Holding the evacuated French city (7)
I believe the answer is:
tenancy
'holding' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'the evacuated french city' is the wordplay.
'evacuated' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (internal letters are evacuated from the word).
'french city' becomes 'Nancy' (city in France).
'the' with its centre taken out is 'te'.
'te'+'nancy'='TENANCY'
(Other definitions for tenancy that I've seen before include "Letting arrangement" , "Let" , "Tenure" , "Temporary occupation of land" , "Rental agreement" .)