Sent October 31, 2022 12:00
Dead rather than business. This summer, the Marseille City Hall made its choice: to bury the project to create an area of economic and handicraft activity on a land of 11,000 m2 in the northern districts of Marseille, for the benefit of the expansion of the adjacent Aygalades cemetery.
The perimeter, which housed four towers, which was made dynamic in 2011, was included in the projects of the National Agency for Urban Renewal for the installation of sports fields and a company village. An investment of 33 million euros that should revitalize this neglected neighborhood. “The project was abandoned without explanation after the tenants were relocated,” complains a former resident.
If the file has not caused a sensation in the business community, it is because there is a terrible lack of space for the deceased in Marseille. “Putting a cross on this revitalization project was heartbreaking. But we have to deal with a growing need to expand existing cemeteries, whose capacities no longer meet the needs of the population, ”says a city official behind the scenes. Currently, 30,000 places have disappeared in the city of Marseille and there are no longer concessions for sale in the twenty-one municipal cemeteries.
Mortality on the rise
The Covid pandemic did nothing to alleviate this tension with a 13% increase in mortality during the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur crisis, one of the largest in France. Furthermore, the habits of the Muslim community, large in Marseille, have changed in recent years: a decade ago, eight out of ten families chose to have the bodies of their deceased repatriated to their country of origin. Since then, the situation has reversed. The municipality therefore estimates the area needed for the new confessional squares to be five hectares.
Finally, Marseille is sorely lacking in space for its commons (the new name of the pits), a legal requirement that allows families to bury their dead while a concession becomes available. The space available in the city represents only 20% of the regulatory area. It would take ten hectares to get into the nails.
With the expansion of the Aygalades, the city will be able to recover a thousand places, half of which in the Muslim square. Another project is planned for the Vaudrans cemetery, where the topography, at the foot of the hills, offers more possibilities. The site has already benefited from several extensions since its creation. The last, in 2007, made it possible to develop an additional 23 hectares for the construction of 3,000 times, at a cost of 18.5 million euros.
Other solutions are being studied, such as building high to limit the footprint. In 1972 the architect René Durandau had inaugurated this alternative in Marseille by stacking vaults on eight levels of burial that had allowed the creation of 18,000 places. An initiative with no future.
