Since the 1990s, transnational financial investors have been investing in Mexico City’s commercial property markets, as they have in those of most major cities in ‘emerging’ countries. These new players are helping to drive the city’s spatial expansion and its development on a regional scale.

This specific contribution to Mexico City’s urban development can be explained in two ways: on the one hand, the distinctive features of transnational financial investment are explained by the restrictive internal workings of the transnational financial network, which is organised around concepts and tools defined outside Mexico; on the other hand, their concentration on the outskirts of the central state of the Mexico City metropolitan area – the Distrito Federal (DF) – can be understood through an analysis of the historical development of the various territories that make up the metropolitan area.

Within the DF, the entry of transnational financial investors into property markets is hindered by rival developers and investors who are part of closed social networks, characterised by a community-based approach and a long-standing system of favours. In the periphery, by contrast, transnational financial investors find it easier to enter property markets, which are embedded in more recently urbanised areas where political and economic resources are more dispersed.

This thesis thus seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which the financialisation of property markets and urban development takes place in a Latin American metropolis such as Mexico City. It demonstrates that the spread of practices, concepts and a new division of labour, promoted by the transnational financial network, is the subject of a power struggle with other, pre-existing and competing ways of developing and investing in property.

Members of the jury

• Olivier CREVOISIER, Professor, University of Neuchâtel, rapporteur.
• Patrick LE GALÈS, Director of Research, Sciences Po Paris, rapporteur.
• Ludovic HALBERT, Research Fellow, Université Paris-Est, Latts, co-supervisor of a PhD thesis.
• Catherine PAQUETTE, Research Fellow, French National Research Institute for Development.
• Vincent RENARD, Research Director, IDDRI – Sciences Po, PhD supervisor.
• Vicente UGALDE, Research Fellow, El Colegio de México.

Sustainable development is becoming a tool for urban planning, leading in particular to the establishment of ‘eco-neighbourhoods’ in many European cities. The aim of our thesis is to analyse the development of eco-neighbourhoods in the Paris region based on two case studies (the Clichy Batignolles ZAC and the Place de Rungis ZAC). The aim is, on the one hand, to show how the concept of the sustainable city is emerging and, on the other hand, how this concept gives rise to architectural standards.

We hypothesise that eco-neighbourhoods form part of a broader concept of the sustainable city, depending on how they are developed, and that the construction of such developments serves to legitimise urban policies rather than to bring about an ecological transition in city management.

To understand the process of developing eco-neighbourhoods, how residents engage with them and how they are integrated into the city, our research draws on theoretical analyses aimed at deconstructing the core concepts of the ‘sustainable city’ and identifying the network of stakeholders involved in the development of eco-neighbourhoods. We also carry out observations and semi-structured interviews with planners, architects and residents of the two study sites.

Drawing on our two case studies, we will explain how, as a result of prescriptive local policies, eco-neighbourhoods contribute to the creation of a homogenised city. This homogenisation is driven by the architectural and urban form of these neighbourhoods.

50 million Europeans face financial difficulties in heating, cooking or lighting their homes. Households that go without these services due to insufficient income, and which spend a significant proportion of their budget on these expenses, are in a situation of energy poverty. European legislation requires Member States to establish policies to measure and tackle the problem. This is a complex objective because energy poverty lies at the intersection of a range of factors addressed by separate sectoral policies: energy prices, the energy efficiency of housing, and social support.

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

This dissertation explores the relationship between drug policy and urban planning, bringing together key questions in political science and urban studies around territoriality, governance, and the management of the contemporary city. Using Paris as a case study, it examines how public space is planned, managed, and maintained in the context of open-air substance use, focusing in particular on how City services (sanitation, green spaces, parks and gardens) navigate streets and squares that are simultaneously sites of everyday urban life and places where people use substances. The dissertation establishes a direct link between drug policy and urban planning through the figure of municipal workers responsible for maintenance, sanitation, and landscaping, who are routinely confronted with substance use in public space. Since the early 2000s, people who use substances have been concentrated in the northeast of Paris, yet regularly displaced through evictions and police interventions. Within a French legal framework that prohibits both the sale and consumption of illicit drugs, substance use remains highly stigmatised and politically charged. When municipal agents encounter substance use in the course of their work, they are drawn into a complex and fragmented governance network. New protocols emerge, and maintenance services are brought into contact with actors outside their traditional field (private companies, police, health professionals, harm reduction workers, researchers…). Drug policy thus becomes an unexpected terrain for public space workers, reshaping day-to-day urban management and entangling street-level maintenance in broader political conflicts over how drugs and public space are governed.

The expansion of electricity, water and sanitation networks in developing cities is, in principle, complicated by the absence or shortcomings of urban planning. The methods used to provide utilities to informal settlements in Delhi and Lima are analysed here as socio-technical mechanisms that reveal the dynamics of urban development. In fact, on a day-to-day basis, companies install poles and pipes in unplanned neighbourhoods. Technical, social and institutional innovations make it possible to extend networks there; the lack of planning is therefore not an obstacle to infrastructure provision.

