Marseille hosts its first "Festival of the Wild City"

"We must now, immediately project ourselves into the city to come. The city of today can no longer be transformed, it no longer knows how to move forward: too self-satisfied, too soft, too complicated, too technocratized, too stereotyped, she no longer knows how to risk anything", believe in a presentation file the members of the association "Va play outside", organizer of the festival.

Until Saturday, experts in architecture and urban planning, politicians, but also artists and members of civil society will be able to "confront their ideas, their actions and their visions of the city, of living together and of the architecture of the common," they add.

To do this, they will be welcomed for three days in the former Abitbol warehouses, a wasteland undergoing conversion located in the working-class neighborhoods in the north of Marseille.

"We have rather focused our invitations on Latin America. Architects will come from Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, elected officials too who will tell us how public policies can transform entire neighborhoods", said detailed during a press conference Matthieu Poitevin, president of the association "Go play outside".

The Mediterranean cities of Naples and Athens will also be highlighted during a workshop.

It is a question of "working differently, working for and by the inhabitants directly in a participative way, in any case to promote an architecture which is more human", and no longer the emanation of a "market system", pleaded M Poitevin.

"What is happening today is that the city is dying because we do not trust its authors. We are always in a moment of urgency to repair", especially in the face of climate change, "and not in a moment of anticipation, to be expected," said Mr. Poitevin, who was the main architect of the Marseille wasteland of Belle de Mai.

But in this new way of thinking about the city of tomorrow, he judges, Marseille has a real card to play because "it has this chance compared to others not to be conformist".