Year of enrollment
: 2018

Doctoral school
: OMI- Organizations, Markets, Institutions

Composition of the jury
Sophie BRETESCHE, Professor of Sociology, HDR, Institut Mines Telecom Atlantique
Martine D’AMOURS, Professor Emeritus, HDR, Laval University, Quebec
Jean-Michel DENIS
, University Professor, Director of ISST (Director)
Yannick FONDEUR, Researcher, LISE-CNAM
Cécile GUILLAUME, Sociologist, Senior Lecturer, HDR, University of Surrey, Great Britain (co-director)
Pascal UGHETTO
, Professor of Sociology, HDR, UGE, LATTS Researcher
Nadège VEZINAT, Professor of Sociology, HDR, University of Paris 8, CRESPPA Researcher (UMR 7217)

The article Elodie Céline Gibault: Freelancers on assignment in banks: Work experiences and career paths of experts first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Surveillance cameras have been part of our urban and even rural landscapes for several years now. However, these devices have not solved all the problems that led to their deployment in many public spaces. One of the solutions proposed to address this shortcoming of video surveillance is to add automatic detection software to the existing system. These additional components come in various forms: people counting, vehicle type detection, illegal dumping detection, abnormal situation analysis, facial recognition, etc. The first uses of these new forms of video surveillance took place in France, although they are not as widespread as in other countries.

This thesis seeks to provide initial reflections on these new surveillance tools and the context surrounding them by addressing three main aspects. The first of these aspects concerns the scientific developments that contribute to the construction of these new surveillance solutions. The second aspect focuses on the public debate surrounding automated video surveillance and the particular form that this debate takes. The third and final aspect examines the uses, most of which are experimental, that are taking place in France, as well as the objectives and conditions of these uses.

For the first aspect, this work aims to show the particular importance of infrastructure in the success of these artificial intelligence tools. Whether at the development or usage stage, artificial intelligence relies heavily on all the tools and materials mobilized in its operation. Data, networks, and sensors are all filters through which the software's work passes and which impose technical limitations. For the second aspect, the research explored the question of the presentation of these technical solutions, their promotion or criticism, as a problem, in public debates or in economic spaces. It appears that despite widespread criticism in society, economic arguments dominate in official reports. For the third aspect, while there is no consensus on the subject of automated surveillance, the thesis analyzes all the strategies and resources mobilized to build a market for automated video surveillance despite this.

Thesis defense on Thursday, March 28, 2024

Year of enrollment

: 2018

Doctoral School

: Organizations, Markets, Institutions – OMI

Composition of the jury

:
Gilles JEANNOT

, ENPC, Thesis Director
Anne-Cécile DOUILLET, University of Lille, Rapporteur
Sylvain PARASIE, Sciences-Po Paris, Rapporteur
Valérie NOVEMBER

, CNRS, Examiner
Clément MABI, UTC, Examiner

The article Victor Maghin: The blind spots of the smart camera. Scientific filters, confined debate, and a discreet market first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

: Elsa Vivant

This thesis in urban planning investigates a public policy instrument that encourages the sale of public and semi-public land as an extension of negotiated urban planning approaches: calls for innovative urban projects (APUI). These consultations have been the subject of much debate in academic and professional urban planning circles, with some seeing them as a privatization of development and others as a breath of fresh air in professional practices.

This thesis highlights how, for their initiators, APUIs operate as instruments of remote governance despite a transfer of project management to real estate operators, with "innovation" helping to enlist urban professionals. They constitute an appropriate response to the contingencies of their initiators: the evolution of local government legitimization strategies, the reduction of local authorities' financial leeway, and the development of project-based approaches in contexts of fragmented governance. These consultations constitute an attempt to modernize urban public action—and, correlatively, public administrations. They temporarily reorient the logic of action of several professional worlds whose areas of activity interact with each other.

To analyze the work in progress, our analytical framework draws on different currents of sociological research: justification, translation, public action, management tools, and activity. Based on ethnographic research, we highlight the challenges resulting from the industrialization of the "project mode" and "innovation" on the activities of elected officials, local public officials, and project management assistants from the launch of consultations to the finalization of winning real estate projects: eventization and enlistment, coordination issues, juridification, and then managerialization of the public-private relationship. We highlight the essential role of artifacts in framing the activities of stakeholders. In doing so, we examine the recomposition of the tools, know-how, and methods of operational urban planning in public initiatives.

