Inventing Greater Paris

Project overview

Inventing Greater Paris examines the history of Greater Paris as a metropolitan concept over the long term, from an international comparative perspective that draws on multiple disciplines (urban, social, landscape and visual history).

Founded in 2012, the Inventer le Grand Paris collective was established to organise a multi-year series of four academic conferences dedicated to the history of the development of Greater Paris in the 20th century, informed by a range of international perspectives. The collective brings together researchers who use history to examine the development of the Greater Paris metropolitan area through the lenses of urban studies, social sciences, architecture, urban planning, visual arts and landscape.

Launched in 2017, the Inventer le Grand Paris website serves as a platform for publishing the programme’s collaborative research, a portal for hosting future research projects, and a guide to historical resources. Aimed at a wide audience of researchers, stakeholders and specialists, it publishes news about the scientific programme and the research outputs produced.

To mark the launch of the website, a scientific event was held on 14 September 2017 in the form of a one-day seminar on Digital Humanities and the History of Greater Paris, organised as part of the LabEx Futurs urbains (University of Paris-Est), which the collective joined in 2018. As such, it received state funding allocated by the Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir.

By 2024, the collective comprised some twenty researchers from the ACP, AHTTEP, CHS, INTRU, IPRAUS, LABURBA, LAREP, LATTS and TEMPORA laboratories. Established in 2025, an inter-institutional scientific and documentary network ensures the site’s long-term sustainability. This network brings together the laboratories and the documentary and archive centres of six schools and universities: the École des Ponts et Chaussées, the École d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville, the École du Paysage de Versailles-Marseille, the Campus Condorcet, the Université Gustave Eiffel, and the Université Paris Est Créteil.

With the publication of 50 research articles based on the conferences (under the ‘Historical Overviews’ section) and 200 transcribed presentations from the 30 seminars (under the ‘Research Projects’ section), Inventer le Grand Paris has become a leading resource centre. It houses oral archives as well as two unpublished research collections: a Bibliographic Database of Greater Paris and an Atlas of Greater Paris Plans.