui conseille l’AQL depuis quinze ans. Le projet prévoit la construction de 6 ateliers d’artistes et 11 logements. Dès le printemps 2007, des artistes pourraient y être accueillis.

L’originalité du projet de la rue Wiertz est sa double articulation. L’AQL pour le côté local, la Fondation Ateliers d’Artistes pour l’approche culturelle. Sur les 11 logements prévus, 6 sont destinés aux artistes et 5 à des familles bruxelloises. « Nous tentons de dépasser la simple logique du quartier, indique Henri Bernard, administrateur délégué de l’association de quartier. Il y a nombre d’activités culturelles à proximité. Musées du cinquantenaire, Musée des sciences naturelles, Théâtre Varia et Horloge du Sud ».

Eviter l’inertie

« Le but de notre démarche est de faire bouger la commune, de la mettre en face de ses responsabilités (de propriétaire) », explique Joëlle Salaün-Stein, présidente de l’AQL. L’initiative semble être accueillie favorablement « mais il faut encore qu’il y ait une volonté politique, qu’une majorité se dégage », ajoute-t-elle. Pour les deux associations, l’inertie semble être le principal obstacle à leur volonté d’aller de l’avant.

M. Albishari (Ecolo) – échevin de l’Urbanisme – se dit « personnellement favorable à une telle initiative » intéressante du point de vue urbanistique. Mais l’échevin insiste : « Cette décision politique importante doit être prise de manière collégiale ». Du côté de l’échevinat des propriétés communales, on déclare que « la priorité est le logement » tout en démentant les rumeurs de vente des bâtiments concernés.