Lauren Dixon’s thesis defence

Introduction

The LATTS is pleased to announce that Lauren Dixon’s thesis defence will take place on Friday the 11th of September 2026 at 1:30, at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (room V303), on the Cité Descartes campus. Her thesis is entitled:

‘The Day-to-Day Management of the City in the Context of Psychoactive Substance Use in Parisian Public Spaces’

This doctoral thesis was carried out at the LATTS, under the supervision of Elsa Vivant, Professor of Urban Studies.

Composition of the jury

• Thomas Alguilera, Senior Lecturer, Sciences Po Rennes, Examiner
• Delphine Corteel, Professor, University of Tours, Examiner
• Geoffrey Deverteuil, Professor, Cardiff University, Rapporteur
• Tommaso Vitale, Dean, Sciences Po Paris Urban School, Rapporteur
• Djemila Zeneidi, Research Director, CNRS, Examiner

Abstract of the thesis

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.