IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v39y2015i3p622-632.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘Many Rivers to Cross’: Suburban Densification and the Social Status Quo in Greater Lyon

Author

Listed:
  • Max Rousseau

Abstract

type="main"> Urban research often considers densification from the perspective of sustainable development and social mix. This essay focuses instead on the social and political stakes involved in densification through the example of a large French metropolitan area. It shows that the densification policies put in place in the Lyon agglomeration cannot be said to succeed in breaking down the historical segregation between its residential and affluent western suburbs (banlieues) and its industrial and working-class eastern ones. The political manoeuvres executed by the institutions implementing densification, and the search for consensus characterizing France's intercommunalities, block any possibility of redistributing functions and social classes at the metropolitan scale, and hence of ending the social specialization of Lyon's suburbs. Moreover, municipalities subjected to pressure from suburban areas carefully assess the profile of residents selected to occupy new housing units—i.e. individuals already residing in the commune in the case of western suburbs, and middle-class individuals hailing from the eastern part of the agglomeration in the case of eastern suburbs. Densification does not foster social mix at the metropolitan scale, neither does it improve the housing conditions of disadvantaged populations.

Suggested Citation

  • Max Rousseau, 2015. "‘Many Rivers to Cross’: Suburban Densification and the Social Status Quo in Greater Lyon," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(3), pages 622-632, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:39:y:2015:i:3:p:622-632
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12197
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Max Rousseau, 2009. "Re‐imaging the City Centre for the Middle Classes: Regeneration, Gentrification and Symbolic Policies in ‘Loser Cities’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 770-788, September.
    2. Brenner, Neil, 2004. "New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270064.
    3. Eric Charmes & Roger Keil, 2015. "The Politics of Post-Suburban Densification in Canada and France," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(3), pages 581-602, May.
    4. Justus Uitermark & Jan Willem Duyvendak & Reinout Kleinhans, 2007. "Gentrification as a Governmental Strategy: Social Control and Social Cohesion in Hoogvliet, Rotterdam," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(1), pages 125-141, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Juliet Carpenter, 2018. "‘Social Mix’ as ‘Sustainability Fix’? Exploring Social Sustainability in the French Suburbs," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(4), pages 29-37.
    2. Eric Charmes & Roger Keil, 2015. "The Politics of Post-Suburban Densification in Canada and France," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(3), pages 581-602, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Justus Uitermark, 2014. "Integration and Control: The Governing of Urban Marginality in Western Europe," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 1418-1436, July.
    2. Eric Charmes & Max Rousseau & Maryame Amarouche, 2021. "Politicising the debate on urban sprawl: The case of the Lyon metropolitan region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(12), pages 2424-2440, September.
    3. Max Rousseau, 2009. "Re‐imaging the City Centre for the Middle Classes: Regeneration, Gentrification and Symbolic Policies in ‘Loser Cities’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 770-788, September.
    4. Geneviève Zembri-Mary & Virginie Engrand-Linder, 2023. "Urban planning law in the face of the Olympic challenge: Between innovation and criticism of exceptional urban regeneration," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 38(4), pages 369-388, June.
    5. Steven Tufts, 2007. "Emerging Labour Strategies in Toronto's Hotel Sector: Toward a Spatial Circuit of Union Renewal," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(10), pages 2383-2404, October.
    6. Navé Wald & Douglas P. Hill, 2016. "‘Rescaling’ alternative food systems: from food security to food sovereignty," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(1), pages 203-213, March.
    7. Kevin Fox Gotham, 2014. "Racialization and Rescaling: Post-Katrina Rebuilding and the Louisiana Road Home Program," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 773-790, May.
    8. Simin Yan & Anna Growe, 2022. "Regional Planning, Land-Use Management, and Governance in German Metropolitan Regions—The Case of Rhine–Neckar Metropolitan Region," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-24, November.
    9. Andrew Clarke & Lynda Cheshire, 2018. "The post-political state? The role of administrative reform in managing tensions between urban growth and liveability in Brisbane, Australia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(16), pages 3545-3562, December.
    10. Federico Savini, 2013. "The Governability of National Spatial Planning: Light Instruments and Logics of Governmental Action in Strategic Urban Development," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(8), pages 1592-1607, June.
    11. Le Galès, Patrick & Vitale, Tommaso Prof, 2013. "Governing the large metropolis. A research agenda," SocArXiv 95zsc, Center for Open Science.
    12. Juliana Hurtado Rassi, 2020. "Gestión conjunta de ecosistemas transfronterizos: la importancia del trabajo articulado entre los Estados para la conservación de los recursos naturales. Análisis del caso particular de la “Reserva de," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 1241.
    13. Xiaobo Su, 2013. "From Frontier to Bridgehead: Cross-border Regions and the Experience of Yunnan, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 1213-1232, July.
    14. Juliet Carpenter, 2018. "‘Social Mix’ as ‘Sustainability Fix’? Exploring Social Sustainability in the French Suburbs," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(4), pages 29-37.
    15. Bernard Jouve, 2007. "Urban Societies and Dominant Political Coalitions in the Internationalization of Cities," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 25(3), pages 374-390, June.
    16. Natalie Papanastasiou, 2017. "The practice of scalecraft: Scale, policy and the politics of the market in England’s academy schools," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(5), pages 1060-1079, May.
    17. Fricke, Carola, 2014. "Grenzüberschreitende Governance in der Raumplanung: Organisations- und Kooperationsformen in Basel und Lille," Arbeitsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Grotheer, Swantje & Schwöbel, Arne & Stepper, Martina (ed.), Nimm's sportlich - Planung als Hindernislauf, volume 10, pages 62-78, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    18. Naomi Prachi Hazarika, 2020. "Spaces of Intermediation and Political Participation: a Study of KuSumpur pahadI redevelopment project," CSH-IFP Working Papers 0016, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, revised Jul 2020.
    19. Cavicchia, Rebecca, 2023. "Housing accessibility in densifying cities: Entangled housing and land use policy limitations and insights from Oslo," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    20. Jacob Salder, 2020. "Spaces of regional governance: A periodisation approach," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(6), pages 1036-1054, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:39:y:2015:i:3:p:622-632. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.