These challenges provide us with broader insight into the evolution of the values promoted by urban development professionals. We highlight an increase in media and networking activity and a proliferation of intermediaries. These shifts call into question the meaning, resources, and place given to expertise in the management of the relationship between public and private actors in urban development.

Keywords

: CIFRE; Ethnography; Project management assistance; Greater Paris; Reinventing Paris; Call for projects; Call for innovative urban projects; Innovation; Land transfer; Public-private partnership; Negotiated urban planning; Urban planner.

Thesis defense on Friday, October 6, 2023

Year of thesis registration

: 2018

Doctoral school

: VTT – City, Transportation, and Territories

Composition of the jury

Véronique Biau – State Architect-Urban Planner HDR, ENSA Paris-La Villette – LAVUE (rapporteur)
Alain Faure – Director of Research, CNRS – PACTE (rapporteur)
Corinne Delmas

– Professor, Gustave Eiffel University – LATTS
Laurent Devisme – Professor, ENSA Nantes – LAAU
Silvère Tribout – Senior Lecturer, Rennes 2 University – ESO
Guillaume Tiffon – Professor, University of Evry Paris-Saclay – Pierre Naville Center
Emilie Bajolet – Deputy Director of Consulting and Programming, AREP (guest member)
Elsa Vivant

– Professor, Gustave Eiffel University – LATTS (thesis supervisor)

The article Yoann Pérès: Reinventing Them: Negotiated Urban Planning Put to the Test of Project-Based Industrialization A Situated Analysis of Professional Practices in Urban Development first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

: Jean-Pierre Levy

This thesis is based on the observation that poor housing conditions have persisted over the last 30 years. By adopting an economic approach based on supply, public policy has been unable to respond to successive "crises." An interdisciplinary review shows that few studies address the issue of housing in terms of the joint dynamics of households (residential mobility) and housing (construction-destruction-renovation). Drawing on the concept of filtering processes and the vacancy chains method, our thesis proposes to overcome this obstacle by creating new concepts (social position, function, and demographic profile) that enable a comprehensive and dynamic analysis of the housing system. To this end, we have developed the Housing Systems Analysis (ASHA) model, which simulates the impact of variations in housing supply on the entire system based on household mobility (turnover rates) between housing types (vacancy chains).

This model was used to analyze data from eight Housing Surveys (INSEE, ENL, 1978 to 2013) to analyze, in a retrospective, prospective, and experimental approach, the evolution of the housing system over a 35-year longitudinal period. Through simple empirical observation, the initial analysis identified the functioning of the current system (2013), which is structured into residential sectors that reproduce 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 was due to the continuation of the programming logic of the 1977 reform (promulgated in the context of the Trente Glorieuses) until 2013. Far from completely abandoning housing assistance, the reform established a system of subsidized home ownership for the upper, middle, and working classes with sufficient means, to the detriment of low-income households, which are often young.

The prospective analysis simulated the extension of the 2013 system until 2050. The results show its high instability. The collapse of the private rental stock is leading households into early home ownership, which weakens them and excludes them from the system. On the other hand, it reveals strong tensions in the social sector. The ASHA model also offers the possibility of carrying out experimental prospective simulations of alternative housing policies: massive construction of social housing and attempts to build housing with a view to making the system more fluid (adaptation to residential logic). The results do not fundamentally change the organization of the system, which remains highly unequal in social terms. In this sense, they show that solving the problem of poor housing requires recognizing that supply-side policies alone cannot address residential vulnerability caused by the effects of the overall precariousness of society. In this context, an overhaul of the system will probably require a reform that integrates the profound transformations of the current and future social context.

