We take this opinion piece published in Le Monde on the government bill of Greater Paris. It is signed Daniel Behar (Planning Institute of Paris, Master Planning, mention territorial strategies and public policies) and Philippe Estèbe (Sciences Po Paris Master spatial strategies and urban).
"The discussion of the draft law on the Greater Paris tends to undermine its drawdown on a transport scheme, to weigh the respective virtues of an air route or underground or blame his lack of overall vision for the Ile-de-France. That is not the question in a "decentralized Republic", it is not the legitimacy of the state to define that vision. However, it costs much to formulate a development strategy for the capital region, that is to say, defining the conditions for its optimal contribution to the performance of France in the context of globalization.
In this regard, this project proposes as previously implied a break doctrinal entirely justified with one of the founding tenets of the "Planning to French ", the current rebalancing between Paris and the provinces. With the renewed attractiveness of large cities and rural fabric, this posture is no longer appropriate. But how then assert the role of the first French city in the world? To meet this challenge, the bill makes a strategic hypothesis: globalization is a scale unprecedented in international competition, to be answered by "adding" competitive factors in the metropolis, or "next" (the proposal attractive to the extension of Paris to Le Havre) or "above", and that the additional layer of the clusters, research and innovation, Defense Saclay through Le Bourget, served by the famous "coaster." This assumption is quite questionable.
It is initially unclear whether the issue of opening the world in the twenty-first century is played in terms of maritime trade merchants. And can we enact and the break with a long history of continually more continental and sea? But most of globalization is not a level more on the outside, but a process that produces a new figure of the city - the metropolis after the town - where the network links disrupt the continuity of play and generate multiple contradictions between the global and the local. In other words, globalization is not a challenge from without, but from within the metropolis.
In economic terms, to reach its height is not to say a few clusters, hoping to effect locomotive is not guaranteed. Rather, the entire metropolitan area should be bet. Business and finance are not the exclusive center of Defence but the attribute of the West of Paris. Scientific excellence is not played on Saclay but the scale of a Southern Cone of innovation between the Montagne Sainte-Genevieve, Evry and Saclay. Tourism and culture - beyond the power of Paris proper - now extend to the north and east on registers as more contemporary heritage. Finally and most importantly, the performance of these activities depend on the excellence of their closeness to the mother ordinary relationships, the logistics, construction and services.
In social terms, the challenge is not to minimize the risk of riots Social and undermining the international image of Paris, through a "detour" the great eight by Clichy-Montfermeil but to develop a decidedly metropolitan cosmopolitanism. In Paris, as in other world cities, metropolisation accompanied by the development of international migration. Also considered a key resource in the metropolitan appeal, this issue is totally ignored in the project of Greater Paris. Are equally hidden creative potential induced by this new cosmopolitanism that new figures of poverty it engenders.
In initiating the project of Greater Paris, the state has seen the challenge for France is that the question mainland. But as a transfer of revenue from 1960 to the time of the Paris area, kept up to date by geography dilated (automatic successor to the subway RER and clusters to new towns), its response is not height. Is to "make metropolis" that would collectively focus. "
Daniel Behar is an associate professor at the Urban Institute of Paris and Philippe Estebe is an associate professor at Sciences Po Paris. Both are consultants to the cooperative Acadia.
