"Living with": emergence and challenges of integrated practices for dealing with risks and crises locally. A survey of local risk scenarios in the urban areas of Nantes and Le Havre.
Thesis supervisor: Valérie November
The thesis focuses on practices for integrating risk prevention and crisis management policies in local areas. While the cyclical representations promoted by disaster prevention encourage us to think about the coherence of all actions to reduce their effects, public action to "deal with" risks and crises remains extremely fragmented in France. The regulations, tools, and actors responsible for preventing risks coexist with those who prepare for the occurrence of crises. By following the activities of the main local actors who take up these issues at the metropolitan level (inter-municipal officials and decentralized state services), the analysis highlights the existence of areas of common practice, describing their emergence and effects.
Integration is first studied from the perspective of the political sociology of local administrations and organizations. These envisage and practice integration in very different ways: through the institutionalization of collaboration between services on the one hand, and through the deepening of an integrated approach based on an endo-urban definition of risks (Gralepois 2008) on the other. Integration is then interpreted through the articulation of public policy instruments and other local socio-technical mechanisms. These articulations, negotiated between local actors, ultimately transform the way in which risks and crises are integrated into urban systems.
This thesis places local actors and their actions at the heart of the analysis. But by exploring the common ground between risk prevention and crisis management practices, the thesis also seeks to highlight the continuities and porosities between the concepts of risk and crisis.
Thesis defense on Monday, September 26, 2022
Year of enrollment: 2017
Doctoral school: City, Transport, and Territories (VTT)
Composition of the jury:
Olivier Borraz, Director of Research, CNRS Sciences Po (Rapporteur)
Mathilde Gralepois, Senior Lecturer, University of Tours (Rapporteur)
Gilles Jeannot, Director of Research, ENPC (Examiner)
Andrew Lakoff, Professor, University of Southern California (Examiner)
Valérie November, Director of Research, CNRS (Thesis supervisor)
Magali Reghezza-Zitt, Senior Lecturer, Ecole normale supérieure (Examiner)