A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #362 - Ecology - Dijon: The Lentillères neighborhood wants to change the entire city! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The Quartier Libre des Lentillères is a center of struggle nestled in 
the heart of Dijon, reinventing our relationship with our commons and 
our autonomy. From May 30 to June 1, 2025, the Quartier Libre des 
Lentillères celebrated its 15th anniversary with a major celebration. A 
look back at the history of this place and the experiences of the people 
who live there. From the only "urban zone to defend in France" to a 
"disreputable squat," to quote Nathalie Koenders, Mayor of Dijon, 
there's no shortage of adjectives to describe the neighborhood. But it's 
its residents who speak best of it: "Although its history is closely 
linked to that of the ZADs in France, the Quartier Libre des Lentillères 
has never claimed to be such." Rather, it's a self-managed neighborhood 
born from the occupation of wasteland by local residents, squatters, and 
environmentalists. It's a territory of political, ecological, cultural, 
and social experimentation."

It's therefore a land of struggle where solidarity and mutual aid have 
for 15 years held off the Dijon city hall's off-site project to 
establish a "Jardin des maraîchers eco-city," whose construction began 
in spring 2015 near Les Lentillères. But since 2018, the very heart of 
the neighborhood has been at the center of the power struggle.

Born out of a protest on March 28, 2010, led by the Urgence Bio 
collective, the creation of the Lentillères Collective Vegetable 
Garden-"Pot'Col'le"-in 2010, followed by the Market Garden in 2012, 
established the structure of the area. The neighborhood is now divided 
into collective vegetable gardens, crops, and residential areas, as well 
as spaces for refuge and biodiversity conservation. Since 2010, 
construction projects have punctuated the occupation of the 9-hectare 
site: in April 2012, the first collective housing project was launched. 
Several key dates have linked the neighborhood's history to that of the 
struggle for dignified accommodation for exiled people.

The Lentillères neighborhood is an open space, reinforcing the city's 
struggles.

Today, this issue is an essential foundation of neighborhood life. In 
June 2016, Roma families moved in, followed by migrants evicted from the 
"Cap Nord" squat. There's also La Cyprine, a 
feminist-trans-anti-speciesist shelter with no straight cis men. Far 
from being an enclosed space, it's a place of daily exchange and 
contact: the Foufournil bakes the bread sold at the market on Thursdays, 
alongside vegetables grown on site; a vegan meal is served at the La 
Chouchou canteen on Wednesdays; and, of course, the annual Spring 
Festival, which attracts many revelers, regularly brings concerts by 
Tarbiya, a Tuareg blues band!

And there are plenty of parties! This June, the Lentillères community 
center celebrated its 15th anniversary. After yet another defamatory 
press release from the town hall last February, the Lentillères chose to 
respond to the growing hostility with collective inventiveness and 
subversive joy: massive support gatherings, posters, pirate plantings, 
banners... Everything was designed to make the neighborhood visible in a 
city plagued by the grayness of concrete.

The Lentillères by those who live there
We participated in the festivities, but as we said earlier: it's the 
people who live in the neighborhood who speak about it best! We gave 
them the floor:

How do you see the neighborhood's place within the social movement? What 
role can it play? Despite what one might imagine, the hundred or so 
people who live in the neighborhood aren't necessarily involved in 
activist activities, and engagement isn't a criterion for living there. 
In this respect, the Lentillères neighborhood is neither a movement nor 
a collective as such, but is made up of several diverse collectives that 
are involved in local struggles and social movements to the best of 
their ability.

The spaces can be made available at any time, whether as a room or a 
workshop. The market gardening collectives offer, at their own level and 
depending on the season, a partial function as a granary for struggles 
and can provide vegetables for charity meals or for strikers. The 
feminist drummers and the tractor, which often lead the march of the 
neighborhood's women residents in demonstrations, reinforce the marches.

Is it also a space for discussion and the production of ideas? Yes, 
beyond the material dimension, the Lentillères neighborhood is also a 
meeting place that allows us to consider intersectionality and the 
complexity of life paths in the face of the massive machine of liberal 
and patriarchal capitalism. In this context, we can sometimes be a force 
for alternative proposals and protests on various issues that affect 
users and residents: work, queer feminism, precarity, racism, etc. This 
is also regularly manifested through the organization of actions, 
discussions, presentations, screenings, etc.

While the objective of the various collectives participating in 
neighborhood life has never been to reach out to the decision-making 
bodies of power to change them, like some unions or political parties, 
we hope to be able to help influence the balance of power with them by 
supporting, in our own way-festive, brazen, and determined-those who 
defend the values of solidarity.

Can you elaborate on your legal proposal for a ZEC? Since 2019, the 
Lentillères community has proposed the creation of a Communal Ecological 
Zone (ZEC): a new zoning scheme to legally protect the interdependence 
of uses-market gardening, housing, culture, nature-and guarantee 
collective governance by its users. Although the proposal was included 
in an appeal against the urban plan, it has never received any response 
or concrete progress from the city hall.

Today, the resistance continues: the legal battle to regularize and 
perpetuate the neighborhood, as well as the one-hectare strip that the 
city hall still wants to raze, continues.

In Dijon, as elsewhere, self-managed spaces raise the essential question 
of land use and the possibility of living differently. Beyond market and 
authoritarian logic, the Lentillère lifestyle could well change the 
entire city!

Charly and Maï (UCL Dijon), Lysandre (UCL Vosges)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Dijon-Le-quartier-des-Lentilleres-veut-changer-la-ville-entiere
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