With less than three months to go before the UN climate change conference in Paris, a project at the forefront of urban sustainability in the city’s north-western suburb of Colombes faces impending closure – in favour of a car park.

Initiated in 2008 by Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu from Atelier d’Architecture Autogéreé (AAA), the award-winning R-Urban scheme is composed of a co-working and making space, the Recyclab, plus (just down the road) an urban agriculture facility, Agrocité, which is made up of allotments, a micro-farm whose produce is sold locally and a school providing professional training in compost-making. There is also a community space and cafe where the food grown on-site is processed and sold at affordable prices.



Petcou points out that the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) acknowledges the role of individuals and local governments in tackling climate change, and that R-Urban “is doing just that”.

“The scheme is all about local practices,” Petrescu adds, “but it’s also about scaling up through regional networks, and changing the way citizens in Colombes and elsewhere think about urban resilience.”

The project in Colombes is just gaining momentum. Shutting it down now would not make any sense Constantin Petcou

Food grown on-site is sold at affordable prices in the community cafe. Photograph: Alamy

With the climate conference putting Paris in the global spotlight from 30 November, the decision by the City of Colombes to abandon one of Europe’s most ambitious urban sustainability schemes seems almost comical in its timing.

The city council argues that the replacement car park is essential to serve the regeneration of the area – but Benoît, a long-term resident of Colombes who joined R-Urban in the project’s early days, points at all the spaces around the Agrocité that sit idle, ready to host the car park.

Claire, a retired nurse who lives nearby, adds that “most of the people around here do not have the money to pay for a parking spot anyway; the ones beneath the residential blocks are half-empty.” The mayor of Colombes did not respond to a request for comments.

While AAA could potentially rehouse the project and develop new schemes in other cities, “we don’t want to let the people of Colombes down,” Petcou says. “It’s great that other cities want to develop similar schemes, but the project in Colombes is just gaining momentum. Shutting it down now would not make any sense.” Yet the clock is ticking, with the project’s official funding coming to an end on 30 September.

Agrocité started in 2008: ‘It’d be such a shame to destroy all this for a boring car park.’ Photograph: Alamy

Spending a rainy afternoon at the Agrocité, I am surprised to see so many people turning up despite the weather, checking on their allotments and spending some time chatting in the community cafe. The mix of people, from different origins and social backgrounds, exchanging gardening tips is unexpected.

The R-Urban project has provided life-changing opportunity for Benoît, who made the big step to leave his job in the print industry to lead initiatives around compost and recycling. Inspired by his collection of beer labels – 700,000 and counting – he is now working with micro-breweries in Paris to recycle their waste, and is co-leading the School of Compost part of the Agrocité.

Benoît is among the R-Urban residents who have launched a petition to save the project. Others, such as Claire, seem more fatalistic. She tells me she grew up on a farm in Lebanon, and was keen to take part in R-Urban as soon as it took off. “You see, here my daughter and I can grow our own vegetables, and we don’t use any pesticides. Organic fruits and vegetables are really expensive, so getting an allotment here has been nice.”

“We learn from each other,” says Catherine, a long-term Colombes resident and former home carer, who had to stop working for health reasons. “I did not know anything about farming or gardening – but, for instance, there are lots of people here from the West Indies who have patches of land back home where they cultivate vegetables. Then the Portuguese know how to grow cabbage, and so on.”



The mix of people, from different origins and social backgrounds, exchanging gardening tips is unexpected

‘We learn from each other’ … residents enjoy the community atmosphere at Agrocité. Photograph: AAA

Catherine is busy baking cakes for the café. “It fills my free time, and you meet a lot of people. If the project moves away from here, I probably couldn’t get involved that much, as I have difficulty walking.”

The dispute over the R-Urban project also reveals the difficulties lying ahead for the soon-to-be-created Metropolis of Greater Paris. On the 1 January 2016, its official birth date, more than 120 municipalities and their individual mayors will attempt to start building a coherent metropolitan identity, addressing issues such as strategic planning, climate change and sustainable development.

The 400-or-so Colombes residents involved in the R-urban project would surely have some useful experiences to share with these mayors and town councillors about how to co-create a functional urban organisation. Showing me the luxuriant oasis of greenery that Agrocité has become over the years, Claire observes: “It’d be such a shame to destroy all this, just for a boring car park.”

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