The journal Justice Spatiale / Spatial Justice was born after the conference which took place at the Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre in March 2008. Some of you may remember the posters of the event on the walls of the university: they included four urban images, collages made by Michel Coquery donated for the occasion. These collages have since been used on the covers of the volumes of proceedings of the conference (and many others are to be found on the covers of other publications in geography or urban studies). It was Michel's way of wishing us well, and it was characteristically modest and important. We all wish to thank him.

Michel Coquery left us in November 2011. He was what he had been: an alumnus of the Ecole Normale de Saint-Cloud (1953 to 1958), agrégé de géographie, co-founder of the Institut Français d'urbanisme, a lecturer at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées and the Université de Paris 8, head of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud (1990-1995). But he was also much more, an outstanding teacher, scholar, artist and human being. What he taught had a lot to do with what we have attempted to demonstrate within the pages of this journal: that our job as professors or researchers is basically to give away freely (give our time, our ideas or our knowledge); that a concern for accuracy doesn't exclude poetry or empathy, and that sound knowledge gains from these; that scholarly research should also prove operational; that politics are essential and that personal involvement is necessary; that it is our duty to attempt to be useful.

"A geographer who is also a poet" said Gilles Sautter about Michel Coquery. And, like a cat, he did indeed have several lives, the lives of a "geographer who is also...", probably because one of his features was an appetite for life, for discoveries, for relations with human beings and their places. His manifold scholarly life made him an "Africanist" after he had become a leading specialist of French geography of commercial activities, a geographer who became an urbanist, but an urbanist who remained first and foremost a geographer. He had parallel lives as artist and scholar, as professor and head of higher education institutions; lives lived in several languages since Michel Coquery was committed to making Anglophone literature known in France, and in Africa, where, along with his wife Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, and also Jean-Pierre Raison, he worked hard to drag French geography out of its traditional backyard. Our hope is to be able to take after someone who did so much to open up new horizons to many students.

All his lives were connected by invisible threads: cities, politics, love, in whatever order. Those threads may have become intertwined in his experience of military service in Oran, Algeria, in the late 1950s. Maybe this is best illustrated in his collages, what better image of life? And can't cities also be best understood as collages, whether harmonious or not, of motley pieces, cityscapes to gaze upon, decipher and learn from?

We salute Michel Coquery, all the Michel Coquery.

One thing is sure, we now know that "cats can grin" and we're happy to be the Alices who find it out. We believe that, like the Cheshire Cat's, Michel Coquery's smile will stay with us after he has left:

"it vanished quite slowly (...) ending with the grin, which remained after the rest had gone.

"Well, I've often seen a cat without a grin", thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life"."

The editors

Bibliographie | References

Frédéric Dufaux | Philippe Gervais-Lambony | Claire Hancock | Sonia Lehman- Frisch | Sophie Moreau
«Hommage à Michel Coquery», [«Homage to Michel Coquery», traduction : Claire Hancock, UPEC]
justice spatiale | spatial justice | n° 04 décembre | décember 2011 | http://www.jssj.org

An interview with Alain Reynaud by Bernard Bret, université de Lyon 3 Jean Moulin, CNRS. UMR 5600- 11 april 2011

and Alain Reynaud, 1981, Société, Espace et Justice, Paris, PUF, 263p., extracts.

Justice spatiale/Spatial Justice: Alain Reynaud, thank you for welcoming us. In 1981, you published a book under the title Société, Espace et Justice [translation: Society, Space and Justice], with Presses Universitaires de France that made an impression on many geographers and others working in social sciences. We therefore felt it would be interesting, 30 years after this work appeared, to hear what you had to say on some of the points dealt with in it. The themes addressed were completely new at that time. The first question will therefore pertain to how your book was received in geography in France and abroad.

Alain Reynaud: Reception was quite mixed, with reservations and rejections, which was relatively normal at a time when there was a great deal of tension among geographers. There was also, I realized later, a genuine interest on the part of a certain number of colleagues. As for the reservations, these pertained to the new forms of geography that were in the process of being established.

