a collective of inhabitants wants to be able to choose its merchants
The Hyper Voisins collective, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, would like to buy commercial premises to turn them into local shops which would be more useful to the inhabitants.
Having the choice between a bank and a hardware store, or buying a real estate agency to turn it into a medical practice: this is what the Hyper Voisins collective is asking for.
This association of residents of the 14th arrondissement of Paris believes that the district, which includes around fifty streets, is saturated with shops that are not useful on a daily basis. Shops like dark stores, spaces dedicated to deliveries, which harm local shops, among other things.
The inhabitants would also like to fight against the establishment of banks or real estate agencies, which they will find too numerous in the district.
“We do not create conviviality with real estate agencies”, launches Patrick Bernard, president of the collective, at BFM Paris.
To remedy this, the collective would like to create a fund which could allow associations to buy commercial premises in order to make them more useful stores in the daily life of the inhabitants. A system that already exists in other countries, such as the Netherlands, for example.
“Reclaiming public space”
To know the opinion and the needs of the inhabitants, the collective made a circular form. “It’s extremely interesting to be able to feed an urban reflection like that, to know if the inhabitants want this type of business rather than another”, says Patrick Bernard.
“It’s a good thing to choose that the inhabitants of the district can reclaim public space and decide what they want things to become,” said a resident of the 14th arrondissement to BFM Paris.
For the moment, the collective would like to see the creation of a nursing home in the neighborhood. A project in progress, but difficult to accomplish, because “as soon as there is a free lease, it is rarely businesses conducive to creating links that settle”, laments Patrick Bernard at Parisian.
In the long term, the collective would like to set up a kind of tax, which would penalize businesses that harm the neighborhood.
Neighbors who “say hello fifty times a day”
The collective is far from its first project. Patrick Bernard founded it in 2017 and describes it on social media as having the goal of “Transforming neighbors who say hello five times a day into Hyper Neighbors who say hello fifty times a day.”
The collective regularly organizes events and initiatives around neighborhood life. In December 2020, he had already made a name for himself by organizing a collection of more than 1,000 pastries for people hosted by the Emmaüs foundation.