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Far from being abandoned, post-industrial areas such as the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining basin are the focus of numerous reconversion initiatives. But when these efforts are carried out in the name of ideals that are foreign to the realities of the people who inhabit these spaces and the economies that thrive within them, they can paradoxically contribute to the very decline they claim to be preventing. By tracing the institutionalization of a regional land policy implemented in France, this article contributes to a long-term analysis of the ambiguities of redevelopment in deindustrialized areas.