However, this process is suboptimal: the execution of works is disorganised, unpredictability hinders the development of strategies, and political directives can be contradictory. Such coordination shortcomings create uncertainties that are difficult for service providers to overcome. There are, nevertheless, promising avenues for intervention in unplanned neighbourhoods: alternative transport schemes exist that can be promoted; informal data and plans meet the need for knowledge about the city and would benefit from being utilised; and the design and preservation of the road network prove crucial to enabling coherent, gradual and sustainable urban consolidation.

An analysis of network expansion helps to identify key tools for public policy in developing cities, thereby offering new perspectives for urban planning to redevelop existing urban areas and strategically prepare for future urbanisation.

Against the backdrop of a recent surge of interest in the concept of transitional urbanism, this thesis examines how urban planning and property professionals are adopting approaches to the temporary occupation of space. Stemming from long-standing practices, temporary occupation projects are proliferating across the Greater Paris area within vacant sites and buildings earmarked for future urban development. A ‘hot’ and evolving topic, transitional urbanism is imbued with a variety of values and challenges by the stakeholders involved in these initiatives: property owners, local authorities, planners, developers and new professionals in the field of temporary occupation.

The main focus of this thesis is the transitional urban planning approach developed since its inception in 2015 by SNCF Immobilier, the organisation responsible for managing and developing the SNCF’s extensive land and property portfolio. Originally an experimental approach, transitional urban planning has become a new corporate activity, raising strategic and operational issues in the early stages of urban projects. Through ethnographic immersion within SNCF Immobilier and an empirical study of the implementation of these temporary projects, this thesis aims to investigate the company’s use of these approaches, the new difficulties they raise, and the values and challenges that employees associate with these projects. As a source of change within SNCF Immobilier, the development of transitional urbanism serves to illustrate, more broadly, the ongoing transformation of professional practices, modes of action and representations within the organisation. The operator’s thinking is influenced by its gradual integration into a new community of practice promoting transitional urbanism, which goes hand in hand with a renewal of its methods and its thinking regarding the long-term development of the city.

This research employs transitional urbanism as an analytical tool to contextualise the evolution of urban development practices, the transformation of urban spaces, and the changing roles of stakeholders in urban planning and the property sector.

Members of the jury

• Lauren Andres – Associate Professor, The Bartlett School of Planning, UCL (Rapporteur)
• Olivier Coutard – Research Director, CNRS (PhD supervisor)
• Laurent Devisme – Lecturer, ENSA Nantes (Rapporteur)
• Maria Gravari-Barbas – Professor, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Benoît Quignon – Director-General of Services for the City of Marseille (Guest member)
• Elsa Vivant – Senior Lecturer, Gustave Eiffel University (PhD supervisor)

With increasing urbanisation and a sharp rise in soil sealing, flooding has become more frequent in recent years, causing significant material damage and, in some cases, loss of life. In light of this, in the late 1980s, an environmentalist approach, according to the Technical Service for Urban Planning (STU, Reconciling Water and the City through Stormwater Management), involved ‘the search for systems to manage and control the water cycle in urban environments, and for appropriate urban forms’. This concept no longer presents stormwater management techniques as technical sanitation tools, but as fully-fledged, multifunctional urban infrastructure integrated into the city.
In this context, the implementation of these alternative stormwater management techniques no longer concerns solely network operators and the sanitation department, but also the departments responsible for green spaces, roads, sports facilities, and so on. However, whilst these departments incorporate stormwater retention, storage and infiltration structures into their infrastructure, they do not necessarily possess the expertise required for the upkeep and maintenance of such structures.
The aim of this thesis is therefore to understand the organisational challenges involved in the implementation of alternative stormwater management techniques within urban development projects.

This thesis begins with the observation that poor housing conditions have persisted over the last 30 years. By adopting a supply-side economic approach, public policy has proved incapable of responding to successive ‘crises’. An interdisciplinary review shows that few studies address the issue of housing within the joint dynamics of households (residential mobility) and housing stock (construction, demolition and renovation). Drawing on the concept of the filtering process and the vacancy chains method, our thesis proposes to overcome this limitation 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, 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

At the end of apartheid in 1994, hopes for political, economic and social renewal began to emerge in South Africa. Among the new ANC government’s priorities were reducing inequalities and ensuring universal access to basic services. Realising the right to water, as enshrined in the new Constitution, thus became one of its key priorities. The City of Johannesburg, which had been engaged since the late 1990s in a process of reforming its water policy, launched the Gcin’amanzi (OGA) project in 2003 in its largest township: Soweto. From the outset, it was the subject of much controversy and led, in 2006, to a court case:

‘the Mazibuko case’. Spurred on by activist groups and with the support of a human rights organisation and a renowned constitutional lawyer, five residents of Soweto are challenging two aspects of the OGA project: the installation of prepayment meters, and the free water policy, the volume of which is deemed insufficient.

This thesis aims to trace the history of this ‘case’ and to examine the impact of the militant use of the law by a group of disadvantaged city dwellers on municipal water policy. Furthermore, this work examines the potential effects of the right to water and helps to understand the effectiveness of the justiciability of the right to water and, more generally, of social rights.

