Violences, sécurités et territoires

The phenomenon of urban violence and the resulting sense of insecurity are at the very heart of contemporary urban dynamics. In order to respond to the growing public demand for security, various public, private, and community measures contribute to the new urban policies of large cities. This new configuration that comprises security enforcement operates as a "meta-game", in which numerous global economic and civil society actors, such as private security companies and neighborhood communities, are called upon to participate. With regard to security, the principle of governance implies a loss of the State's monopoly of legitimate violence. We have therefore evolved from a regulatory mode, based on disciplinary institutions, to the political inclusion of actors, concepts and means of providing security that jeopardize governability: we no longer know who governs who and the physical and social urban landscapes have been modified. By focusing on urban development practices that aim to physically resolve insecurity problems and perceptions in cities, our objective is to analyze the extent to which the governance system of security has led to a radical and significant transformation of cities and the practices of its inhabitants, notably through the reinforcement of spatial and social fragmentations. Unequal participation is a reflection of unequal access to public space, and vice versa. The city is leaning towards a global and hegemonic model of public space, where the routine enforcement of order is imperative through the use of appropriate planning policies. We question the degree of publicity of public spaces and the democratic management of urban territories. The "generic" city seeks to eliminate or hide anomic behavior. However, violence adapts to specific forms of urban territories, with the form of the city determining their substance. Consequently, violence should be interpreted as a reaction triggered by the way in which society is organized. Instead of reducing urban violence, the use of security planning in urban areas often territorializes it. A geography of violence reflects the geography of security. With the transition from governmentality to governance in the security field, society has also evolved from fragmentation to greater segregation of urban areas. Efforts must be made by public authorities to reconfigure their structures in order to respond, by themselves, to the public demand for security. To avoid the transition from conflict to violence, the anomie in the city must be reconsidered and urban risks resolved within a framework of inter-sectorality.

Planification urbaine et usages des quartiers précaires en Afrique

Benjamin Michelon

Since 2000, declarations issued in rapid succession by the international community have aimed at setting goals to drastically improve the living conditions of slum dwellers while, in the same time, the slums dwellers increased by 4,5% per year in Africa. Simultaneously, we have witnessed changes in the manner in which city residents perceive space: in today's city, the relationship between places and flows constitutes the new living space and sense of belonging (Castells, 1996). With the changes in the information society, space of flows are transformed into power flows, concentrated in space of flows which dominates more and more space of places, peripheriques areas where flows takes place everyday. Using this theory as grid, it is to re-examine the evolution of urbanization in African cities and their shantytowns. Indeed, this process of domination of the space of flows has implications for the planning approaches and uses of space of place in slums. This dual vision, putting power to the flows of space valued by the elites'cities of the living spaces of places experienced by people, is used to observe, name and understand the past and the future of cities. These elements have resulted in the formulation of a number of questions that have served as guidelines for this research. This research first targets the development of the urbanization process and the role of precarious neighborhoods: what measures are now being implemented by the authorities to reconcile the need to improve the competitiveness of African cities (advocated by donors) with the expectations of people in poor neighborhoods? In a second phase, the role of these neighborhoods' community areas is evaluated: are they a media to be valued and included in the projects to restructure the neighborhoods? Two assumptions have emerged from said questions. The first concerns the process of urbanization in African cities. This involves an analysis of the balance of power between the application of modernizing planning practices and the use of space by the residents of the neighborhoods. The second questions the role of community spaces as efficient public areas within the framework of projects to upgrade the neighborhood. The expected results of this thesis aim i) to understand the evolution of these precarious areas in the building of African cities, ii) to learn about the place and the role of community spaces and to learn from neighborhood upgrading projects. For this study, two cities were chosen: Douala (Cameroon's economic capital) and Kigali (Rwanda's political capital). For each, two methodological perspectives were adopted: the first is a comprehensive study of the entire city, based on plans, planning documents, interviews with local officials, archive documents; and the second is as a local study carried out in a market area of the city, based on observations, interviews, a questionnaire developed from a representative sample of traders, and a social and spatial analysis of the neighborhood. This approach is therefore comparative (two cities and two districts), multi-scale (two scales of analysis), historical (identifying cultural, social and political customs) and interdisciplinary (even holistic to a certain extent, taking into account different disciplines such as law, economics and urban sociology). Ultimately, this study reveals both the local specificities and differences of each city. These dissimilarities were largely developed in the presentation of these territories. They are indeed important, especially for the city of Kigali, which is undergoing a process of post-genocidal reconstruction. However, it also appears that each city's path contains a significant number of common characteristics, mainly linked to the responses they provide to urban problems: globalization today tends to standardize practices. The first element common to both areas is urban duality. This process occurs first in an urban form. The African city today remains a binary geographical entity: the city that separated the indigenous people from the settlers was succeeded by a post-colonial city marking the separation between the inherited formal city and the informal city in creation. This urban confrontation can be seen as a form of inertia, defined as a rectilinear uniform advance, suitable for the fabric of the city. The analysis of the evolution of city planning shows that projects have failed to break this logic. The delay accumulated in this field since the 80s had the effect of amplifying the phenomenon. Furthermore, this duality is reflected in the urban power struggle between the authorities and the inhabitants. On the one hand, the authorities seem determined to reproduce and keep constant both tension with and distance to the population, seeking to maintain their social control over the population. On the other hand, residents of poor neighborhoods regularly claim a "right to the city". This inertia does not mean a lack of change. This manifests itself through urban crises which temporarily break the balance. A new order is then implemented, replicating the urbanization process that prevailed in the old order. In a second phase, this research highlights the struggle for territory which emerges in these African cities. Indeed, in the midst of the general trend of inertia and reproduction, a few evolutions are worth mentioning. There is first of all a real spatial and social fragmentation of urban areas. This process occurs both in the slums and the formal rich neighborhoods mushrooming more and more on the outskirts of the city (near the urban ring roads serving these new places in which to live). To this diversification of territorial situations can be added an increasing number of slum upgrading projects, the results of which fail to meet the original targets. Moreover, even within neighborhoods, there is a fragmentation of community spaces, such as markets. The latter have undergone an important evolution since the 80s, sometimes leading to conflict between this type of local trade and the business carried out in shopping malls, which is claimed to be modern. The influence of the space of flows and the implementation planning process promote liberal "modern" sector, consisting of subsidiaries of large corporations, supermarket chains to a upper class people, while causing profound changes in space with neighborhood markets. The challenge of planning for the city of tomorrow appears to reduce this duality and to take into account this duality to prevent the development of precarious neighborhoods and urban fragmentation.

