Coutard, Olivier | France

Olivier Coutard, PhD, researcher, born 1965, holds a full time research position with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) with Latts, a multi-disciplinary social science group based in Marne-la-Vallée (Paris, France). He is a civil engineer (Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, F., 1988) and holds a MSc in Transport Sociology and Economics and a PhD in Economics (1994).

His research addresses the social and spatial issues associated with the regulation of, and reforms in, utility industries (water and energy supply, telecommunications) in Europe. He is also studying transport policies addressing mobility issues faced by low-income individuals and households.

Within Latts, he heads the research group on Networks, Institutions and Territories (Réseaux Institutions Territoires, RIT). He sits in the editorial boards of Flux, International Scientific Quarterly on Networks and Territories and of the Journal of Urban Technology, and is a referee for the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2004).

Between 2000 and 2004, he was a member and the secretary of the French CNRS national committee for the assessment of CNRS researchers and research groups in geography and urban and architectural research.

Abstract:
European cities and Networked Infrastructure Systems: An Investigation in Urban Sustainability

The social and spatial polarisation of cities raises widespread concern among European governments. Phrases like “splintered cities” or “fragmented cities” are increasingly used by actors and urban researchers alike to describe observed or suspected trends of aggravation of the social specialisation of spaces within urban areas. The steady increase in the number of “secessionary” spaces such as business improvement districts, gated communities, or marginalised spaces (ghettos) in cities world-wide is acknowledged as the sign of a general process of fragmentation of societies and collapse of the ideal of the inclusive city, characterised by its public space, political community and integrative government.

The extent to which European cities are affected by this process is of primary policy importance.

In a recent book (European Cities: Social Conflicts and Governance, Oxford University Press, 2002), Patrick Le Galès argues that European cities have been, as yet, protected from the harshest forms of urban fragmentation (as well as economic marginalization) by their long-lasting history (at least since the early modern times) and by the strength of the state and of the welfare state in Europe. However Le Galès (and most other authors who have addressed this issue) have not systematically discussed how urban public policies effectively affect processes of integration or fragmentation in cities.

In Splintering Urbanism (Routledge, 2001), Steve Graham and Simon Marvin argue that “a parallel set of processes is under way within which infrastructure networks are being ‘unbundled’ in ways that help sustain the fragmentation of the social and material fabric of cities [world-wide]” (p. 33). If this “splintering urbanism” thesis proved to be true for European cities, it would clearly challenge Le Galès’s argument and would have major policy implications. But there is no consensus among scholars on this issue.

This research project examines the interactions between trends of social and spatial polarisation in European cities and the changing context of provision of network infrastructures and services. Based on available empirical evidence in European and non-European cities, it aims at critically examining the relevance, for European cities, of the “splintering urbanism” thesis and at replacing the discussion of cities/networks relations in a broader perspective of urban sustainability.