In the political organization of France, the so-called
'Jacobean logic' plays an important role. It stands for a tendency
towards centralisation and uniformity. However, since the 1980s there
has been a process of decentralisation to sub-national authorities.
Grenoble is an example of a city in which new ways of involving citizens
in urban policies are being tried out. Since the 1960s
government-citizens relations in Grenoble are structured via the local
associations, and mainly on the neighbourhood level. The focus of the
city government's recent strategy is to adapt the infrastructure of
citizen participation to the conditions of modern urban life.This means,
for example, that the associations are stimulated to take into account
the level of the agglomeration, and that new forms of involving
individual citizens have been established