EPFL2012

Sustainable Development, Planning and Poverty Alleviation

Jean-Claude Bolay, Eléonore Labattut

In 2018, the world population is around 7.6 billion, 4.2 billion in urban settlements and 3.4 billion in rural areas. Of this total, according to UN-Habitat, 3.2 billion of urban inhabitants live in southern countries. Of them, one billion, or nearly a third, live in slums. Urban poverty is therefore an endemic problem that has not been solved despite all initiatives taken to date by public and private sectors. This global transformation of our contemporary societies is particularly challenging in Asia and Africa, knowing that on these two continents, less than half of the population currently lives in urban areas. In addition, over the next decades, 90% of the urbanization process will take place in these major regions of the world. Urban planning is not an end in itself. It is a way, human and technological, to foresee the future and to act in a consistent and responsible way in order to guarantee the well-being of the populations residing in cities or in their peripheries. Many writers and urban actors in the South have criticized the inadequacy of urban planning to the problems faced by the cities confronting spatial and demographic growth. For many of them the reproduction of Western models of planning is ineffective when the urban context responds to very different logics. It is therefore a question of reinventing urban planning on different bases. And in order to address the real problems that urban inhabitants and authorities are facing, and offering infrastructures and access to services for all, this with the prospect of reducing poverty, to develop a more inclusive city, with a more efficient organization, in order to make it sustainable, both environmental than social and economic. The field work carried out during recent years in small and medium-sized cities in Burkina Faso, Brazil, Argentina and Vietnam allows us to focus the attention of specialists and decision makers on intermediate cities that have been little studied but which are home to half of the world's urban population. From local diagnoses, we come to a first conclusion. Many small and medium-sized cities in the South can be considered as poor cities, from four criteria. They have a relatively large percentage of the population is considered to be poor; the local government and its administration do not have enough money to invest in solving the problems they face; these same authorities lack the human resources to initiate and manage an efficient planning process; urban governance remains little open to democratic participation and poorly integrates social demand into its development plans. Based on this analysis, we consider it is imperative to renovate urban planning as part of a more participatory process that meets the expectations of citizens with more realistic criteria. This process incorporates different stages: an analysis grounded on the identification of urban investment needed to improve the city; the consideration of the social demands; a realistic assessment of the financial resources to be mobilized (municipal budget, taxes, public and international external grants, public private partnership); a continuous dialogue between urban actors to determine the urban priorities to be addressed in the coming years. This protocol serves as a basis for comparative studies between cities in the South and a training program initiated in Argentina for urban actors in small and medium-sized cities, which we wish to extend later to other countries of the South.

