In the Costa Rican metropolitan area, these measures are implemented in particular in neighbourhoods affected by urban flooding – events that disrupt daily life in the city and are emblematic of so-called ‘urban’ risks. These risks are linked to morphological factors, as well as to settlement patterns, urban activities and services.

Adopting a systemic approach, the study examines the relationships forged between local government officials and local residents within these participatory committees. The thesis draws on a variety of empirical sources: a study of institutional archives, cartographic work, and interviews and participant observation in two neighbourhoods with different socio-economic profiles, Barrio Luján and La Carpio.

The thesis demonstrates that top-down mechanisms, ostensibly designed by bureaucrats to promote a ‘culture of risk’ amongst the population, are exploited by both residents and local officials to defend their respective projects and interests in the areas concerned. The systemic and comparative approach reveals that this instrumentalisation is neither unambiguous nor fixed: it evolves in step with the interactions between the two actors. Thus, by highlighting the contextual and dynamic nature of risk definition across neighbourhoods, the thesis draws attention to the unstable nature of the categories proposed by public risk management, which are reappropriated and subverted by the way in which residents make them their own. In both cases studied, local residents constantly highlight the limitations of public policy and its contradictions regarding its stated objective. From this perspective, the thesis highlights the contribution of residents’ conceptions of the territory and invites reflection on new pluralist frameworks for risk policies.

Composition of the jury

• Bruno Barroca, University Professor, Gustave Eiffel University, examiner
• Mathilde Gralepois, Senior Lecturer – HDR, University of Tours, co-director
• Jean-Pierre Lévy, Research Director, CNRS-Latts, PhD supervisor
• Patrice Melé, Professor, University of Tours, rapporteur
• Pascale Metzger, Senior Research Fellow – HDR, IRD, rapporteur
• Valérie November, Research Director, CNRS-Latts, examiner
• Julien Rebotier, Research Fellow, CNRS-LISST, examiner
• Helga-Jane Scarwell, University Professor, University of Lille, examiner

The article Sofia Guevara: On the fluid nature of the concept of risk in urban areas. Residents and administrators facing flooding in Barrio Luján and La Carpio (San José, Costa Rica) first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

This thesis examines the conditions under which the issue of energy vulnerabilities emerges on national and local public agendas, drawing on an approach from urban political ecology. The comparative study is conducted in two cities (Porto and Barcelona) where the issue is significant and addressed in different ways. Our analysis aims to examine the factors that combine to create situations of vulnerability and bring them to the fore as a public issue. It focuses on legislation, local innovations and media coverage of the issue. We contrast these forms of collective action with a study of the concrete conditions of energy vulnerability experienced by vulnerable households supported by social services and charitable organisations.

The main finding of the thesis is that situations of energy vulnerability are politicised, involving both new and traditional actors in energy governance and giving rise to two types of response. We also show how the activism of community groups is giving rise to a right to energy, which is not enshrined in national legislation and which, under pressure from new social movements, is becoming an imperative for local authorities. Finally, we demonstrate the roll-out of an intervention model for households aimed at reducing consumption to lower bills and limit the number of unpaid energy bills. This experimental and low-cost model is of interest to civil society organisations, local authorities and energy suppliers, even though for vulnerable households it represents a continuation of their efforts to reduce their energy bills.

Members of the jury

• Stefan Bouzarovski, Professor, University of Manchester (Rapporteur)
• Olivier Coutard, Research Director, CNRS (LATTS) (PhD supervisor)
• Sylvy Jaglin, University Professor, Université Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée (Chair of the jury)
• Hélène Reigner, University Professor, Aix-Marseille University (Rapporteur)
• Jonathan Rutherford, Research Fellow, École des Ponts ParisTech (co-supervisor of the thesis)
• David Saurí, University Professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona

The article Lise Desvallées: Framing, politicisation and the resolution of energy vulnerabilities: between the right to energy and the regulation of the practices of the poor in Porto and Barcelona first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

