In a working-class suburb of Paris, a decades-old allotment area is under threat. The fight to save the Jardins ouvriers des Vertus is more than just a tussle between gardeners and town planners: it’s an urgent debate about what we expect a city to be
In Aubervilliers, a working-class suburb to the northeast of Paris, an iconic community garden and allotment known as the Jardins ouvriers des Vertus is once again under threat.
Dating back to the 1930s, the Jardins have been whittled away by successive phases of urban development: most recently the building of an Olympic training pool, planned transport hubs and a new metro line to the area. Now just seven hectares remain: around one fifth of an original allotment area that used to supply fruit and vegetables for the major produce markets of central Paris (themselves largely gone). A series of aerial photographs from 1949 to now show just how much the area under cultivation has been reduced, and how.
That process is ongoing. “These gardens are still, as ever, threatened with destruction,” writes the architecture collective ScopFair in a polemic for Le Club de Mediapart, a forum where readers of the independent French news site Mediapart express their views.
These continued threats come, the authors say, “despite the collapse of biodiversity, despite the risks of overheating in the city, despite the precariousness of working-class neighborhoods, despite the dangers [of] flooding or drought, despite the promises of elected officials, the decisions of judges and local protests.”
Since 2020, gardeners have been pushing back against plans to build over parts of the allotments with office developments, shops and hotels. Negotiations and court rulings have saved some of the land. But the threat has never fully disappeared. Activists now fear that an area they fought hard to save could be used for commercial buildings under a vaguely worded urban development plan. The gardeners see this as a quiet, piecemeal erosion of a vital green space under layers of bureaucracy.
During a public consultation on the space, Dolorès Mijatovic of the Collective for the Defense of Workers’ Gardens, wrote to town planners: “These gardens, the Vertus allotments, are a refuge for all living things: animals, plants and humans… a lifeline in the fight against the ongoing climate change. These gardens are a place for our future, and yours too.”
The authors of the Mediapart post echo her comments. But they also point out that the surface area of the allotments that gardeners are battling to protect is, in the wider picture, a “drop in the ocean”. Every day, France builds on the equivalent of 100 football pitches of agricultural or forested land.
A drop in the ocean, but still worth fighting for, they say: as a breathing space in a densely populated, working-class neighbourhood; and as a home for ladybirds, bees, ants, butterflies and humans.
* “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” is a line from the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire’s book Candide, expressing the need to work, above all, on what is under one’s own control.
Original article (“Pourquoi les jardins ouvriers d’Aubervilliers sont-ils encore et toujours menacés?”) by ScopFair was first published in French on 13 June 2025.
It’s available here.
Le Club de Mediapart is a platform for blogs, opinion pieces and discussions, allowing readers of the independent news site Mediapart to publish and exchange ideas.
Summary by TM
