How to study the city?

If people of finance, carried away by thehubrishad not pushed the world into a major systemic crisis, 2008 would have been designated as “ the year of the city », The one where the number of inhabitants living in cities worldwide exceeded that of rural people – they were only 10% in 1900 – ; where the Nobel Prize in Economy rewards a founder of the new economic geography, Paul Krugman, cantor of agglomeration effects ; Where the World Bank devotes its annual development report to the benefits of urbanization. It is not until French debate, which, from the Ile-de-France regional master plan in competing projects in Grand Paris, would have been absorbed by the strategic discussion on the metropolitan future. The financial crisis has plunged back into Keynes and the nostalgic pleasures of the developer state, while waiting for the worldwide regulation. It may pass, will inevitably transform. The city – and its more and more residents – will remain.

It is the merit of Live in towncollective work produced under the direction of Julien Damon, to mark it through appropriate comments on urban becoming from the Ipsos survey, carried out on behalf of Veolia Environnement and presented in a project “ global observatory for urban lifestyles ». Let us recall the nature of the investigation which serves as a material – as a pretext ? – In the book: 8,500 people interviewed in fourteen major world cities (around 600 per metropolitan area), mainly northern cities, two Chinese cities (Shanghai, Beijing), two metropolises in the development world, very alone (Mexico, Alexandria). Questioning about “ Being in town »Was carried out online and supplemented by a qualitative phase reserved for young urban people well endowed with cultural or economic capital.

The bias is therefore strong, as the challenge launched to the authors: to make the milestones of a reflection undoubtedly essential on theHomo Urbanusstarting from “ Bobo Urbanus “Young and” northern “While the urban of tomorrow will certainly be young but above all” southern ” Or “ emerging », And very graying to the north. This gives an introduction where it appears, without great surprise, that the inhabitant of cities is rather happy – “ The city makes free “-, satisfied with the possibilities of openness to the world and access to leisure and culture offered by urban life but worried about the perspectives in terms of environment and quality of the environment.

But the challenge is taken up … It is the strength of a book to allow the reader to gain in depth and richness of analyzes and therefore in pleasure as and when reading. Inequalities, social polarization, threat to sustainable development, poverty, disasters to come … The tour is complete even if the temptation is great, as the world is now urban, to bring all the misfortunes to the city. “” The happiness of cities “Of which Alain Cluzet spoke, who emerges from the investigation, finally leaves more and more room for the” Monde city/Monster city From Saskia Sassen. Living in town 2008 then invite to deepen three questions.

The city, lever of globalization

The first is that of the appearance ofHomo Urbanus and the perspective, debated in economics, convergence (or standardization). Through the urban, a global community would see the light of day ? Interdependent community of destiny (building sustainable density), practices and lives, links (places in the world, temporary or sustainable migration, global networks). Real but relative convergence. In the same way that globalization has not removed the diversity of capitalisms, generalized urbanization underlines the existence of several types ofHomo Urbanusin drawing still vague in the survey, among which we should certainly distinguish the urban middle class and Asian optimistic, the stressed, dynamic and socially polarized Anglo-Saxon urban, the continental urban being balanced and cultivated, the urban of the megalopolises of the Third World Grand Forgotten of the World Observatory. To each of these types, would correspond a physically embodied reality and urban projects.

Theoretical construction ? Not only. In the search for an exceeding of the East-Asians (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) tensions inherited from a XX^e century which is not digested, the Meti Japanese has endeavored in the new century to think of regional integration, politically not found, by urban culture. An Asian middle class flourishes in cities. She has the same consumption habits, nearby lifestyles, a shared technological passion. It has a strong interest in products “ cultural »Regional (television series, films, discs, modes, multimedia technological products). It is built on exchanges of students, tourists, artists, cultural goods. It could be a better understanding factor and a regional unit engine.

The second point is the democratic question. The urban of the World Observatory is a living, user, consumer … little or not a citizen or player in the development and implementation of the urban project. We are far from the “ planned and negotiated metropolis “Around” Sharing expertise and knowledge »Vanied during the revision of the master plan for the Île-de-France region. Beyond quarrels without a solution of institutional design which delight specialists and whose global calibration does not refer to any undeniable model but to national idiosyncrasies, the problem of governance arises, as a post-Fordist alternative to the government, that is to say the development and conduct of public policies through collective interventions, preferably coordinated, different levels of governments, public institutions autonomous, private actors “ made up – Economic circles, different interest groups – and citizen participation. So what a route to the Government 2.0 since the urban survey are on the web ? Equally determining for the democratic question is the integration of new urban migrants into the processes of collective choice-immigrants from Western or Japanese metropolis, Chinese Mingong-since metropolitan attraction exceeds the old borders of the nation state and is nourished by cultural and ethnic diversity. Diversity, governance, democracy: living in the city will also have to respond to them, especially since it is faced with urban requirements in terms of environmental quality, collective equipment, especially for transport, conviviality and preservation of the standard of living.

A third issue constitutes a dead angle of Live in town : It is that of theHomo Urbanus producer. You have to wait more than two thirds of the book to see it appear as such. Yet the city swells because there is the benefit of the agglomeration for the economy. And as the urban is a responsible player and “ sustainable “, The post-Fordist metropolis-at least in the north-being more and more invested in intangible production and the creation industries and services, it will be able to reconcile personal and professional commitment.

L’Homo Urbanus called to resolve the challenge of global public goods ? This brings us back to the first debate on the metropolis as constitutive of the global, in a way of a “ globurban »Still to design. Both are inseparably linked even if internationalist economists rarely meet city specialists. Is it a coincidence that one of the best urban planning experts, Saskia Sassen, preceded Joseph Stiglitz by half a decade to analyze the “ globalization and its dissatisfaction »» ? One of the interests of the multidisciplinary approach to Live in town is precisely to invite such an encounter … and take it seriously. By pretending to believe the subjective results of the World Observatory for Urban Lifestyles – “ Happy urbanization “-While keeping in mind the many objective fixes brought by the co-authors of the work, could we not draw a metropolitan response to the open challenges of the” unhappy globalization »Or at least perceived as such in our country ?

In the shorter term, it is not an urgency to propose an urban contribution to the resolution of the crisis: by investment and ecological experiment in cities, the development of social ties, the construction of a new inhabited imagination, around creation, the transfer of urban technologies to the metropolitan areas of the third world … New Urban Deal…