Urban transformation in France has a long history but its ideas, methods and objectives have changed over the past 20 years (Driant and Lelevrier, 2006; Lévy-Vroelant, 2007; Deboulet, 2008; Lelevrier, 2010). A distinction should be made between ‘urban renewal’, which corresponds to the more common notion in English-speaking countries of the ‘urban regeneration’ of older sectors of the city, and urban redevelopment, a political notion associated with government intervention in France since the 1950s and 1960s, and then officially designated in the 1970s as la politique de la ville. The principle of intervention to achieve urban and housing renewal is well established and now takes the form of a contractual arrangement between administrative areas (municipalities, urban areas, conurbations) and the Agence Nationale pour la Rénovation Urbaine (ANRU) (National Agency for Urban Renewal), created by the Act of 1 August 2003 on the orientation of planning for cities and urban renewal, sometimes referred to as the ‘Borloo Law’. It is a high-cost programme: the work scheduled for the period 2009–14 is valued at nearly €40 billion, with ANRU contributing up to €10.9 billion. It consists of large-scale projects, including demolition, for renewing urban areas dating mainly but not exclusively from the post-Second World War reconstruction period (1950–60). The areas are selected and defined on criteria such as levels of poverty, the concentration of populations of migrant origin, and the prominence of older social housing units. Zones urbaines sensibles (vulnerable urban areas), of which there are 751 across the whole country, are the target of the ANRU-approved programmes, where a policy of social mix is explicitly provided for by law, using social housing on the one hand and promoting home ownership on the other, with a view to achieving a tenure and a socio-economic ‘rebalance’ aimed at greater ‘social mixing’.

Present-day urban renewal in the broadest sense (namely, beyond ANRU operations) includes not only the transformation of old and outdated dwellings into modern housing but also the renewal of urban space already allocated for housing, under powers vested in municipalities or groups of municipalities. Under the notion of ‘residential itineraries’ land can be used for a succession or chain of housing purposes, often culminating in home ownership.