JS: The theme was groundbreaking, at least in geography in France. It was better known among certain economists, such as Samir Amin and André Gunder Frank. In geography, some were concerned with inequalities (remember that Yves Lacoste's book on the geography of underdevelopment had come out in 1965), but from a very different approach, which did not include the concepts of centre and periphery.

AR: Exactly. Samir Amin's book had interested me a great deal and in the 1970s, I wanted to work in this direction, but as a geographer. The theme summarized some of the concerns at the time. For me, it was a matter of dealing with the spatial aspect, trying to go in depth from the geographer's perspective by fine-tuning a broader vocabulary than the simple centre-periphery contrast. Later, the tensions among geographers caused me to somewhat withdraw and led me to become interested in topics of historical geography like ancient China. I was unexpectedly led to apply the concepts of centre and periphery to a very distant past. China of the Spring and Autumn Period - the name of the period between the 8th and 5th centuries B.C - was an unusual area for geographers!

JS: Which undoubtedly validates the idea of centre and periphery as a model that is applicable to quite diverse configurations.

AR: Yes. In the case of China, it was by taking into account the long length, two and a half centuries, and trying to grasp the evolutions, transformations and reversals in spatial organization.

JS: These concepts were also more familiar to certain historians, who you of course cite, like Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein. If we stay in the field of geography but outside of France, English-language geographers had shown themselves to be more sensitive than their French colleagues to the theme of spatial justice. What was the response to your book among geographers in these countries?

AR: There was hardly any response at all from the Anglo-Saxons. On the other hand, there was a translation into Italian.

JS: Which is very fine, obviously, but Italian is not a great language for communication on a world scale. The fact remains that many of your readers were surprised that your work had not had a greater impact and new editions in French.

AR: The first run of 1,800 copies was sold out in a few years, and, it's true, there were no more printings.

JS: Thank you all the more for having agreed to JSSJ reprinting a few excerpts with their English translations.

AR: I'll go back over the context when it appeared. The work that I did was in keeping with geography of the time, where the topics were land use and development, where regional inequalities were raised and (human) desertification was a hot topic. In a certain way, I had placed myself in a broader movement. But what I was doing could be disturbing for two reasons. The first was the degrees of spatial scale in play, since I was forever moving on the same page, in the same paragraph, indeed, in the same sentence, from one degree to another by going from the urban neighbourhood to the world. At this time, geography was preferentially concerned with the smaller degrees of spatial scale, i.e., the regional and even the local. We were accustomed to dealing with one degree of the spatial scale, and one degree at a time. Accordingly, in the eyes of many colleagues, my approach did not appear to be very serious. The second reason was clearly my willingness to conceptualize and theorize. This caused a great deal of concern among geographers claiming that their work was concrete, practical, a position that was beginning to be debated but still had many followers.

JS: While allowing that there are a number of legitimate geographers, the idea that conceptualizing is considered frightening in the social sciences is nonetheless astonishing ....

AR: Of course, but that was a state of mind that existed for a long time in geography. However, since the late 1960s, a shift was occurring, with the period of greatest tensions being the early 1980s. The matter was finally resolved in the 1990s: today, geographers work on an extreme variety of themes from equally varied perspectives, but they tend to accept one another without wanting to exclude those who may move away from a dominant line.

JS: You say you were in sync with the issues being discussed then, but the fundamental originality of your work was precisely to systematize observations in an explanatory model, in other words, to go on to conceptualization.

AR: Yes, that is an underlying tendency of mine but it was not the rule. I had been faced with this problem in physical geography and geomorphology in particular, which had been my main area of interest during my studies. Suddenly, I wanted the equivalent in human geography.

JS: How do you perceive the revival of the theme of justice in geography? The question had not been abandoned by English-speaking geographers, but in France, even though your work stood out without however having the effect it might have deserved, there is the impression that not much happened afterwards until just the last few years.

AR: It seems fairly normal to me to see the theme of spatial justice rekindled at this time, as we are in an era where inequalities, particularly spatial inequalities, are growing. So, social scientists again want to reflect upon them. Of course, inequalities existed thirty or forty years ago but they were tending to diminish, socially and spatially, and we were in a period of was strong growth. Today, there is hardly any growth, at the very least in the most developed countries, and the inequalities are worsening.

