ESPACE ET TERRITOIRE - ESPACE ET TERRITOIRE : LES ENIGMES SPATIALES DE LA VIE EN SOCIETE.

Demolition in great housing estates (grands ensembles) : a paroxystic effect of the hopes and motivations from space – AAE

Submission summary

Since the late 1990s, France launched a large program of demolition in public housing located at the periphery of the city. By its extent, spectacular nature and conjunction of interests, this program constitutes a good analyzer of references and institutional representations of space that guide urban policy. The authoritarian action "breaking the ghettos" and "finishing with large ensembles” by blasting them, seems a typical case where political, architectural and urban planning practice can be seen in its full extent. Indeed, these operations of "ground zero", which the equivalent is in brownfields (Graçon, 2002), show you the criteria of normal and pathological judgments in the urban area. These evaluative and praxeological framework, underlying the disqualification of the built environment, reveal, by the negative, but in a "detonating" way, the figures of acceptable and unacceptable urban.
With the demolitions we can observe the system of idea of policymakers, technicians and the media. Demolitions make particularly clear the imputation system governing the action on and by space. The postulates and attributes that lead to a reading of large ensemble on the mode of disappointed expectations, failure, deficiency are also those that lead to the formulation of the expected judgments that the media refer to as "criminogenic". Therefore, the “wrecker discourse" appears as a way to capture the socio-political contemporary imagination of space and the city. We therefore consider demolition as an intervention that reveals especially social and institutional expectations vis-à-vis space and action – action being presumed efficient. Our research does not focus on the spatiality («uses of space, the arts do with the space in the everyday life by individuals and groups") but on the space in the meaning of the ecological-ethologism (how configurations of physical space could determine social relations). The demolition of housing estates represent the quintessence of the ecological-technocratic ethologism of the past and it allows to update the way whose the founding postulate of the urban action is redefined today in the system of beliefs of both public actors of urbanization and, often to a lesser degree, the private stakeholders.

Project coordination

philippe GENESTIER (ECOLE NATIONALE DES TRAVAUX PUBLICS DE L'ETAT) – genestier@entpe.fr

The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.

Partner

RIVES-ENTPE ECOLE NATIONALE DES TRAVAUX PUBLICS DE L'ETAT
PREFics UNIVERSITE RENNES II (HAUTE BRETAGNE)

Help of the ANR 107,598 euros
Beginning and duration of the scientific project: - 24 Months

Useful links

Explorez notre base de projets financés

 

 

ANR makes available its datasets on funded projects, click here to find more.

Sign up for the latest news:
Subscribe to our newsletter