Politics, Markets, and Urban Worlds (PMMU)

Presenters: Pauline Gali, Emmanuelle Santoire and Félix Adisson

The PMMU research area explores the production, management and regulation of territorial systems through two key themes of the LATTS: the urban environment and infrastructure. It thus brings together research from several fields of study, such as Science and Technology Studies (STS), political ecology and urban political economy. It incorporates work on funding channels, resident and professional practices, the use of the law, as well as urban mobilisations and protests. In doing so, this research area examines urban transformations that stem not only from planned urban development and public policy strategies, but also from markets, urban practices, and even protest movements and the reappropriation of urban space.

The research brought together under the PMMU research theme addresses a variety of political and geographical contexts across urbanised regions in both the Global North and the Global South. It explores everything from growing global metropolises to urban regions in decline, as well as small and medium-sized towns. It addresses processes, subjects and issues ranging from the emergence of niche markets to that of transnational growth coalitions, from physical infrastructure firms to digital platforms, and from the pursuit of objectives such as territorial equity, environmental preservation or ecological transition to those of fiscal consolidation or home ownership. Within this diversity, the group’s work is united by an approach that views urban transformations as evolving, context-specific configurations of political-institutional and socio-technical arrangements, conventions, practices and career trajectories.

The research thus aims to explain the role of urban spaces in the accumulation and distribution of wealth, to shed light on the restructuring of public policy and its role in the provision of public goods and the regulation of their use, the adaptation of essential services (water, electricity supply, etc.) and the greening of urban production and management practices. It thus highlights the power relations at work in the production and reproduction of built urban environments, social inequalities and vulnerabilities, as well as territorial disparities.

Through its annual programme, the research group’s seminar provides an opportunity to present and discuss this work on a regular basis, as well as to invite researchers from outside the group to present the latest research developments in the relevant fields.