Elsa Vivant

Bio

Elsa Vivant is an urban planner and sociologist. She teaches at the Paris School of Urban Planning and on courses within the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Gustave Eiffel University.

Her early research focused on the relationship between the worlds of art and urban planning as a lens through which to re-examine questions regarding the ways in which cities are produced. She has developed a critical analysis of the role of culture in urban dynamics and the reconfiguration of metropolitan areas. In her doctoral thesis, defended at the Institut Français d’Urbanisme in 2006, she highlighted how alternative cultural venues have been gradually integrated into the dominant logics of urban development. During her postdoctoral research at the London School of Economics, she studied the impact of philanthropy on the evolution of the cultural landscape, through various museum projects. Her work on the ways in which cultural projects are instrumentalised in urban planning has shown how urban planning internalises the artistic critique of which it is the subject.

She is also interested in the evolution of professional practices within the field of urban planning. An initial research project focused on the working conditions of young self-employed graduates, as part of a fellowship as an associate researcher at the Centre d’Etudes de l’Emploi. The study of collaborations between artists and urban planners inspired a shift in her research practices, incorporating research-creation approaches and participating in artistic projects related to her research themes as part of a residency at the Ateliers Médicis as an artist-researcher. All of these reflections form the basis of her thesis for the qualification to supervise research, entitled ‘Urbanism and Creation’, which she defended in July 2019.

Following an initial collaboration with mental health care institutions, she embarked on a new research project during a stay at Harvard University, focusing on responses to the opioid crisis in the United States, in particular the ways in which conflicts over the use of public space are managed, changes in policing practices towards drug users, and the controversies surrounding the creation of safer consumption rooms. In 2023, she was awarded a residency at Villa Albertine to continue this research and prepare her first documentary film, Recovery Island

Her latest book, L’impasse. Scènes de l’urbanisme ordinaire, was published in 2021 by Editions Créaphis.
Presentation of the book on the publisher’s website.
Presentation of the writing approach: Attention: projet! Understanding the professions of urban planning through documentary fiction.