This model was used, drawing on data from the eight Housing Surveys (INSEE, ENL, 1978 to 2013), to analyse, using a retrospective, prospective and experimental approach, the evolution of the housing system over a longitudinal period of 35 years. Through simple empirical observation, the initial analysis identified the functioning of the current system (2013), structured into residential sectors that mirror the hierarchy of society as a whole. Simulations of the continuation of successive supply policies (between 1978 and 2013) showed that the real break in the system stems from the continuation of the planning logic of the 1977 reform (enacted in the context of the Trente Glorieuses) up to 2013. Far from completely abandoning housing subsidies, the reform established a subsidised home ownership scheme for the upper, middle and solvent working classes, to the detriment of vulnerable households, often young people.

The prospective analysis, meanwhile, simulated the extension of the 2013 system through to 2050. The results reveal its high level of instability. The collapse of the private rental market drives households into early home ownership, which leaves them vulnerable and excludes them from the system. Furthermore, it highlights significant pressures within the social housing sector. The ASHA model also offers the possibility of conducting experimental prospective simulations of alternative housing policies: large-scale construction of social housing and attempts to build housing with a view to improving the fluidity of the system (adaptation to residential dynamics). The results do not fundamentally alter the organisation of the system, which remains highly socially unequal. In this sense, they show that resolving poor housing conditions requires recognising that a supply-side policy alone cannot address residential vulnerability caused by the effects of increasing precariousness in society as a whole. In this context, an overhaul of the system will likely require a reform that incorporates the profound transformations of the current and future social context.

Composition of the jury

Rapporteurs:

• Marc Dumont, Professor at the University of Lille
• Yankel Fijalkow, Professor of Social Sciences at ENSAPVS

Examiners:

• Jean-Claude Driant, Professor Emeritus at the Paris School of Urban Planning
• Véronique Flambard, Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of Lille
• Arnaud Simon, Senior Lecturer at Paris-Dauphine University (PSL)

Guest:

• Manuel Domergue, Director of Research at the Abbé Pierre Foundation

The article Julien Salingue: A longitudinal analysis (1978–2013) of the French housing system: continuity and discontinuities first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Nevertheless, this issue has emerged in the public debate at a particular juncture – against the backdrop of the Grand Paris Express project – as if spurred on by a number of stakeholders whose strategies and ideals appear, at first glance, to converge, and is accompanied by a wave of construction work that is quite unprecedented in the stations of these networks.
Furthermore, the ‘everyday’ cannot be equated with the same images or values as the ‘suburbs’.

In this respect, this shift cannot be considered coincidental. Drawing on an analysis of the representations conveyed by various forms of narratives from stakeholders on the one hand, and an exploration of the stations and the projects concerning them in the Seine Aval region on the other, this thesis aims to reveal the ruptures that enable the emergence of ‘everyday’ stations as a new category within Greater Paris, the meanings that run through it, and the transformations it entails. Its ambition is thus to discuss more broadly the imaginary functions of categorisation in the construction of urban spaces.

In doing so, this study offers a fresh perspective on the contemporary history of urban planning in the Île-de-France region through the lens of ‘everyday life’, and from this angle reveals certain shifts in the relationship between transport and urban planning stakeholders and the ‘suburbs’ and their inhabitants, as well as in the professional divisions and power dynamics at play.

Members of the jury

• Xavier Desjardins, University Professor, Paris-Sorbonne University
• Jacques Peynot, Director of Stations for the Île-de-France region, SNCF (guest)
• Antoine Picon, Research Director, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Director)
• Paola Pucci, Professor, Politecnico di Milano (rapporteur)
• Olivier Ratouis, University Professor, University of Paris-Nanterre (rapporteur)
• Nathalie Roseau, Associate Professor, École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (co-supervisor)

The article Élise Avide: The Metropolitan Fabric of ‘Everyday’ Stations: Imaginaries and Symbolic Functions of a New Category in Greater Paris first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

The article Belghit Derouiche: Urban Development Strategies in Tunisia: Continuities and Breaks in Urban Planning Approaches. A comparative analysis of four strategies from before and after the ‘Tunisian Spring’. first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

To address these questions, this thesis first analyses the Fukushima disaster in three phases – before, during and after the event – and the management of this disaster at two levels – collective and individual. It also examines the socio-technical controversies surrounding the risk posed by low doses of radiation – a risk that extends over a wide area and a long period of time – thereby enabling us to grasp the complexity of this ‘post-accident’ situation in a nuclearised Japanese society.

