L'expropriation et le nouvelle urbanisme en France: uno studio critico

This paper aims to make a critical study of French expropriation proceedings, its evolution and the relationship between it and the land planning, town planning, also with a brief to social urbanism. In this context, the state can certainly be considered the most important subject of the French expropriation proceedings . If, in fact, it is still the only monopoly for the realization of this procedure, the subjects with which it works - public entities territorially localized, public administrations and private companies with public purpose - have multiplied and diversified over time . So - over the years - the procedures have multiplied themselves, revealing the historical period in which they occurred, the precise social goal that determinated the creation. The structuring of the same course of classic expropriation proceedings has crystallized in two different phases, assigned to two very different state subjects, the prefect and the judge. The arduous search for a balance between public interest and private interests, the unclear distinction between active and judicial administration, have done of the French experiment the test for assessing the actual justiciability of the system and for seeing if the gears prepared were able to protect the owner without jeopardizing the public interest. The public objectified interest pressed to have legislation corresponding to the needs of a already completely anthropomorphized State. However, the prosperity and national growth, the desire to create large public works ,demanded new expropriation rules, characterized by an increasingly smaller weight of the ordinary courts. From there began the emergency and social "expropriation". Also from here began an important and evolving legislation as far as regards the planning and implementation of housing programs, land management oriented - at first - to replace and then to integrate the expropriation proceedings. The ablative legal instrument for excellence, has been gradually concealed behind the land planning. The massive work of land management has always had - or at least has always tried to hide - a clear social call. Just this perspective has gradually tried to impose itself on the concept of private property, legitimizing a new expropriation age and a new perspective of urbanization. In a larger project ,in the urbanistic and expropriation legislation , significant changes have occurred, all aimed at harmonizing the two addresses, with the aim to avoid any possible contradiction between the proposed transaction and urban plans. Just in regard to planning, there has been a gradual development of different systems of management and organization of the territory. These tools allow the SO-CALLED "Acquisition of real estate", that is ,of land not directly – that is without the expropriation procedure - but in an indirect way, for example, by imposing a vocation related to meeting the collective needs of the area. Therefore, what slowly happened in the French experience , was a progressive and twofold change.On the one hand, it was increasingly stretched to meet the community planning and urbanization needs , to use indirect tools. A slow "fall into disuse" of expropriation procedures established, surely, the clearest signal of this change. Secondly, there was a "turn" as regards the object of what was "socially proclaimed as a public" no longer the land, but the building on it insistently. Both of these changes - as often happens in history - were the result of changed social needs and were characterized, therefore, by a slow and continuous improvement. Just the above mentioned "social"profile - used as a purpose of the planner changes - greatly helped the expansion of urbanism and its always better qualification. Since the '70s, the social urbanism in France came to constitute a form of manifestation of a broader collective project, namely the attempt to harmonize the different social predicaments. The essential goal was pursued through a calculated use and rational social diversification –with a more positive view of the same . The city planning and urbanism - have turned their structure to meet the new needs of social construction.