JS: All the same, in the 1970s and 80s, the inequalities were great and other social sciences besides geography were exploring them.

AR: Of course, but to write the book, I was basing myself on numerous books and articles on geography. In other words, the themes I was working on were between the lines or explicit in many publications. What didn't exist was the systemization in a model with a well thought out vocabulary for translating the various aspects of the situation and its multiple nuances.

JS: This effort to name the situations and understand how the model evolved had a huge significance.

AR: The favourable reception that some of my colleagues gave this work showed that the need existed in the field.

JS: There is nonetheless a point to be clarified. The concept of justice as implied in your work consists of the equality among individuals and therefore, from your perspective, among territories. From reading your work, it seems that the search for justice is the search for equality among socio-spatial classes through compensatory mechanisms. This remains a distributive justice point of view tending to equalization of conditions. Do you still see the matter in this way, or can spatial differentiation possibly reveal inequalities that would be beneficial to everyone and which thus would not be contrary to fairness? This is a theoretical reflection but one that may help to qualify the various actual configurations. To place the question in the centre-periphery model again, is a periphery necessarily in an inequitable situation compared to the centre?

AR: In some cases inequality may not be felt. One may be very well be satisfied with the territorial setting one is living in and not be aware of the peripheral situation one is in. To speak about "centre" and "periphery", things must be seen from higher up, unless you're in an extreme situation with very difficult living conditions. A difference only becomes an inequality if it is perceived, felt and experienced as such.

JS: Of course, how a fair or unfair situation is felt by people is fundamental, but we can qualify a situation as being fair or unfair through analysis without having experienced the situation ourselves. The question remains therefore asked on a theoretical plane of knowing if inequality necessarily involves an injustice. Which brings us back to wondering what exactly justice is. Does it merge with equality or not?

AR: The purpose of seeking socio-spatial justice is never, it seems to me, arriving at perfect equality of territories. Rather, it is a matter of mitigating existing inequalities because the spontaneous trend is the aggravation of inequalities, which may end up being counterproductive for those who find themselves in the most favoured situation, since when inequalities are pushed to the extreme, whether they are social or territorial, they generate tensions and immobilization. Personally, I have the impression that we have a problem of regional inequalities pushed to their extreme with Ivory Coast. Some say that it's more complex because there have been internal migrations toward Abidjan. Regardless, there is definitely a North-South contrast that led to armed conflicts and a civil war. And this contrast is also found in neighbouring countries. Nigeria in particular comes to mind.

JS: Your book sets out territorial redistributions as a partial remedy to inequalities. How can the present crisis and particularly the "Nanny State" crisis negatively impact this redistributive justice?

AR: With regard to the Nanny State crisis, the redistributive mechanisms put in place in the 1950s still exist but are weaker, bearing in mind the weak growth and deficits of States and territorial collectives. But even during the heyday of the Nanny State, these mechanisms were nothing but corrections to the spontaneous evolutions initiated by the economic decision makers. So, in the United States, the industries of the Manufacturing Belt shifted towards the South from the 1960s through the 80s. I had studied Arkansas in this regard. This shift was not related to State intervention. Businesses simply saw that it was in their interests to move to the South (lower wages and no unions). Today, we're witnessing a shift of industries from the United States and Europe toward emerging countries. The mechanism is the same but on another scale: it is in businesses' interests to move to Indonesia, Vietnam or China.

JS: With this major difference: there is a border between the country of origin and the destination.

AR: Without any doubt. Crossing political borders is of particular importance that some people seem to have forgotten when they claim there are no more borders. Clearly, there still are. Today, we observe a definite sort of masochism on the part of developed countries which at times give the impression of wanting to emphasize this offshoring. Supranational interventions such as those of the WTO go in the direction of accepting this mechanism, not toward wanting to reject it or slow it down but rather toward speeding it up.

JS: When you reject the statement that there are no more borders, I'm totally with you. This cliché is complete idiocy. What is true is that borders function differently now. They're no longer walls that isolate and would block international flow, however, they are still the boundaries of territorial laws, particularly tax and social laws. Instead of putting a halt to international flow, they increase it, as there would be no reason to go offshore if legislation were the same everywhere on a worldwide scale.

