Marseille, Rue de la Republique: Housing, Speculation (and Repression)
- If you had taken a early stroll down the Rue de la Republique in Marseille on Sunday morning the 22nd of November the first thing that would have struck you was that it appeared that nobody lived there. This might have been because of all the vacant shop and apartments, or alternatively due to the infamous icy Mistral wind blowing down from the North of the city and the ‘Port Autonome’ area which dares you to brave its Siberian wind chill factor. Further on a more surreal vista would have surprised even the most hardened activist. Across the wide boulevard stretched a line of black clad CRS special force police, blocking all car traffic and the recently opened tramway, jewel in the crown of Marseilles’ regeneration projects. In one of many cruel ironies in this irony of irony story what Hausmann had intended as a formal planning mechanism to forestall uprising, even popular revolution had been surpassed. Behind the ranks of Police a group of around 50 mainly young people were dancing, singing, shouting and generally goading the massed ranks of “guardian de la paix.”
- Timed to coincide with the informal meeting of Housing, Sustainable Development, Urban Planning and Territorial Cohesion Ministers from all the European Union Countries this autonomous group had occupied N0 62 Rue de la Republique, a vacant apartment building belonging to Atemi SA, a unit of Lehman Brother Holdings Inc’s Lehman Brothers Real Estates Partners LP managing the so called flagship regeneration project. (Part of Marseille Euromediterranee regeneration vison )
- Why is this street so historically important and iconic?
- For answers we have to go back in history and La Belle Epoque when Marseille was the Porte de l’Orient (Gateway to the East) and the French colonies, and consider the most recent debacle caused by Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.
Posted on January 14th, 2009 under Marseille • Tags: Lehman Brothers. • 
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