What are the City Hall and the Metropolis for?
Understanding why municipal elections really count in Montpellier
Municipal elections do not only serve to elect a mayor. In Montpellier, they also determine the political orientation of the Metropolis. In other words, they weigh on decisions that directly affect daily life: getting around, housing, breathing cleaner or more polluted air, accessing public services, living in welcoming and safe neighborhoods.
Understanding what the city hall does, what the metropolis does, and how their choices fit into broader issues allows one to measure the concrete importance of the municipal vote.
Why are municipal elections decisive?
Municipal elections are often presented as "local" elections, therefore secondary. This is a mistake. Decisions made at the city and metropolitan levels shape daily life and commit the territory for several years.
In Montpellier, the mayor plays a central role within the Metropolis. Voting in municipal elections is therefore choosing a political direction for the entire agglomeration, well beyond just the municipal limits.
The role of the City Hall: proximity in daily life
The City Hall is the institution closest to the residents. It is often the one identified when a concrete problem arises.
Living environment and neighborhood development
The municipality decides on many visible and sensitive elements:
- the layout of streets and squares;
- public lighting;
- maintenance of parks and green spaces;
- cleanliness of public spaces.
These choices directly influence the quality of life, the attractiveness of neighborhoods, and how people appropriate the city.
Schools, childhood, and local services
The City Hall is responsible for nursery and elementary schools: buildings, canteens, extracurricular activities. It also manages crèches, sports facilities, libraries, and associative venues.
These local policies play a key role in equal access to public services and social cohesion.
Security and public tranquility
Even if security largely falls under the State, the municipality acts through the municipal police, prevention, and the organization of public space. Municipal choices strongly influence the feeling of safety and life in neighborhoods.
In Montpellier, these choices have taken a very distinct direction. The current municipality has heavily invested in video surveillance, increasing municipal police staff, and reinforced police presence operations, often conceived in a deterrent and symbolic logic.
Conversely, other levers recognized for their long-term effectiveness remain little mobilized: prevention, local social work, harm reduction for people in great precariousness or drug use. The refusal to implement lower-risk consumption rooms illustrates this political choice: favoring a security response rather than a health and social approach.
Culture, sport, and associative life
In Montpellier, a student and cultural city, municipal decisions structure the local identity: support for associations, cultural programming, access to sports, public events. The cultural vitality of a city is also a political choice.
These choices pose a central question: what culture is prioritized? Cultural policies can favor an institutional and bourgeois culture, concentrated on large facilities and prestigious events, or conversely support a popular, associative, neighborhood, accessible, and emancipatory culture.
In Montpellier, budgetary arbitrations and subsidy criteria have sparked tensions with the associative fabric. Several actors denounce a weakening of independent and popular culture in favor of a more event-driven offer that enhances the city's image.
The role of the Metropolis: thinking about the territory long-term
The Metropolis of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole brings together Montpellier and several neighboring municipalities. It exercises strategic competencies, often less visible daily, but decisive for the future.
Transport and mobility
The metropolis organizes public transport, defines major mobility orientations, and implements structuring mechanisms. These choices condition access to employment, studies, and services, and lastingly transform travel habits.
Free transport has marked a significant break, but it alone is not enough to guarantee fair mobility. The development of the tramway network, the frequency of lines, and the service to working-class neighborhoods and peripheral municipalities remain central issues.
The implementation of the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) also illustrates the tensions of these policies: designed as an environmental tool, it can become socially unjust if not accompanied by credible alternatives for residents furthest from the city center. The question remains: for whom and for which territories are mobilities designed?
Urban planning and housing
It is at the metropolitan scale that housing construction, social housing distribution, and major urban projects are decided. In a territory subject to strong real estate pressure like Montpellier, these decisions have a direct impact on rents, social mix, and urban sprawl.
Housing is one of the most conflicting issues in Montpellier. The pursuit of major projects and strong urban densification is often criticized for favoring developers and wealthier households, without sufficiently responding to the housing crisis.
Existing tools remain little mobilized: rent control, requisition of vacant housing, massive development of truly accessible social housing. These choices reflect a clear political orientation on how housing is considered: as a right or as a market.
Environment and ecological transition
Water management, waste management, air quality, preservation of natural spaces: the metropolis plays a central role in the ecological transition. Faced with heatwaves, drought, and climate change, these policies become decisive for the health and well-being of residents.
In Montpellier, these issues are already a daily reality. Extreme heat episodes, water scarcity, and soil sealing directly question urban planning and development choices.
Prioritizing greening, de-sealing, and water sobriety or pursuing projects that consume a lot of space and resources: here again, the local ecological transition depends above all on political decisions.
Economic development
The metropolis acts on the territory's attractiveness, welcoming businesses, and developing business zones. These orientations influence the nature of jobs created and the local economic development model.
Local issues that go beyond the territory
Acting on climate change
A city like Montpellier can reduce its emissions, adapt its urban planning to high heat, transform its mobility, and protect biodiversity. Municipal and metropolitan decisions have a real impact on the territory's climate trajectory.
A voice beyond borders
Local authorities can also act through international cooperation, twinning, or symbolic stances on human rights and international solidarity. Even at the local level, these choices participate in the global public debate.
Example in Montpellier: international choices that commit the city
In 2024, the mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse, visited Morocco as part of economic and institutional cooperation, particularly with cities located in the Dakhla region, in Western Sahara. This visit took place in a diplomatic context where the French State recognized Moroccan sovereignty over this contested territory, to the detriment of the Sahrawi people's claims for self-determination.
This trip, accompanied by public statements and economic partnerships involving French companies established in the Montpellier metropolis, illustrates how a municipality can, at its level, integrate into broader geopolitical orientations.
It also shows that the international choices of a city are never neutral: they reflect a political vision and priorities that largely go beyond the strictly local framework.
Voting in municipal elections: a major political choice
Voting in municipal elections is not just choosing a team to manage the existing. It is deciding on a development model, an ecological orientation, a vision of solidarity and living together.
In Montpellier, municipal elections commit the city and the metropolis for six years. The decisions made today shape the territory of tomorrow.
Key takeaways
The City Hall acts on the immediate daily life. The Metropolis sets the major long-term orientations. Together, they influence housing, transport, the environment, the economy, and quality of life. Understanding their roles is understanding why voting in municipal elections is a central political act for the future of Montpellier and its metropolis.