The future of cities is being played out in suburban zones. The first crowns surrounding the cities constitute nowadays a neuralgic target of urban development politics, for they consist of an important proportion of undervalued and lowgrade areas (often a badly structured combination of council houses, industrial wastelands, shopping centres, green spaces and individual houses). Neuralgic can be understood here as both “key” and “sensible” – key because suburban zones form the principal space for an intervention against urban sprawl; sensible because they concentrate the most severe social and environmental inequalities (poverty, unemployment, pollution, nuisance…).

Because of these characteristics, suburban crowns undergoing transformation represent a privileged field, in which the production of the city can be questioned from the point of view of spatial justice. Public planning of current urban projects in the Lyon urban district will serve as a case study.

Conference speaker

Yves Bonard is a geographer and a town planner, guest researcher at the University of British Columbia of Vancouver and scientific collaborator of the Observatoire universitaire de la ville et du développement durable of the university of Lausanne. He is now completing his thesis, devoted to the modes of production of the contemporary city and to the theories of urban justice.

Conference