In March, nearly 36,000 mayors will be entrusted by voters with the destiny of as many municipalities for the next six years. In a fragmented political landscape, where new forces are emerging, the municipal majorities will be more composite and will probably require more compromise.

In implementing the commitments affirmed during their campaigns, mayors will immediately face the contradictions of their constituents: they want more services but less taxes, more housing but fewer buildings, more jobs but fewer jobs. factories etc. Many will find the motivation in the finding that if the French are demanding, irritable and pessimistic, they are also passionate, utopian and generous. Our society is strong and fragile at the same time, and this ambivalence is a challenge for those elected “everyday”, who act most immediately on our living environment and, in turn, on our quality of life.

Real estate developers are among the economic actors for whom the municipal elections are the most rich of stakes: it is to draw a framework of life, to change by keys the atmosphere and the physiognomy of a district, to embellish it and the to equip, it is in the first sense “to make the city” for and with its inhabitants. It is the structuring political act of a mandate but which requires a multiplicity of skills as the urbanism and the act of building have become complex.

The elections of March 2020 come at a pivotal time in the evolution of our society which is aware that it must meet the challenge of the attractiveness of the cities but also reduce the territorial divide by revitalizing the medium-sized cities because if a majority of French aspires to live in the countryside, they will always be more numerous to live in town. The challenge of the 2020-2026 municipal mandate is to draw the city that will reduce this contradiction: an accessible, mixed, pleasant, sustainable city that accompanies and anticipates the transformations of our society. And to imagine, the mayor-promoter dialogue seems inevitable.

Alexandra François-Cuxac
President of the FPI France

Source: https://fpifrance.fr/actualites/promoteurs-au-coeur-des-territoires