A few days before the municipal elections, this file returns to numerous issues – covered over recent years by La Vie des Idées – which should be at the heart of this election. We are also offering for the occasion a collection of essays and reviews on urban and territorial issues.
Over the past year, the Trumpian destabilization of the world order and the permanent political instability of the French government, without a parliamentary majority, have largely deprived the country of the campaign that could have taken place for the municipal and community elections of March 15 and 22, 2026. Faced with the succession of international and national crises, as well as the rise of authoritarian regimes and the far-right parties that fuel them, in-depth public debates on local issues and the governance of municipalities have been hidden or relegated to the corners of media news (as they had already been in 2020 due to the pandemic), especially since they lend themselves more difficult to the editorial strategies of infotainment and propaganda which now characterize a growing part of the journalistic field. Of course, the risk that the far right comes to power during the presidential elections in spring 2027, in an unpredictable geopolitical context, partly justifies this sense of priorities. If the municipal campaign has not really taken place, it is also because the presidential campaign is already in its early stages. However, the two elections would have deserved to be much more closely linked to each other, as many of the social questions and political problems at the heart of the national debate in fact have a preponderant local dimension.
The effects of the digital revolution on cities must often be regulated and governed locally (think, for example, of French municipalities now limiting the number of rental days on Airbnb). Likewise, the persistence of a high rate of unemployment supported by different territorial distributions of jobs to be filled and job seekers, the inflation of the cost of living, the widening of inequalities and the demographic decline are all four partly reducible to a housing crisis whose solution necessarily involves the municipalities and intercommunal authorities, which issue building permits. In the areas of social assistance and health, we observe a growing role of municipal social action centers. The ecological transition, between the fight against residential sprawl, the protection of biodiversity, the implementation of ZAN (zero net artificialization), the development of soft mobility and the management of mobilizations NIMBY against densification, also plays out in many ways at the local level. This is also the case, obviously, of the promotion of social diversity and the struggles against territorial inequalities and for environmental justice, which constantly come up against the strategies of self-control and monopolization of the upper classes. Likewise, drug trafficking like urban riots cannot have a lasting solution without adequate measures relating to urban policy, of which it should be remembered that the official definition specifies that it “ aims to reduce development gaps within cities “, of “ restore republican equality in the poorest neighborhoods » and “ improve the living conditions of their inhabitants ”, and whose real effectiveness often depends on the joint efforts and goodwill of municipalities. Which makes the government’s desire to put an end to the activity of the National Observatory of Urban Policy all the more surprising (NPPO), responsible for measuring and evaluating the results of the latter according to rigorous methods.
The current period is also characterized by records of citizen distrust of the government and national representation, while mayors and the municipal level are, on the contrary, considered the most trustworthy political institutions. Finally, the National Rally’s strategy of apparent normalization historically and still largely today involves the exercise of municipal power, and the same is true, since 2020, of the resilience of the Socialist Party. It would therefore be useful if voters could fully understand the actual issues at stake in the next election, as well as the different options offered to them.
This issue hopes to help flesh out, intellectually structure, and make public a conversation that otherwise always runs the risk of being conducted in more confidential arenas between local technicians, representatives of economic interest groups, consultants, and other players in the urban growth machine. In addition to the numerous texts already available, this month we are publishing a series of reviews of recent works, French and international, allowing an in-depth and often innovative understanding of working-class neighborhoods, suburban housing, neighborhood relations, foreign experiences in terms of social municipalism and management of local health crises, and many other subjects, as well as essays reminding us of the seriousness and urgency of the issues at stake in an election which is anything but secondary.