Presentation of a Small Scale Action (SSA): the urban development of a square

The multi-year agreement for the implementation of the neighborhood requalification program for the Faubourg d'Isle neighborhood was signed in Saint-Quentin on December 19, 2011.

A global strategy for the requalification of the district has been developed in order to fully integrate it into the mutations at the scale of the City and the Agglomeration.

The general objectives of the social, urban and economic project are as follows:

- Replace the neighborhood at the heart of the city's evolution and development dynamics;

- Give back to the neighborhoods the qualities and functionalities of an urban sector in the heart of the city, attractive for the inhabitants and users: in particular by developing a quality urban offer and by revalorizing the central public spaces;

- Propose a diversified housing offer, a source of balance, social cohesion and well-being for the neighborhood’s inhabitants: treating, through targeted demolition-reconstruction and development operations, pockets of old degraded housing and unfit housing, as well as proposing products adapted to the needs of current and future populations.

Co-construction workshops with the inhabitants.

The framework of the project to be respected:

• A budget of 315,000 euros
• Open up the neighborhood by connecting it with the main artery of the local shops and to create a green space which is cruelly lacking in this neighborhood

Several work sessions took place in the form of workshops with the inhabitants and stakeholders of this space, the shopkeepers, the associations and the schools of the sector. The objectives were to place this new urban space in the globality of the neighborhood by also taking into consideration the future of the neighborhood. A work on plan also took place to know the daily mobilities of the inhabitants and their uses to move within the neighborhood and to allow them to project themselves in this new space and to specify what is the social utility of this one. Finally, to express the desired developments within the square.

The consultation was extended with the city's inhabitants in the form of a survey based on the Co-construction workshops with the inhabitants. Some 600 residents collaborated on this new urban space.

Feedback:

This dynamic allowed us to accompany the inhabitants to the change of the neighborhood and to gain their implication. This allowed them to project themselves and to avoid an important point of tension, the demolition of the neighborhood’s annexed mayor's office, a place of proximity for the population.

Private actors in the Co-construction

The shopkeepers were involved around this space and particularly a very recent business in the neighborhood; “Confiture et Compagnie”. We anticipated the planting of fruit trees in this new green space with this partner. A jam with the effigy of this square has also been created. Workshops on eating well will also be offered regularly in the square.

A different way of working for the community service.

But this includes different ways of operating for the community. The services have been able to adapt to the co-construction with the inhabitants, and several lessons have been learned by the services concerned.

Points of vigilance in terms of staff:

- Define a project team and resource persons from the study phase of the project. To implement a specific coordination of the services and to structure the approach (define a technician by technical service, they are at the heart of the follow-up of the works)

- Define a technical pilot for the operation

=> The pilot does not necessarily have to be in the department that has the most credits in the project but a person in the department that will bring a real added value to the project

- Define a person in charge of citizen participation to coordinate the relay of information to technical services

- Define a centralized monitoring of the budget by the technical pilot of the operation to ensure a good management of the expenses (control of the expenses in the respect of the global budget of the operation

Without the pooling of the overall budget for the work, it would not have been possible to create a double pedestrian pathway, which was the starting point for the development.

This experiment carried out within the framework of the Urbact Active Citizens program allowed us to better understand the Co-construction approach with the inhabitants. To understand the necessary changes in the functioning of our community to carry out this type of project. It will allow us to go further in our approach of citizen participation and its stakes in a serene way and by preparing at best our functioning for this type of urban projects

Dominique Puchaux

Project Manager