Defense on Friday, January 12, 2024

Keywords

: Residential mobility, Modeling, Housing/Settlement, System
Year of enrollment

: 2014
Doctoral school

: VTT- City, Transportation, and Territories

Composition of the jury

:

Rapporteurs:
Marc Dumont, University 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)

Thesis supervisor: Jean-Pierre Lévy, Director of Research at the CNRS

Guest: Manuel Domergue, Director of Studies at the Abbé Pierre Foundation

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

: Sylvy Jaglin and Armelle Choplin, at the Techniques, Territories, and Societies Laboratory and the "City, Transportation, and Territories" doctoral school at Paris-Est Sup.

Year of thesis registration
: 2016
Doctoral school
: City, Transport, and Territories (VTT)

The article Mélanie Rateau: Electrical configurations, inequalities of access, and urban practices in Ibadan (Nigeria) and Cotonou (Benin) first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

: Taoufik Souami

Faced with negative feedback during the implementation of sustainable urban projects, urban planners are increasingly incorporating energy system operational concerns into their designs. The aim of this research is to examine the effects of this integration of operational issues on the urban design process. Based on a case study, we show that the integration of operational concerns leads to changes in technical choices, energy objectives, and the social organization of design. We are witnessing a bifurcation of technical choices, following double-loop learning by stakeholders, where objectives must be reviewed during the design process in order to move forward. Indeed, thinking in terms of operation leads to different design choices that prioritize quality of use and services provided.

In terms of design organization, the integration of operational concerns does not

call into question the hierarchical and linear organization of stakeholders' activities. However, it facilitates the emergence of new stakeholders such as energy and multi-service system operators. More broadly, research shows that feedback from more than 15 years of experience in the operation of sustainable neighborhoods contributes to an interprofessional learning process, the results of which produce new technical references or projects and contribute to the renewal of professional cultures. In this way, the design activity is transformed. The analysis emphasizes the importance of technical objects in consolidating the learning of stakeholders, objects around which lessons and feedback crystallize.

Defense on Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Year of enrollment

: 2018

Doctoral school

: VTT – City, Transportation, and Territories
Doctoral thesis in urban planning and development

Composition of the jury

Véronique Biau, Chief Architect-Urban Planner of the State, École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette (Rapporteur)
Gilles Debizet, Senior Lecturer, University of Grenoble-Alpes (Rapporteur)
Joëlle Forest, Senior Lecturer, National Institute of Applied Sciences of Lyon (Examiner)
Caroline Gallez, Director of Research, Gustave Eiffel University (Examiner)
Laurent Michelin, Director of Innovation, Bouygues Immobilier (Guest member)
Taoufik Souami, Professor, University of Paris-Est (Thesis supervisor)

The article Meriam Bechir: From design to operation? Integrating energy system operational concerns into urban project design first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

: Valérie November

Thesis summary

: This thesis examines the conditions for the emergence of seismic risk in Istanbul—before the seismic disaster occurs—by studying the structures between geographical scales and the potential dialogues between actors and entities involved in this emergence. Particularly after the August 1999 earthquake in the Marmara region, the prospect of a potential major earthquake (olası depremi) in Istanbul has brought together the actors involved in the city's development to address the issue. The research is based on a qualitative survey to closely monitor the operators (scientists, engineers, public institutions involved in planning and disaster management, construction and real estate companies, associations) who, in the sense of the sociology of science and technology, are "interested" in seismic risk. The increasing complexity of the concept of "fabric" makes it possible to reconceptualize the modes of interaction between risks and urban spaces in a joint manner, based on two areas of analysis. The first strand explores the performative aspect of seismic risk in order to understand how this risk structures the organization of urban planning in Istanbul. In a context of economic and political instability, fragile buildings are a factor in seismic risk and bring together actors in the construction sector, while fragmenting the professional world of urban planning in return. The second strand examines, at the neighborhood level, the local assemblages at work in the fabrication of urban space, as material and social products of stabilized or unstable negotiations between urban planning actors and residents and their spokespersons (neighborhood mayors, associations, solidarity groups, or disaster education centers). The latter highlight alternatives for managing risks based on new knowledge. On the other hand, their reinstitutionalization at higher levels calls into question the standardization of local practices. The thesis highlights the complex relationships between risks that a priori belong to different categories. It emphasizes the idea that, as seismic risk is translated, seismic hazard is diluted in broader assemblages of actors, entities, and correlated risks. Through the prism of sociotechnical systems, the thesis sheds light on the delicate coexistence of these risks in the same place, if not their intertwining or even friction.

