Alain Juppé, the mayor who transformed Bordeaux

In 2017, the tourist guide Lonely Planet placed the Gironde capital at the top of its world ranking of the most attractive cities. A consecration saluting the spectacular rebirth of the city, some twenty years after the arrival at its head of the former Prime Minister, now leaving for the Constitutional Council.

In the 1990s, however, you had to be a visionary to imagine the hidden assets of the "sleeping beauty" behind its blackened facades, its dilapidated hangars, its ill-famed quays and, everywhere, its parking lots dedicated to a ubiquitous car.

When he took control of the city in 1995, after 48 years of reign of the Gaullist Jacques Chaban-Delmas (1915-2000), Alain Juppé, 50, also president of the urban community, was determined to wake it up.

He first buries the metro project, dear to his predecessor, preferring to use a vast tram network that keeps the car away from the historic center. It will be the "wireless tram" - the world's first example of a tram running on a ground power system - inaugurated in 2003 and acclaimed since.

At the same time, a major project to renovate the quays of the Garonne has been launched, while the city has ostensibly turned its back on its river since the decline of the port in the 1960s. "The principle of redeveloping the quays on both banks was established from the end of Chaban's mandate, with the architect Dominique Perrault. Juppe will rush into this project, but by soliciting other actors ", underlines Marc Saboya, art historian, author of works on Bordeaux architecture.

The project will be entrusted to the urban planner Michel Corajoud. It transforms the quays into a vast 6 km promenade bordering the river, with its famous "water mirror" which has become emblematic of the city. The facades of the historic center are restored, revealing a blond and luminous cut stone; pedestrianization is widespread, soft traffic favored ...

Bastion of "yellow vests"

The award fell in 2007 with UNESCO's classification as one of the finest European examples of 18th century architecture in the world heritage. The number of tourists jumped, crossing the 7 million mark in 2017.

Elected and systematically re-elected in the first round (60,9% in 2014), Alain Juppé projects his city in the role of a major regional metropolis in the 2010s, all the more since he returned to the head of the agglomeration in 2014 after ten years of "co-management" with the left.

A new period of transformation opens for the one which becomes in 2013 the capital of New Aquitaine and finds itself in 2017 two hours from Paris thanks to the LGV: new districts are built on both banks, a business center is launched around Saint-Jean station ... Businesses are setting up, a new tram line is launched to bring the network to 77 km.

In terms of contemporary architecture, it will be the Chaban-Delmas lifting bridge across the Garonne inaugurated in 2013, followed by the complex and delayed construction of the Simone Veil bridge, designed by the agency of the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, the Cité du vin, la Arena performance hall ...

But this forced development also arouses the discontent of residents who denounce the dramatic rise in property prices, the congestion of road transport, parking difficulties in a "museum city" ...

And then this insolent influence of the metropolis aroused resentment in the surrounding rural areas, which feel neglected, and whose number of inhabitants invade the streets of Bordeaux every Saturday, dressed in the "yellow vest".

"Bordeaux would pay the ransom for its success?" Wondered recently Alain Juppé, who seemed destabilized by the violence disfiguring every week a city for which he had just written a "Speech in love".