Mariana Reis Santos – A Region in Motion: Imaginaries of Planning, Justice, and Mobility Experiences in Greater Paris since the 1960s

This thesis examines the intertwining of transport infrastructure, spatial planning, and urban imaginaries in the production of metropolitan space, focusing on the case of Greater Paris. It argues that infrastructure is not only a technical artifact, but also a political and discursive instrument through which power, territory, and modernity are negotiated. The imaginaries of planning are understood here as collective visions and symbolic orders endowed with spatial force: they define boundaries, legitimize actions, and influence notions of justice and sustainability. Using discourse analysis, archival research, and field observation, this study traces how Greater Paris planning regimes have mobilized notions of density, compactness, and mobility to promote socio-spatial cohesion. From postwar new towns to the Grand Paris Express (GPE), these strategies have reinterpreted metropolitan integration through the transit-oriented development (TOD) model, while reproducing the persistent hierarchies between Paris and its suburbs. An in-depth case study in Bobigny shows how infrastructure interventions—metro extension, tram reactivation, new transport hubs—materialize these imaginaries while generating territorial tensions and forms of unequal development. A comparative reflection on the metropolitan region of Rome places these dynamics in a European context, highlighting the decisive role of institutional and political frameworks. Thus, justice and sustainability appear as contingent processes, resulting from historically situated struggles around territory and mobility. By highlighting the constitutive role of urban imaginaries in spatial practice, it repositions planning as a field of interpretation—a critical space that reveals both the aspirations and contradictions of contemporary metropolitan futures.