(COUNTER)POWERS AND PUBLIC SPACE IMAGINARY.
An analysis of participatory planning situations through the example of parisian urban transformations

ABSTRACT
Based on a research on urban transformations of the North-Eastern metropolitan area of Paris, this article aims to question the role of public space imaginary in urban planning participatory processes. The presented research consist in an ethnography on interaction situations between different groups of actors: neighbourhood associations, groups occupying empty urban spaces, artists and architects collectives promoting urban art and participation, policy-makers and technicians of major urban projects. In the context of the recent valorisation of citizens' participation in French urban planning policies, the observed interactions rise a series of questions about the results of the dialogue between institutions and organised civil society. While showing an attention to contestation instances in urban planning processes, the institutional apparatus issued by participatory policies seem in fact to produce new categories of action that flatten collective urban identities and reduce the possible alternatives to neoliberal planning processes. Through this text, we wish to enquire the relation between public space, collective imaginaries and urban transformations. If the definition of what is public and common is a moving concept in urban societies, what seems interesting is precisely to focus on the process of this definition production. In order to be interpreted, this process has to be read through the analysis of collective imaginaries. By affirming the importance of a relational understanding of collective imaginaries as one of the main issues permitting to analyse the disputes about city's future, we wish to enquire the capacity of participatory policies to stimulate these disputes in urban projects. After highlighting some general questions on participatory policies and their development in the French context, we will present two examples of negotiations on public space transformations in the Chapelle district (18th arrondissement of Paris) in the form of two narrative scenes. Those scenes will permit to point out some questions on the sense and effectiveness of participatory devices through an analysis of spatial and political issues. We will focus especially on the justifications and representations that lie beyond the action of citizens engaged in participatory situations and on the result of their negotiations with institutions. Our aim will be to show how participatory planning devices avoid the possibility of disagreement between actors and, in consequence, suppress (instead of questioning) the debate on the social meaning of public space imaginary. Our main thesis is that participation, as an institutionalised practice, frames the social imaginary and, consequently, reduces its political potential supporting a neoliberal vision of public space, but also of urban citizens. Participation is in fact working as a political apparatus that implies a voluntary subjection of citizens to the logics of neoliberal development. In the background, this essay wishes to affirm the importance of urban ethnography not only as a tool of analysis, but also as a necessary step for building participation.

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(COUNTER)POWERS AND PUBLIC SPACE IMAGINARY. An analysis of participatory planning situations through the example of parisian urban transformations 

1 | Participatory policies
Public space in contemporary cities needs to be understood as a complex object composed by the interaction between both the physical and psychological accessible spatial urban entities (Joseph, 1998) and the sphere of political dialogue (Habermas, 1989 [1962]). The heterogeneity and illegibility of urban public space in the recent history let emerge its role as a recipient of conflict between actors because of its capacity for gathering all the different representations of a fairer and more liveable city (cf. Daconto, 2014). If the definition of what is public and common is a moving concept in urban societies, what seems interesting is precisely to focus on the process of this definition production. In this essay we would like to consider the fact that, in order to be interpreted, this process has to be read through the analysis of collective imaginaries, in the sense of as an ensemble of mental and material productions (Wunenburger, 2003). As said by Cornelius Castoriadis (1987), imaginary can be understood as a creative social practice that guides transformations and shapes power relations. It is in fact the social imaginary that builds the institution of collective meanings in the social life. For Castoriadis imaginary is a relational process issued by power disputes whose result is the affirmation of norms and institutions. Following this dynamic vision, we can consider the collective imaginary that lies beyond disputes on city's transformations as the fundamental element for the collective definition and shaping of what is considered as public both in socially and spatially. In this sense, we could say that the disagreements linked to the public space imaginary constitute an interesting point of view for assessing power relations in the contemporary city.
This key role of the public imaginary is nowadays widely recognised by urban policies, not only through the development of territorial marketing techniques, but also by a wider attention to the building of participatory planning policies. It is in fact the better understanding of the 'common citizen' imaginary through participatory devices that is assumed as a goal for depicting a more effective synergy between institutional action and citizens' needs in space building. Participatory policies seem, in this sense, to open the debate on urban transformation by letting emerge a potential dispute on collective imaginaries. Nevertheless the institutionalisation of this participatory imaginary seems to produce ambiguous effects both in democratic and spatial sphere.


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• This article must be quoted as: Gatta F. (2017), "(Counter)powers and public space imaginary. An analysis of participatory planning situations through the example of Parisian urban transformations", Planum. The Journal of Urbanism, Magazine Section, no. 34, vol I/2017, pp. 1-24.