Dominique Lorrain
Urban Planning 1.0. Investigation of a Greater Paris municipality.
Raisons d'agir, 2018, 232 p.
With Greater Paris, construction has taken off again: housing, facilities, infrastructure. This book offers an interpretation of the transformations taking place in a municipality in eastern Paris based on a "political economy of detail." Thanks to a meticulous study combining several points of view, it moves beyond the big picture to explain how the city is changing through a series of operations which, when repeated, modify a street or a neighborhood and reshape it. It shows how history is written and what the impacts are for residents.
What are the effects of densification that reduces green spaces and does not take into account roads, parking, and facilities? This informative book also sheds light on several general issues. It questions the management of housing policy in Greater Paris. It questions the role of elected officials 35 years after decentralization. By studying several operations, it sheds light on the concepts of asymmetry between developers and residents and the "capture" of elected officials, revealing levels of profits and rents. Through a series of short but significant stories, it demonstrates that change cannot happen without vision and without the "right institutions." Ultimately, it helps to gauge the scale of the task ahead in designing "sustainable cities."