Edited by Dominique Lorrain
Métropoles en Méditerranée
SciencesPo les presses, 2017, 322 p.
Beirut, Cairo, Algiers, and Istanbul evoke a very long history. But for several decades now, the images associated with these Mediterranean cities have faded, giving way to images of daily life marked by violence, waves of migrants, and urban dysfunction.
Have they become ungovernable? Are they too dense, too polluted, too unequal? By delving into the fabric of their networks and institutions, this book shows that the major difficulties facing these cities reflect not the absence of government, but specific modes of government.
While not everything is governed, urban networks contribute to governance by helping to equip cities. Failures are compensated for by coordination based on problems. In the absence of a strong industrial sector (with the exception of Istanbul), housing production plays a major economic role. And it is the distribution of land, urban, and oil rents among the elite factions that determines the fate of these cities, between greatness and decline.
Dominique Lorrain is Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS, Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés (Latts), École des Ponts ParisTech. Contributors to this book: Pierre-Arnaud Barthel (AFD) • Jean-François Pérouse (University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès and IFEA/Istanbul) • Taoufik Souami (Paris School of Urban Planning) • Éric Verdeil (Sciences Po, CERI)