Secondly, this thesis conducts a comparative study of the Minamata disaster, caused by mercury contamination dating back to the 1930s. By analysing these two case studies in their various dimensions – uncertainty, risk and the onset of the disaster – it highlights the process of reconstruction, or even rebirth, of a Japanese society repeatedly affected by techno-industrial disasters, a mirror image of the country’s development and modernisation.

Members of the jury

• Claudine Burton-Jeangros, Professor, University of Geneva (Rapporteur)
• Sophie Houdart, Research Director, CNRS LESC (Rapporteur)
• Paul Jobin, Associate Research Fellow, Academia Sinica (PhD supervisor)
• Valérie November, Research Director, CNRS (PhD supervisor)
• Philippe Pelletier, Professor, University of Lyon 2 (Examiner)
• Sandrine Revet, Research Director, CERI, Sciences Po (Examiner)
• Sezin Topçu, Research Fellow, CNRS CEMS-EHESS (Examiner)

The article Rina Kojima: Rebuilding in the aftermath of Fukushima: empowering and making people vulnerable through risk first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

To answer this question, this thesis analyses the processes inherent to low-carbon energy transitions
through socio-spatial and socio-material lenses, considering power relations and state structure. At the
intersection of urban planning and energy systems, DES proves practical to explore the nexus between
low-carbon governance, energy governance, and urban governance.

Theoretical frameworks employed in the analysis include :
1) recent contributions from (urban) transition studies and socio-technical systems;
2) a Lefebvrian conceptualisation of socio-space and social changes;
3) Jessop’s (1990, 2008) strategicrelational approach of state power.

An original inter-scale comparative research allows for examining the uneven construction of low-carbon energy policies in France and Alberta, and their relations with state structures, and existing urban and energy systems. Jessop et al.’s Territory-Place-Scale-Network (TPSN) framework is mobilised to overcome the issues of commensurability and spontaneous comparison.

This theoretical and methodological approaches provide a robust demonstration that the provincial scale in Canada, and the national scale in France, are the scales dominating the construction of low-carbon energy transitions and urban governance. Despite similar state powers, French and Albertan governments
developed different state policies on low-carbon transition, highlighting selectivity in the exercise of state
capacities.

They differently engaged and enabled local urban governments and developed different state
interventions on DES. In France, state-sponsored DES activated new channels of growth compatible with
existing dominant socio-materialities; in Alberta, state-funded DES experiments failed to activate new
channels of growth compatible with dominant socio-materialities. This thesis posits that selective
construction of low-carbon policies depends on the material interests of dominant energy and state actors.

In other words, the state does not seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by all means. Rather, it seeks
to reproduce dominant socio-material status quo, adapting low-carbon policies to existing socio-material
configuration. Ultimately, this thesis validates how the concepts of state structure and the TPSN framework can enrich the theorisation of space and power relations for (urban) transition studies.

Members of the Examination Committee

• Julia Affolderbach, Senior Lecturer, University of Hull, United Kingdom, Examiner
• Sophie Van Neste, Professor, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), Montreal, Canada, Examiner
• Olivier Coutard, CNRS Research Director, LATTS, Université Paris-Est, Co-supervisor
• Noel Keough, Professor, University of Calgary, examiner
• Byron Miller, Professor, University of Calgary, Canada, co-supervisor
• Jonathan Rutherford, Research Fellow (ENPC), LATTS, Université Paris-Est, examiner.

The article Aïda Nciri : The divergent diffusion of district energy systems in France and Alberta: state politics and the socio-material and socio-spatial construction of low-carbon transitions first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.