JO-2024: around 300 people demonstrate against the "concreting" of Seine-Saint-Denis

“Stop the concreting of fertile agricultural land, we can no longer procrastinate,” insisted Dolorès Mijatovic, member of the Vertus allotment collective.

These century-old gardens located in Aubervilliers are threatened by a vast urban development project. About 4.000 m2 were destroyed for the construction of annexes for an Olympic swimming pool, supposed to serve as a training pool for the Games and then to facilitate learning to swim in this popular city lacking in infrastructure.

Opponents secured a significant victory on Wednesday, March 9. The Paris Administrative Court of Appeal ordered the immediate interruption of the work started at the end of 2021, considering that they could cause "hardly reversible consequences" for this "primary core of biodiversity".

It has asked the public authorities to review the local urban plan on which this 33 million euro project is based.

In a popular department lacking in greenery, the defenders of the gardens demand that the plots be returned and sanctuarized.

"I defend the history and the work of the gardeners who have been there for so long, the land that we inherited and that we work with love", underlined, ivy crown on her head, Marie Chouk, 74-year-old gardener .

Demonstrators opened a breach in the palisades of the swimming pool construction site, but were immediately repelled by the police. Some also spread compost in front of the entrance to the Aubervilliers Town Hall and threw paint on the facade.

In the procession were also parents opposed to the creation of a motorway interchange linked to the Olympics near a school in Saint-Denis, and elected environmentalists, rebels and communists, noted AFP.

On Saturday tens of thousands of people demonstrated in France to demand that the climate emergency be at the heart of the debates in the presidential election.

The Ile-de-France collectives present in Aubervilliers had decided to hold their event a day later to "make local struggles visible". Throughout Greater Paris, the region is experiencing an urban metamorphosis embodied by major real estate and public transport projects.