Du mythe de l’habitant-écocitoyen à l’optimisation des modes de vie : vers une subjectivation néolibérale des conduites ?. Étude des représentations professionnelles sur l’écologie et les écoquartiers

This article looks at the social representations of ecology induced by the professional practices of eco-district project managers and contractors. The field of urban action is structured around a top-down logic of the construction of the sustainable city in France. The complexity arising from regulatory processes, the search for funding, and the use of technical project management assistance (TPMA) contributes to the institutionalization of urban planning and makes it difficult to propose inclusive and more democratic projects. This standardized modeling of the eco-district is also marked by the spread of managerial discourses that shape the reflexive and practical schemas of urban planning professionals. This is followed by a definition of professional standards and a routinization of the construction of sustainable housing according to objective and subjective constraints. These technical representations are the extension of pre-established projections on ways of living that are considered adequate and in conformity with a dominant and institutional vision of ecology. The eco-district thus implies an ideal and symbolic appropriation of the eco-citizen-inhabitant far removed from the concrete realities of life. Interviews conducted with urban planning professionals reveal an unequal treatment of climate change issues, where the priority is primarily based on performance and energy savings. This disconnect between urban designers and inhabitants is particularly evident with regard to the hegemonic understandings of ecology, which seems to be confined to a neoliberal straitjacket and reduced to an uprooted individual understanding of social specificities.