The climate and "the human", priorities of Catherine Vautrin at the head of Anru

Appointed on September 1 at the head of the agency responsible for steering the transformation of working-class neighborhoods, she succeeded Olivier Klein, who became Minister Delegate for the City and Housing.

The priority of her mandate will be, she promises, the integration of the climate challenge in urban renewal, in the extension of the "Resilient neighborhoods" approach announced Monday by Olivier Klein.

"How can we imagine coming out of projects which in five years, in ten years, will be incapable of responding to the challenges facing us?"

"What we are proposing is that during project reviews, we take up each of the projects, that we look at whether we are very resilient in terms of the environment, energy consumption: each time we can be connected to a heating network, have we done it?"

"We must, whenever we can, try to fight against heat islands. These are the famous slabs with concrete everywhere, not a tree... we can remove asphalt, put back revegetation. You also have the thermal insulation of buildings, and it is as much against the heat as against the cold. It is not only savings in heating, it is also quality of life in summer."

"We also have to draw the consequences of post-Covid", continues Catherine Vautrin.

“When people were confined to their homes, what did they tell us? Obviously, the space (…) In an Anru project, on average, a balcony is 7.000 euros. is an additional cost, and yet, isn't it worth watching? Because it immediately offers a different prism from one's accommodation. A summer like this, if in the evening, you can be on your balcony for a bit, it's a bit of air."

On the other hand, no budget extension on the horizon for Anru, despite the soaring prices of building materials, which makes construction sites more expensive.

"Budget maintenance"

"There is no question of making operations at a discount, and it is all the more true that the materials are of fundamental importance in our approach to sobriety and resilience. (...) But at this stage, I will already fight to get the budgets maintained, I don't see how I can get an inflation budget in the context," she admits.

The former Minister Delegate for Social Cohesion under the presidency of Jacques Chirac also wants a deeper assessment of completed urban projects.

"I want us to have an extremely precise look at the state of the operations that we carried out eighteen, fifteen, ten years ago, because it's important that we have a management that allows us to see how, over time, the choices that have been made have aged."

"When you have a neighborhood that is undergoing a complete renovation, it is normal that beyond the simple renovation of the neighborhood, there is a follow-up so that this neighborhood, which is not no longer the same, has ambitions to which it must respond and that we can support, see what works, what does not work, so why not see that something is not working, how we act immediately and we don't wait for things to get bad."

Also president of the urban community of Greater Reims, Catherine Vautrin does not plan to leave her local mandate.

"What I learned in Reims, what I experience in Reims every day, precisely allows me to get to know the neighborhoods, to experiment, to compare, and I think that a president of Anru must be on a daily basis at the heart of the problems of the inhabitants of the districts", she justifies.

"There would be nothing worse for Anru than to have at its head someone who does not know what a neighborhood is and who does not have this experience".