Commercial planning commissions are usually supposed to prevent the siting of overly large shopping centres to the detriment of city centres.
I have never really understood the benefit of this, except that it gives a lot of power to local politicians, with the risk of corruption being very high in view of the effort…
A major retailer will lobby the French Chamber of Commerce (CDAC) to prevent a competitor from moving in. The CDAC has a lot of room for manoeuvre. Cash still exists; what guarantees us that a boot full of banknotes will not be placed in the boot of a CDAC member to say “no” to a settlement project? Many cases are anything but clear-cut!
It is very pleasant to be able to reach shops without having to pay for parking spaces in the city centre, without having to endure traffic jams, bumps, small roundabouts and other incursions that plague the life of the ordinary citizen.
A wide road, a driveway, a huge car park, a department store – that’s the dream of the ordinary Frenchman with his diesel. Probably too staid!
So they implemented this rather questionable “trick”, which from now on introduces extraneous considerations into the logic of the supposed harmony of the French nation’s territory. This was already not very convincing from the beginning, but now it becomes downright outrageous.
So now, according to the CDAC of the Gironde department, in order to obtain a permit for a commercial extension, one would have to be an Islamophile and in particular express one’s support for the “Uighurs”, the Chinese Muslims.
One wonders what this has to do with commercial URBAN CONSTRUCTION, i.e. the good organisation of French cities in the name of the general interest, especially aesthetics and spatial balance – answer: NONE!!!
Once again, I am fed up with an international issue interfering in national affairs. Especially in an era beset by borderless Islamic terrorism.
When it comes to urban planning and aesthetics, there is a lot of good and not so good here too. It did not bother many MPs to build mosques in traditionally Christian landscapes, as in Poitiers with its highly visible minaret, and at the same time to step on the toes of ordinary citizens when they want to change the appearance of a building that is within the perimeter of a historical monument.
Bordeaux residents are thus deprived of the expansion of the Zara shop, which is suspected of profiting from the forced labour imposed on “Uighur” Muslims, although the company denies this “accusation”.
A decision, moreover, that violates Chinese sovereignty. Who are we to tell the Chinese how to punish the Uyghurs? This is a typically controversial question, with the radical left defending the Uyghurs as much as the “Palestinians”. One knows these people well by now and knows how little one can trust them.
It is high time to put these aberrations in order!
