Adaptive Planning for the Hospitable City: The Experiences of Temporary Housing in Grenoble, Rennes and Villeurbanne

Résumé En

Homelessness is not generally considered an issue to be addressed by urban planners, but rather by specific social welfare policies. However, the migration and the reception crises in Europe have brought to the forefront questions about the capacity of cities as hospitable places for asylum seekers. This chapter builds on the literature on the transformation of planning and governance when confronted with crises and on the capacity of dominant systems to integrate self-organisation, bottom-up initiatives and ad hoc institutional arrangements. It questions the way hospitality policy is put in practice through the example of temporary housing for homeless migrants in three French cities: Grenoble, Rennes and Villeurbanne. It focuses on the potential of such initiatives to transform dominant planning systems, through an actor-centred perspective and an emphasis on the role of mediators in these processes. It appears that such mediators play the role of “bridging organisations” by integrating different values and rationales from the fields of property development, housing management and social welfare, thus facilitating the transformation of practices of other involved actors.