Aubervilliers Customize Gardens Resist 2024 Games

“Gardening resists,” we can read at the entrance to the Garden of Defense (JAD) at Fort d’Aubervilliers, in Seine-Saint-Denis. Since April 23, activists have been camping day and night to protect this century-old space, where residents farm the land, from future infrastructures to be born in light of the Olympics.

From the summer of 2023, an aquatic center will open its doors in place of the car park that borders the Jardin des Vertus plots to the east of the city. The solarium, which accompanies the Olympic pool project, poses a problem for a certain number of residents and associations, such as the Defense Workers’ Gardens Group in Aubervilliers, because it will cut the gardens dedicated to one of the 7 hectares they have from them to practice urban farming.

A deal worth 33 million euros

In addition to the solarium, the future marine complex, whose cost will be more than 33 million euros, will include several swimming pools, a fitness and cardio area, saunas and showers, as well as vegetable areas. This operation, concluded by the previous municipality, aims to enhance the attractiveness of the municipality which has only one swimming pool. But opponents fear that this heritage is not really intended for them with regard to the entrance card “between 10 and 15 euros,” as the gardeners say.

On the town hall side, the entrepreneur, City Councilman (UDI) Karen Frankelt, evokes in Parisian columns, “a group that does not even represent the gardeners, who have decided to take the voting process hostage. In the city council, ratified by the gardeners associations in a democratic way, With the risk of jeopardizing the construction of this pool while the children of Aubervilliers and the surrounding cities need this equipment.”

4 hectares are threatened by line 15

While an agreement has been signed between the two associations that use the total area of ​​​​the gardens – 273 residents – and the Grand Paris Aménagement, the landowner, the city states that all green spaces will be re-established, in the long term. ‘, and that ‘all the gardeners reallocated a plot of land.’ The defenders of the Jardin des Vertus could be expelled at any time, after an application drafted by the Grand Paris Aménagement was accepted in May by the local court of Aubervilliers.

While the administration continues to remind people of the need to fight heat islands and produce locally, activists have no intention of giving up. And even less as nearly an additional 4 hectares could disappear in favor of the future Grand Paris Express, which should ensure easy access to the site by line 15.