Building Hope In the Banlieues

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On the plane en route to a labor-union congress in Bordeaux, Jean-Louis Borloo leans out of his seat and jabs a finger at a cluster of suburban housing projects below. "The very design of neighborhoods like that was meant to create zones that no one exits and no one enters," barks Borloo, who as France's Employment and Social Cohesion Minister has made revamping the country's blighted banlieues a personal crusade.

Borloo insists that demolishing the "invisible but impenetrable walls" separating project residents from suitable housing, functioning public services and jobs is the only way for France to avert a repeat of the violence that wracked the suburbs over the past three weeks. "We need fluidity here," Borloo says. "More banlieues flowing into the towns, and more from the towns gushing out to the banlieues."

Though Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin were the most visible politicians during the crisis, Borloo may be the only man with a real plan for fixing the banlieues. Last year, he launched a project — now budgeted at $35 billion over five years — to demolish and rebuild or renovate an initial 240 of France's most troubled neighborhoods. He's battling segregation, too, by situating as many as possible of the new developments in or near city centers. An employment scheme, meanwhile, is expected to create 500,000 new jobs, most of which Borloo says should go to banlieue residents. The plan is modeled on Borloo's success in the 1990s, when he tackled high unemployment and crime rates as mayor of the northern city of Valenciennes.

Will it work? Borloo, for one, is optimistic. "It took great effort — and constant haranguing — to get the machine moving," he says. "Now it finally is, and people are just starting to see results. More, lots more, are on the way." France has to hope so; otherwise the only thing flowing from the banlieues will be more violence.