Commies ruin everything, including buildings. Here’s the story of a French suburb of Paris that went from failing to thriving after getting rid of their ugly commie architecture.
“This town did the impossible! It was able to transform itself from a gloomy dispirited town, dominated by decaying concrete flats into a thriving, friendly and beautiful community.”
“That town is Le Plessis-Robinson. This municipality is home to around 30,000 inhabitants. When you walk it’s center, you might not notice what is so special about this place. It looks like a perfectly ordinary, charming French town, until you learn that everything you see is recently built.”
“After World War II, the local Communist party wins the elections. and becomes the ruling party of Le Plessis-Robinson for over 40 years. During those years, the town is further expanded with a modernist urban scheme.” Translation: Lots of ugly, Brutalist concrete.
“There’s a lot of social housing, but the concentration of marginalized groups has its toll.” In the French context, I’m guessing “marginalized groups” means unassimilated Muslims from French North Africa.
“The town becomes more sinister, filled with rubbish, petty crime and poverty. At some point, 2/3rd of the buildings are in a bad state. They are energy inefficient, vandalised and badly maintained. Companies are closing down, and problems related to poverty are rising.”
“He promptly sets out to regenerate the municipality. In doing so, he takes an unconventional method: To beautify the city, and to improve the town on all fronts. Instead of the harsh, brutal and grey blocks that dominate the city, Pemezec wants a type of architecture that people can connect with. Instead of grey concrete, there would be color.”
“The town would have a vibrant, mixed use center with lively streets, creating more jobs, by planning commercial spaces for local businesses, but also by offering the peace of beautiful parks, gardens and fountains. Le Plessis-Robinson would have a soul again.”
“François Spoerry [is the] main architect, who designs a masterplan. Spoerry is also the supervisor who tests all the designs made by other architects. In this case, only traditional and classical architects are attracted, which is rare.” In other woods, beautiful, classic designs, not ugly modern crap.
The revamp public (“social”) housing. Also: “Owner occupied homes are introduced as well, to achieve a greater, more natural mix in social- and income classes.” Funny how much better people treat things when they own it.
“A program is introduced to give social housing tenants the chance to become a homeowner, by offering them to buy a new home under favorable terms.” Shades of Jack Kemp!
“At that point, the housing supply of Le Plessis-Robinson consists of 72% social housing. These extremely high concentrations of social housing in one location are often not sustainable and have been linked to various social and economic problems.” You don’t say.
I don’t agree with every point of the video, and there are lots of lefty planning buzzwords (“new urbanism,” “gentrification” etc.), but the video makes clear that the Le Plessis-Robinson of today is clearly much more beautiful and livable than the concrete commie slum Pemezec was faced with in 1989.