2019

Villes à la frontière et transformation de l'espace

Lena Poschet El Moudden

Few borders exist which separate two countries as dramatically disparate as the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Both share the territory of the Hispaniola island, but a profound process of differentiation rooted in the colonial division of the island between France and Spain and ideologically maintained by both modern nations, has lead to what Théodat (1998, 2003) calls the "twofold insularity" – each country behaves as if it were located on a separate island. In spite of all prejudices and ethnical, historical, linguistic, social, economic or religious differences, people living in the border regions established cross-border relations which, even if largely based on economic interests, are much more frequent and important to both nations than officially admitted (De Jesus Cerdano and Dilla, 2005; Sillé & Segura & Cabral, 2002). The local dynamic created by this exchange becomes palpable when one observes the busy binational market in the border towns of Ouanaminthe (Haiti) and Dajabón (Dominican Republic). Twice a week, people from nearly the whole northern part of both countries travel to these towns located on either side of the Masacre River, in order to buy and sell goods or to offer services in the market of Dajabón. The other days, tons of cargo transit to Haiti, to the extent that the once small borderland settlements have become an important junction in the economic subsystem of the northern part of the island. Moreover, the construction of a free zone in Ouanaminthe in 2002 –to produce textiles for the US-market– has connected the borderland towns to the international economy. This recent development is set within a context of progressive opening of borders (Martinez, 1994). It is the result of international policies that have been decided in the capitals, without consulting the concerned regions. In Ouanaminthe and Dajabón, local institutions are weak and receive no or little financial and administrative support from central administration. They do not have the means to cope with growing pressure on land and infrastructure, as the emergence of legal and illegal livelihood opportunities in the borderland has generated a threefold increase of the overall population in the past twenty years (Dajabón grew from 8'500 inhabitants in 1980 to 16'000 in 2002 and Ouanaminthe from 7'000 in 1981 to 39'000 in 2003). How did these recent economic, political and societal transformations shape the urban space of the two borderland towns? I addressed this issue by analyzing the motivation of stakeholders involved in the process of spatial transformation, and the impact of their actions. In my work I refer to the conceptual framework of urban intermediation (Bolay and Rabinovich, 2004), i.e. the spatial issues that each town has to address according to its internal characteristics, its function in national and international networks and its relation to the direct rural environment. In order to use this framework for the borderland issues, the conceptual part of this study proposes to develop the concept of "borderland intermediation". To the existing urban intermediation concept, it adds the influence of the characteristics of the border (based on policy and political aspects, economic issues, local identities, social networks, national defense issues and geographical insertion). By doing so, it relates the bi-national system of borderland towns to the intermediation concept. Data has been collected over three and a half years during several periods of fieldwork: observation and mapping of occupation and use of urban space, cartography, qualitative interviews with local stakeholders and residents, completed by other primary and secondary sources. This study shows that the recent transformations have accentuated the existing unbalanced relationship between the two towns. The powerlessness of the municipality of Ouanaminthe to meet population growth and to impose regulations or taxes related to the growing trade has enhanced its dependency to the Dominican town. For a growing number of Haitians, it is of existential importance to cross over to Dajabón in order to seek income, healthcare and education and this, in spite of latent racism and mistreatments. Founded on a strong sentiment of exploitation, Haitians often criticize the capitalist or even colonialist relationship imposed by their neighbors: not only the fact that the bi-national market takes place in Dajabón, but also that Dominican enterprises develop subsidiaries in Ouanaminthe, taking advantage of cheap labor and the absence of local production. On the contrary, the majority of Dajabón residents interviewed do not need to cross the river for their living. Most of them have never been to Ouanaminthe, but consider it insalubrious, out of control and dangerous. Both towns lack application of regulations in urban planning matters. Thus, spatial growth has entirely been ruled by landowner structure and land occupation practices. Around Dajabón, the adjacent land belongs mainly to two landowners, whose strategy –to enhance soil value through development of equipped middleclass neighborhoods– has restricted the urban sprawl. In Ouanaminthe land belongs to a multitude of small peasants. The selling and illegal occupation of rather small plots leads to sprawling urban growth, guided by rural pathways and leaving entire parts of neighborhoods inaccessible to motor vehicles. Population growth has also been absorbed by high densification of existing neighborhoods. No formal collaborations exist between the two municipalities. Informal ones do, through the implication of the two mayors, but overall, cross-border collaboration is left to NGOs and professional associations who militate for human rights, environmental issues and fair treatment inside the bi-national market. International development agencies present in the borderland initiate projects with bi-national concern, but these are disconnected from the local level and strongly influenced by the fact that these agencies relate directly to the central governments. We also observe a process of internal segregation in both towns, as commercial establishments progressively occupy parts of the town centers and the emergent middle class gathers in specific neighborhoods. Ouanaminthe and Dajabón are functionally interlinked and their transformation is undeniably governed by the progressive permeability of the border. Nevertheless, this border separates two completely different urban landscapes that are deeply marked by the internal characteristics of each town. Furthermore, the unequal and complex relationship of both populations creates the paradox that their spatial proximity accentuates the segregation in both towns, as it allows the citizens of both countries to stay in their environment and to commute –if necessary– even daily. This work shows that the application of the intermediation concept is relevant for the study of complex relationships that govern borderland space. The analysis based on this concept has enabled to study, on a local level, processes that are taking place on a global level. In so doing, it has allowed us to provide some answers to the central question: "How do local populations, national and international firms and governments react when a territorial economy, based on agriculture, is progressively linked to international networks? "

EPFL2006