The Pink City is on the heels of Lyon, 3^and city ​​in France and could well catch up with it in a few years. Jean-Luc Moudenc specifies: “Toulouse gains approximately 5,800 inhabitants per year, Lyon gains 3,700. That is a gain for Toulouse of 2,000 inhabitants. per year. At this rate, it would take about fifteen years to catch up with Lyon (30,000 inhabitants), which would put the two cities at the same level in 2037. Until then, a lot of things can change,” concluded the mayor. . Already divided into six sectors and twenty districts, since 2009, Toulouse Should align itself with the particular status of Paris, Lyon and Marseille? These three municipalities are since the PML law (Paris, Marseille, Lyon) of 1982, divided into districts: twenty in Paris, nine in Lyon and sixteen in Marseille (grouped into eight sectors). These arrondissements, unlike the sectors of the Toulouse councillors, directly elect their and their arrondissement mayors.

The law should be changed

The division of Toulouse into districts, if it favored the proximity of voters with their elected representatives, would however complicate the Toulouse electoral mille-feuille a little more: the City of Toulouse belongs, with 36 other municipalities, to Toulouse Métropole and a certain number of Municipal elected officials are delegated to the metropolitan council. The addition of Toulouse boroughs would not really help the situation, while the elected metropolitan representatives will also, in the long term, have to be elected directly by the voters.
In addition, the arrondissements of the three largest cities in France are historically older than Toulouse: Paris was divided into arrondissements during the Revolution (in 1795), Lyon in 1852 and Marseille in 1946. And it would take a law to cut Toulouse in arrondissements. Jean-Luc Moudenc finds the question “superficial” and prefers to speak of “deepening the quality of life at neighborhood level”.

Moudenc: “I prefer the proximity of the district to the number of the arrondissement”

Toulouse continues to grow. Should we divide it into arrondissements?

This is a totally superficial question, which does not exist in reality. There is no citizen or political demand on this. Toulouse’s growth calls for responses in terms of quality of life and not administrative reorganization. This involves proximity, village cores, shops and public services in each district of the city. Demographic growth must fuel an increase in everyone’s quality of life, at the neighborhood level. There are about fifty districts in Toulouse, but we could not have 50 district mayors. We chose to have twenty administrative districts and twenty district mayors. In each administrative district, there are several districts: in Rangueil, there is also Saouzelong or Pouvourville; in Lardenne, also in Basso Cambo and Les Pradettes.

How can we deepen this quality of life?

Current events show us that we must work on health. This is why there will be, by the end of the municipal mandate, a nursing home in each district. So that everyone has access to local care… The mayor of Toulouse, whatever his label, is the one in France who receives the greatest number of votes on his name. The disadvantage of voting by arrondissement is that the mayor of Paris, Lyon or Marseille is only directly elected in the arrondissement where he is running. In the others, he gives his support to other candidates on his list, who then elect him. All Toulouse residents can directly elect their mayor.

The boroughs are therefore not on the agenda?

No, what is is to improve the quality of life of Toulouse residents. But also organize the ecological transformation of the city, make it greener, more cyclable and recyclable, more sustainable and sober, and this first of all at the neighborhood level. The district offers more resentment, the borough is just a simple number.