Keywords

: urban fabric, seismic risk, intermingling, sociotechnical systems, Istanbul

Thesis defense on Friday, September 8, 2023

Year of enrollment

: 2018

Doctoral school

: VTT – City, Transportation, and Territories

Composition of the jury

Laurent Devisme, Professor at ENSA Nantes (Rapporteur

)
Valérie November, Director of Research, CNRS (Thesis Director

)
Jean-François Pérouse, Senior Lecturer, University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès (Examiner

)
Sezin Topçu, Research Fellow, CNRS CEMS-EHESS (Examiner

)
Elsa Vivant, Professor, Gustave Eiffel University (Examiner

)
Albena Yaneva, Professor, University of Manchester (Rapporteur

)

The article Youenn Gourain: The fault line and the city. A journey through a joint venture between risk and urban development in Istanbul. first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

: Sylvy Jaglin

The 1990s and 2000s were marked, in many sub-Saharan African countries, by the adoption of neoliberal policies reputed to be conducive to development goals (MDGs). Senegal and Tanzania are no exception. In the electricity sector, low electrification rates on the one hand and the inability of public operators to rapidly expand the conventional network on the other led their governments to undertake institutional reforms characterized by the liberalization of the sector and the creation of agencies dedicated to rural electrification. Initially the prerogative of large national or international operators, rural electrification is now open to smaller private operators. Coupled with a reduction in administrative constraints and new sources of financing, liberalization is benefiting decentralized solutions (mini-grids and solar kits in particular).

The result in both countries is a diversification of electricity supply modes based on multiple devices, actors, resources, and modes of governance, which coexist locally and are analyzed in the research as co-production arrangements. Through a multi-scale comparative study conducted in Senegal and Tanzania in areas of diffuse urbanization, the thesis proposes a conceptual framework and methodology for rethinking the nature and conditions of the provision of an essential service based on the heterogeneous arrangements observed. It thus draws on the notion of local supply configurations to take an open-minded approach to all the electrification solutions available, understand their interdependencies, and examine the conditions for possible regulation of the various modes of electricity supply at this scale.

By combining a situated sociotechnical approach to electricity access supply configurations with a socioeconomic approach to local electricity markets, the thesis proposes a conceptualization of the emerging geographies of electricity supply in territories marked by rapid and diffuse urbanization. On the one hand, it demonstrates that neoliberal electrification policies have led to a diversification of electricity supply, better adapted to the plurality of demand, an average increase in coverage and access rates in these areas, and at least a partial improvement in the quality of services provided as a result of market competition. On the other hand, it highlights the limitations of these policies and their market-based logic, which have led to an increase in socio-spatial inequalities at all levels and the exclusion of the poorest from any form of access to electricity. The analysis of these pitfalls highlights the need for regulatory mechanisms, the premises of which, still fragile and disparate, are examined in the thesis. Questioning who gets what service and where, it finally outlines avenues for reflection on what the transition to a future essential (public) electricity service might look like in these changing urban environments.

Defense on Friday, January 14, 2022

Keywords: Local supply configurations; electrical hybridizations; inequalities of access; co-production; service regulation; Senegal; Tanzania

Year of thesis registration

: 2017

Doctoral school

: VTT – City, Transport and Territories

Composition of the jury

Ms. Sylvy JAGLIN, Gustave Eiffel University, Thesis Director
Ms. Pascale TROMPETTE, Grenoble Alpes University, Rapporteur
Ms. Luisa MORETTO, Free University of Brussels, Rapporteur
Mr. Eric VERDEIL, Sciences Po Paris, Examiner
Mr. Philippe LAVIGNE DELVILLE, IRD, Examiner
Mr. Bruno VALFREY, Hydroconseil, Guest

The article Emmanuelle Guillou: On the grid – Off the grid: emerging electrical configurations in areas of scattered urbanization (Senegal and Tanzania) first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

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)

Link to her thesis

The article Cassandre Rey-Thibault: first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

