Contenu du sommaire : Les politiques de la ville

Introduction Urban policy cover three series of lines. It leads first, in a prospective way, to revisit the principles laid down in the fifties and sixties. Secondly it points to the essential problems of contemporary administration in housing estates. Thirdly, foreign models or counter-models have to be taken in account. Thinking along these three lines reveals important remaining difficulties notwithstanding the efforts made by the actors of social development. There are four causes to explain this : a bad use of its capabilities to think and study by public administration ; a weak field coordination of services coming under different ministries ; the growing lack of proximity of so-called local services ; and the weak capacity of hierarchical organisations to be at arms length of field officials.

Barcelona after the Olympic Games At the end of the eighties Barcelona was looking for its new vocation, as did most towns of an international size. To get adapted to its new functions, a "commercial logic" had to be integrated in its management, in order to sell the Barcelona product as well inside as outside of the city. The olympic games emerged as the means to meet the challenge and accomplished this. The economic possibilities and the creation of transport infrastructures, hotels and sporting infrastructures have been playing a double role : dynamizing the cities' activity so much that it has become an important competitor to other European metropoles and rehabilitating its image in the minds of its inhabitants as well as of those -professionals and tourists -it could interest. Nowadays, the new challenge Barcelona has to meet is to prove that it can integrate the olympics' results into long run economic and social life.