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Since the beginning of the 2000s, policies deployed in France to deal with spatial concentration of poverty have mainly consisted in transforming the urban environment in order to promote social diversity in areas referred to as “deprived”. This was the approach behind the national programme for urban renewal (Programme national de rénovation urbaine / PNRU), which was launched in 2003, mobilising hitherto unequalled resources for area-based policies.

Although numerous countries have pursued such policies, others chose different options: in Germany, for example, where the “Social City” programme aimed to develop the neighbourhoods concerned, from an urban, economic and social point of view, on the basis of their endogenous potential, rather than attempting to change their sociological composition; or in the United States, where the Obama Administration sought to transform these areas into neighbourhoods of choice and opportunity by combining multiple means – development of neighbourhoods through community development, social diversity through urban renewal and residential mobility.

At a time when the government is discussing the next stage of the French area-based policy, and while major inequalities remain between areas, this policy brief stresses the need to replace the current approach, focused on buildings, by one focusing on the inhabitants, and insists on the promotion of their backgrounds and directions, both social and residential. Facing renewed calls for the mobilization of mainstream policies and territorial equality, this Note d’analyse also proposes to structure the sectorial policies at city scale, on the basis of the analysis of the mechanisms causing exclusion, segregation and inequalities. Several instruments are necessary to make such an approach possible: tools that enable decision makers to objectify the social and residential mobility of households, as well as a geolocalization system for public resources.