The long-since-begun “Voie des Sacres” redevelopment project is an urban nightmare for the city of Reims. Ultimately meant to redevelop the historic path between the Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Reims and the Church of St. Rémi, the project has shut down a major thoroughfare in Reims. Having started in Summer 2024, the project has now eclipsed its one-year mark. However, the so-called “progress” is not an opinion shared by the residents of the neighborhoods affected by incessant noise and desolate streets. This being said, how exactly does the construction happening along Rue Gambetta, among other streets, affect the urban essence of the city?
For a neighborhood to flourish, an entire urban ecosystem must sustain it. Streetways allow rapid transportation through the neighborhood, sidewalks invite steady foot traffic, and residential units overlooking both provide a sense of natural community surveillance. Together, these elements create an ecosystem of public contact.
On their way to class, SciencesPo Reims students might pop into La Fournée Croquant, one of Rue Gambetta’s local bakeries. On their way back home, maybe Anamour Grill for some late-night kebab bites. These micro-interactions form the connections of Rue Gambetta. No matter the reason for movement, a web of public trust is woven from the paths people walk and with whom they interact. The issue facing Rue Gambetta is that when the interactive rhythm breaks, community presence in the space is disincentivized.
Urban sociologist and author Jane Jacobs wrote in 1961 that “impersonal city streets make anonymous people,” and Rue Gambetta has seen just this. When people choose to walk Rue Barbatre in lieu of Rue Gambetta, we can ask if this is not a result of concrete-laden, grey visuals. It is a quiet rejection of ugliness. Unpleasant sights like sidewalks torn open, heavy machinery, and closed-down businesses are all depersonalizing features of the Voie des Sacres project. Where ugliness and inconvenience stare Gambetta in the face, a passage formerly of daily life turns into a space to be merely endured.
The first loss is that of passive connection. We can call this phenomenon the simple, yet often unnoticed encounters that hold a neighborhood together. When you nod to a shopkeeper or overhear a passerby’s conversation with a fellow parent, the passing contacts make the place human. They form what urban sociology, for one, calls “weak ties”. The casual, everyday bonds that foster trust and belonging. Weak ties in passing contacts provide information otherwise missing from a neighborhood. When the shopkeeper gives a smile in passing, one knows their shop would be a refuge in the case of an emergency.
On Rue Gambetta, those ties have been replaced by the sound of jackhammers at 8h00 and a landscape of barricaded detours. The result is highly predictable: people only walk there when necessity leaves no choice. As one SciencesPo Reims student provided, “If any of us can avoid Rue Gambetta, we will.” Thus, it is no surprise 80% of those we cross paths with on this street are SciencesPo students, those with no other means of accessing the campus. On Gambetta today, movement has been segregated by circumstance, in a sense.
Gambetta’s second casualty is an economic one. Street life feeds small business, and the link between foot traffic and revenue is as old as commerce itself. The charm of Rue Gambetta once lay in its walkability and mix of bakeries, small restaurants, and boutique storefronts. When the pavement disappears beneath construction barriers, so do the chance encounters sustaining local economies.
Several storefronts along the street have already reduced hours or closed temporarily. For shop owners, a month of lost visibility can be survivable, but a year of it is devastating. A simple look back at COVID is a testament to this fact. Even when the work ends, recovery may be very slow. Habits change, and people form new walking routes. Customers once loyal to a bakery or kebab shop may not return, not out of protest, but out of forgetfulness.
Urban revitalization projects often promise a future of economic renewal, but the transition period is rarely acknowledged. When a street’s economy collapses during construction, what exactly is being “renovated”? If the human scale of business, the owners, workers, and customers, does not survive the process, the end result risks being a polished rather than living neighborhood.
Finally, there is the question of safety and community oversight. A vibrant neighborhood watches over itself. People sitting and sipping coffee contribute to a sense of mutual awareness that discourages disorder.
Today, Rue Gambetta’s only regular spectators are the construction crews and elderly men standing, arms crossed behind their backs, to observe the demolition. In a sense, they continue this role of informal guardianship, but the diversity of watchfulness has diminished. Distinct demographics now survey what was once a shared public realm. Familiarity has given way to observation without participation. Workers with their pre-packed lunch do not buy locally, and elderly observers do not lend a hand to the construction itself. The difference is significant: seeing the street is not the same as being a part of it.
When “eyes on the street,” to once more use the insights of Jacobs, becomes few, the street stops belonging to its people. Construction has not only altered the views from residential windows, but it has also changed what and who is visible.
The tragedy of Rue Gambetta is not just the noise of delay, but detachment. Where there is ugliness, people look away. When they look away, they disengage from their shared space. The Voie des Scares project may eventually restore beauty to a path once hosting the coronation processions of French kings. But in the meantime, it has hollowed the life between its endpoints.
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