Last month, Olivier Klein — France’s recently named delegate minister in charge of cities and housing — sat in a windowless room in the French National Assembly. His task: to present, for the first time, his “roadmap” for urban development, in the context of rising costs of living due to the war in Ukraine.

A freeze setting maximum rent increases at 3.5 percent, an equivalent rise in housing aid, and ten thousand additional housing units for victims of domestic violence: Klein, who passed through France’s Communist and Socialist parties before joining Emmanuel Macron’s government, took on a surprisingly progressive tone in his first policy briefing.

“I didn’t learn about the problems of working-class neighborhoods in books,” he said. “I was born there, I grew up there, I lived there, and I still live there. The city is my great cause; it is the fight of my life.”