Planning and the Culture of Governance: Local Institutions and Reform in France

Legislation introducing major reform of the French planning system is now 6 years old. It was intentionally seen as part of a trio of reforming statutes that linked spatial planning to institutional reform of local government. Taking as its starting point, the idea that planning is inevitably an embedded activity, it explores the relationship between institutional reform and the reform of planning in France generally, and then more specifically in the Région urbaine de Lyon. It concludes that the search for greater simplicity and clarity is not borne out by results on the ground. The French case demonstrates that the success or failure of planning reform is intimately linked to the nature of local government.     

The programme local d'habitat: preparing a housing strategy for Lille

By the end of the 1970s, the French government had begun to realize that the large‐scale provision of social housing had created as many problems as it had solved. Social exclusion, unemployment and racial tension appeared to be particularly concentrated in the peripheral housing estates that had been the result of the housing policy of the 1960s. In the 1990s, the government developed the programme local d'habitat (PLH; local housing programme) as a means of creating an integrated housing policy across the whole of a given urban area. This article looks at the origins and evolution of the PLH, and presents the programme in the context of local administration and the structures in place for the provision and improvement of housing. It then turns to the application of the PLH to the communauté urbaine of Lille. It boks at the problems to be addressed within the Lille conurbation and the way the PLH responded to them. The article concludes with a reflection on why the PLH has not proceeded and what may be learnt from this apparent failure.     

Review

Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East, Valentine M. Moghadam Women in the Middle East: Perceptions, Realities, and Struggles for Liberation, Haleh Afshar, editor     

Promoting Radical Change: The Loi Relative a` la Solidarite´ et au Renouvellement Urbains in France

At the end of 2000, France enacted major reform of its planning system in the Loi relative a` la solidarite´ et au renouvellement urbains (Loi SRU). It presented a restructuring of the instruments of land-use planning and in addition carried sections that dealt with housing policy and urban transportation. It linked the preparation of plans to emerging forms of local government. Using Hampson's analysis of the causes of the French Revolution, this article identifies both the long-term structural weaknesses and the contingent decision-making of the previous decade that led to reform. It concludes that the Loi SRU is probably not as radical as it was promoted as being, but may nevertheless be instrumental in achieving evolutionary change. Avenues for future research are identified.