: Jean-Pierre Lévy

This thesis aims to examine the reasons for differences in usage within public recreational spaces, highlighting the tension between project design and management methods and the way children appropriate these spaces. The central hypothesis of this research is that this discrepancy is part of a process of standardization of the uses of public spaces, in which the recreational city is merely a new framework for design, management, and usage practices. The results of this research emphasize that, far from being anarchic, children's practices in public spaces are organized in a dialectical relationship with the norms in force. The discrepancy in uses, perceived as transgressive by designers and managers, is in fact an appropriation and redeployment of the norm. The principles of standardization of play areas, under the guise of ensuring everyone's safety, amount to an over-infantilization of children. The logic behind repositioning play in public spaces is therefore more about updating mechanisms of social control than about caring for children.

Thesis defense on Monday, December 10, 2018

Thesis keywords:

deviation, norms, children, uses, public space, play, danger

Thesis in spatial planning, urban planning

Year of enrollment

: 2012

Composition of the jury

Philippe Bonnin, Emeritus CNRS Research Director, AUS – LAVUE – Examiner
Catherine Deschamps, Assistant Professor, HDR, EVCAU, ENSAPVS – Examiner
Yankel Fijalkow, Professor, CRH – LAVUE, ENSAPVS – Rapporteur
Maryonnve Prévot, Senior Lecturer, HDR, TVES – University of Paris Lille 1 – Rapporteur
Jean-Pierre Lévy, CNRS Research Director, LATTS – Thesis Director
Alain Costes, Architect-Urban Planner, Atelier 15, CIFRE Thesis Tutor

The article Fanny Delaunay: The socio-spatial forms of the norm. The case of the use of public recreational spaces for children. first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Report for a public works group, Prevention Department, March 2019.

The research aimed to understand the mechanisms by which corporate occupational health and safety policies produce their effects in terms of accident rates and economic performance, but also encounter limitations that may, to date, remain relatively enigmatic to stakeholders. It was carried out by a multidisciplinary team (economics, ergonomics, management, and sociology) and combined a qualitative approach with quantitative analyses. The group's prevention policy has developed a number of tools that reflect its desire to organize safety: informing and raising awareness of risks, listing them in order to better avoid them, and combating risk-taking. This includes a database of near misses and various awareness-raising and incentive schemes. A network of quality, prevention, and environment (QPE) professionals is an integral part of this policy. The group's prevention policy explicitly relies on the conviction of managers at all levels, considering that without a deep-seated belief in the importance of prevention on the part of managers, a group policy would lack real leverage.

The research revealed several findings and results. As much as it is influenced by individuals, and in particular by the ability of agency managers to take ownership of this policy and demonstrate their commitment to it, the effective deployment of tools is also influenced by economic reasoning. Even with highly committed management, economic considerations can take precedence: this can be seen in the case of an emergency on a construction site or in order to obtain a contract, knowing that the client is not sensitive to prevention. In this company, as in others in the sector, the indicators and management control of the agencies and the group effectively place prevention in juxtaposition with economic considerations. Although they are informed and aware of the tools available for prevention, workers are keen to report situations where this policy seems to give way to more pressing imperatives, such as the speed of completion of a project, catching up on accumulated delays, etc. The decisive factor is that project planning integrates prevention primarily in administrative terms. The schedule, initially based on the study and invoiced costs, focuses on ensuring that the project is completed within the budget. It leaves it largely up to the construction site and its management to adjust to the actual conditions. However, the realities of construction sites are marked by the normal nature of uncertainty, recurring downtime, and emergencies. For the construction site hierarchy, which is directly involved in concrete situations where the tension between economics and prevention must be resolved, there is nothing simple about embodying and implementing prevention measures in a credible manner. QPEs also have a complicated path to find their position in the articulation between a policy whose rules are formulated in the abstract and concrete situations that challenge the compatibility between economics and prevention.

Keywords
: Occupational health and safety. Risk and accident prevention. Public works. Occupational risk management tools.

The article Safety on construction sites: preventive measures and their implementation in a public works company first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Final assessment of EUREQUA

The article Multidisciplinary evaluation and environmental requalification of neighborhoods (EUREQUA). first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.