Capital Crisis

Following its year as European Capital of Culture, has Mediterranean Marseille stalled again?

Marseille Vieux Port

Descending to the métro at Gare Saint-Charles, a large advertisement asks commuters “Do you still listen to clichés about Marseille?”

Questions of Marseille’s reputation have never been so pertinent. As 2013 Capital of Culture, the city hoped to shake its seedy status and rebrand as an international destination. Spurred by an ambitious regeneration project, Marseille benefitted from a 680mn euro investment from the CoC fund, and private investment totalling a staggering 3bn euro. 

When January 2013 arrived however, Marseille was not ready. The inauguration of new museums, including the first national French museum outside Paris, MuCEM, was delayed. Shining new shopping centres in the revamped port district were not opened until half way through the year. The T3 tramline remains a work in progress today.

Sophie Carrano, a teacher in Marseille, told me “In 2013, there were different local events every week. People from all the arrondissements were involved. Marseille was united for probably the first time. It is already a distant memory.”

Marseille has long since been a bubbling bouillabaisse, a city synonymous with gangs, crimes and drug circles. Despite all efforts in 2013, crime is seeping back in, with 20 gun related deaths last year, and widespread standoffs with police. Away from the centre’s multi-million euro investment, Marseille has some of the most impoverished areas in the country.

New maps highlight how poverty in Marseille remains an incongruous anomaly on the sun-drenched French Riviera, as the city with the most socio-economic deprivation in France. Unemployment, whilst reduced, remains above national averages.

Claire Bullen’s report for the European Cultural Foundation found Marseille to be on the precipice of further demise. “Socio-cultural organisations that were involved in the initial bid… are starting to become either circumspect or cynical” she suggested.

“Life for ordinary people seems to remain precarious and the tensions between the different urban agglomerations seem as rocky as ever. [Artists] no longer see a future for themselves.”

When MuCEM finally opened, designer Philippe Starck described the building “a clairvoyant, untamable wild animal”; a metaphor which might be used to describe Marseille itself. As efforts towards regeneration fail to tame the animal, or fail to discourage criminality, Marseille is threatened by a criminal undercurrent that seemingly cannot be dammed by any wave of investment.

(I originally wrote this article as part of a bursary application, but really liked the end result, so I am publishing it here too.)