Drawing on empirical research conducted in two ordinary cities in emerging economies – Vitória in Brazil and Coimbatore in India – we explain why municipal waste management in the Global South cannot exclude so-called ‘informal’ actors, lest it end in failure. This observation is now widely accepted, though the reasons behind it have not yet been fully explained.

We begin with an empirical observation of conflicts over ownership that arise when municipal schemes for separate waste collection are introduced, and which transcend the dichotomy between large private operators and small-scale waste pickers. These clashes lead us to pose the following central question: to whom does waste belong—res derelictae, objects defined precisely by their abandonment?

This is where our research makes its contribution: by combining economic theory with an urban planning approach, we demonstrate that the urban waste stream constitutes an impure public good (or ‘public bad’): a rival good, but one that cannot be excluded. This characteristic stems as much from disruptions in the waste collection service as from the market value of a growing number of materials – provided they are captured at source.

Finally, looking at the issue from a broader perspective, we argue that the local trade in dry waste is directly influenced by the prices of virgin or secondary raw materials (where such markets exist). This dominance of the global economy over a local urban service allows us to identify emerging strategies of urban mining, which raise the question of the legitimacy of appropriation with renewed urgency.

The aim of this research is to study and understand a period in the history of architecture and technology that shaped the transformation of the French engineering landscape at the turn of the 21st century. The years 1970–2000 were marked by upheavals and reforms that have left a lasting impact on today’s construction industry.
On an international scale, the Meadows Report (1972) and the quest for material efficiency through the development of lightweight structures marked the beginning of a complex debate concerning lifestyles and production methods. In France, the early 1970s coincided with the end of the Trente Glorieuses (1946–1975) and the post-1968 era.

Before the end of the Trente Glorieuses, architectural construction in France was still heavily influenced by the post-war reconstruction period. It was characterised by post-war needs, during which industrialisation had had a profound impact on the art of building, as well as by the tradition of reinforced concrete in French construction. The post-1968 era marked a turning point in French society, prompting reflection on new needs and new construction policies. Georges Pompidou’s term in office (1969–1974) gave rise to research driven by architectural innovation and the emergence of major international competitions. In terms of architectural education, the post-1968 era represented a break with the tradition of the École des Beaux-Arts, according to which the architect was to deal with the art and the engineer with the technical aspects. In this context, the role of the engineer was encouraged to change.

What appears to have begun as a socio-cultural shift and a period of political upheaval led, during this time, to the completion of projects presenting major technical challenges, thereby playing a key role in elevating the status of the French consulting engineer to a leading position within the architectural design team. The Centre Pompidou, the glasshouses and stretched-fabric roofs at La Villette, the Louvre Pyramid, and Hall 2F of the Roissy terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport all reveal the undeniable importance accorded to structure, which even became a defining feature of the architecture itself.

This period leaves a tangible mark that manifests itself through various projects: from the technical language developed in his buildings to the design and communication tools used (such as calculation software, models and drawing books), amongst other things. But this mark is also intangible, as it represents a truly unique approach to the profession that emerges through these practices. The collected body of work covers project design, the functioning of architectural practices and the careers of lead architects, in the form of archives and interviews to be conducted with a range of key figures from this period. The thesis examines how these projects and buildings were realised, and how their rationale and processes reveal and transform ways of working: networks, professions and practices.

India’s major cities are undergoing far-reaching spatial transformations, characterised in particular by a proliferation of property developments aimed at transnational corporations and the upper middle classes. Our thesis focuses on the property development companies that initiate and coordinate this type of project. By studying two urban regions in southern India (Bangalore and Chennai), we seek to understand the processes through which some of these companies are strengthening their position in the material, symbolic and political shaping of urban spaces.

We begin by emphasising the crucial role played by central government through its housing finance policies (the expansion of household credit), the gradual liberalisation of land use, and the opening up of the construction sector to capital from financial markets. The thesis then shows how, in the mid-2000s, the explosion in investment, particularly from abroad, benefited a limited number of property developers. These developers took advantage of this context of abundant capital. Armed with the cognitive, social and political resources enabling them to navigate India’s ‘informal urbanism’, they took on risks that asset managers—still unfamiliar with local players, their practices and the geography of property markets—were unwilling to accept. Whilst recourse to financial markets brought about organisational transformations and accelerated a process of professionalisation, their key role in securing investment ensured these development companies a degree of autonomy. On the one hand, bolstered by the capital raised, they accelerated their growth by industrialising their operations and expanding their markets into southern Indian cities. On the other hand, these major developers were able to develop and disseminate models relating both to desired forms of urbanisation and to national and local policies on urban development.

Members of the jury

• Armelle Choplin, Senior Lecturer, University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
• Eric Denis, Director of Research, CNRS, UMR Géographie-cités (rapporteur)
• Ludovic Halbert, Research Fellow, CNRS, UMR LATTS (co-supervisor)
• Loraine Kennedy, Research Director, CNRS, UMR CEIAS
• Christian Lefèvre, Professor, University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (Director)
• Renaud Le Goix, Professor, Paris Diderot University (rapporteur)