Alain Taravella (Altarea) : Altarea, une société foncière spécialisée dans l'immobilier

We did our work. You know, we are not simply a real estate company or a developer; we are a company with a team of 2,000 experienced people. And from the beginning, Hugo Flimant, we went into crisis mode to face the problems that arose. The problems were numerous. We have shopping centers, as you know, you closed them. Housing was much more difficult to live in. Construction sites stopped. So we went into development mode to succeed in getting through this crisis, and we sequenced a mobilization of the teams that we managed to achieve, giving results that are not bad given the circumstances.

If we look objectively at things, commerce has resumed because shopping centers and stores are open, and it's one of the sectors that is doing better. For example, we have shopping centers where customers come more willingly. However, there are sectors like clothing that are a little more difficult, but overall we can say that we are at 90-95% of last year's same period. So it has recovered. And residential real estate has recovered; it never really stopped. Individuals continued to buy during the lockdown period and continue to buy now. So everything is a little degraded compared to last year, but we have very good results in terms of sales. And from the perspective of office real estate, we continue the vision of what was the relay for real estate sales. We sold to individuals, and what is very interesting is that institutional investors are also present to buy apartments.

We have had a good first semester, yes. We are equipped to face a second wave. We feel that customers want to consume, want to buy apartments. We have a macroeconomic and social environment, perhaps health, that makes things difficult. So we are, I am an active pessimist: I expect things to go badly, and when they go well, well, we wish that everything goes as well as possible.

So we are urban developers. We build housing, offices, shops. We are a city company; our job is to house people and ensure that the French, since we are mainly based in France, are well within the walls. You help with urban planning, as you say, urban developers. So the first thing to adapt to the climate crisis is that we already do our job: urban restructuring, working on brownfields. We don't like to build in the middle of nowhere on agricultural land. Our job is mainly to renovate buildings. For example, at Issy-les-Moulineaux, we are building a large district where there were activity spaces, and we said we will build housing, offices, shops, an urban forest. We will densify this site, build more, but it's inside the city, so we don't take any agricultural land. And urban forests and people will be much better off. So that's part of our job to fight against climate degradation. It's already working on brownfields, it's the job of urban planning. Then, product by product, in terms of housing, we need to build more virtuous housing that consumes less energy. We already do that, we will intensify it. We have taken a stake in a company called We... which builds housing that we will develop. So that is something that will also allow us to fight against climate degradation. And in general, our constructions must respect a certain number of standards that are tightening, and we push for simplification so that our constructions consume less energy.

The government is very aware that efforts must be made on the climate. And I think on the government's side, there is not too much need for pushing for that. On the other hand, we need to convince the mayors to deliver building permits. So we have a new situation: we have many new mayors, new ideas to see the city differently. So we are fully in line with this issue, and we work with mayors regardless of their political party. We are ready to work hand in hand with the mayors, especially the new mayors.

It's clear. I want more housing, and we need more housing. Housing must be built somewhere. So we fundamentally believe that we need to rebuild the city on the city, restructure the city, renovate urban brownfields, work in the city, densify the city, and not artificialize the land. We had the ambition to do this two or three years ago, it didn't happen. But what is needed is for the public authorities to toughen their tone and twist the arms of the mayors a little to free up land, because that is the issue today. Yes, I think that it is up to us to convince the mayors that our projects are good, and that it is not constraint that will change their minds. A big issue, etc.