Land and Housing
Stakes for public policy
The imbalances between border property markets and their consequences give rise to new challenges for territorial governance. Relieving the tensions linked to the different dynamics in housing will require a rebalancing of new home construction on either side of the border. Insufficient construction on one side of the border and high rates of construction on the other contribute to imbalances, to property and land price explosions and large migratory flows.
The major challenges for cross-border public policy with regard to housing include:
- improving cross-border coordination of urban planning for housing (revision of the “Cross-border Housing Master Plan” [FR] in the Greater Geneva territory);
- the development of tools for the observation of new home construction and housing policies (the Greater Geneva Cross-border Statistical Observatory’s topic factsheets [FR]);
- the construction of more subsidised (social) housing in order to avoid the marginalisation or displacement of the middle-income population - the Urban Solidarity and Renewal (SRU) Act requires a proportion of 25% social housing by 2025 within French municipalities of more than 3,500 inhabitants;
- optimising efficient land use management by increasing the density of housing in cross-border territories;
- offering alternatives to border workers, such as teleworking, enabling them to reduce the externalities associated with the distance between their home and place of work (within the framework of the France-Luxembourg Tax Convention, signed in mars 2018, French cross-border workers are entitled to 29 days of teleworking per year);
- the prioritisation of building projects in proximity of public transport hubs, optimising journey times for daily commutes;
- advancing the energy transition by promoting energy efficiency renovation of existing homes; the construction of energy efficient new homes (see projects A2E and GReENEFF).