AR: Exactly.

JS: Globalization was already underway in 1981 but it has developed since. Has this overturned the centre-periphery model configurations to the point of seeing the scales differently, and have some of the concepts that you had developed, such as the isolate or the blind spot, remained relevant?

AR: I do not believe that the model is outdated.

JS: The general model, certainly not. The question is one of the currency of certain forms identified thirty years ago.

AR: The "isolate" and "blind spot" seemed to me to be starting and end concepts. It's a starting concept because the first organized groups of humans were generally far apart from one another and had weak means of communication; they lived in a closed circuit. The term "isolate" must be used here. In the case of Ancient China, the passage from isolates to connections of growing importance over time and leading to contrasts of the centre and periphery type is greatly felt. Regarding the "blind spot", this is a variation of the "isolate", with a low-density population and weak internal organization. It's an end concept because the "blind spot" can also be the end of evolution when the dominated periphery has gone on to the neglected phase, then de-structured; some would say desertified. This then brings us to the residual "blind spot", which we had examples of during the 1980s and 90s in some fragments of what was called "la France du vide" [tr. empty France].

JS: The model, precisely because it is a model, provides an effective grid for interpreting quite varied situations.

AR: It seems to me that what I was suggesting in my findings has happened, namely, the dominated peripheries becoming integrated peripheries. What has happened in the last thirty years? Unquestionably, the growing importance of very large cities everywhere in the world, in other words these megalapolises, that Paul Valéry was already calling immense cities in the 1930s, and which the poet Emile Verhaeren named tentacular cities in the late 19th century.  These very large cities, which are increasingly numerous, are both world cities and city-worlds. They affect how the world functions but they are also worlds unto themselves. These cities took on extreme dimensions and after awhile, they fine-tuned. They tended to get rid of activities that had become unimportant to their scale, considering their other roles. They thus sought an outlet in the peripheries, which became integrated, with a reversal in the flow of capital and finally, migration. In France, in the 1950s and 60s, the cities surrounding Paris experienced multiple benefits from the transformations of Paris, including universities, industries and services. But these benefits are not always of the highest level, which means that the universities tend to specialize in undergraduate programs, services were the transfer of bank records and today are call centres. Another example that was striking to me is Shanghai. Prior to the 1978 upheaval in China, Shanghai appeared to be a dominant centre penalized by government power, which distrusted this metropolis that had formerly been linked to the capitalist world and for this reason, had a poor brand image. After 1980, Shanghai very quickly became a hyper-centre and has gradually de-industrialized, outsourcing to the Yang Tse Kiang delta. On the world scale, industrial outsourcing to emerging countries at first was able to appear to be a phenomenon integrating formerly peripheral countries, but we are now beyond that and are perhaps witnessing a major redealing of the cards: former dominant centres (Europe, the U.S., Japan) in a state of relative stagnation and former peripheries perhaps finally transforming themselves into dominant centres. The expression emerging countries is in danger of becoming obsolete over the years - i.e. once they've emerged. Some of these regions and cities become genuine centres. If we are looking for a city that in the 21^st century would properly symbolize what Fernand Braudel had eloquently illustrated with Venice in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, Amsterdam in the 17^th and London in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and then New York in the 20^th, it would be Shanghai. Every time there is a shift from one dominant centre to another, the former continued to exist but no longer at the top of the hierarchy.

JS: The other major transformation in recent years is the collapse of the Soviet block. We are familiar with the scenario and the interpretation that has been given by some, when Francis Fukuyama wanted to interpret this as the end of history, starting from the moment when the market economy spread everywhere. This was undoubtedly a bit simplistic as it's hard to see why history would stop. That said, how do you see Russia among emerging countries? Does it really make sense to place Russia in the same category as Brazil or India?

AR: That is in fact a problem. Russia at the start of the 20^th century could call to mind Brazil or Mexico at the same time.

JS: Meaning Mexico during the period from 1875 to 1910 when Porfirio Diaz was in power and which corresponded to a modernization perceived by some people there as a threat to their collective identity.

AR: The evolutions in Russia were somewhat the same as those in Mexico and comparable to what happened later in Iran. In all cases, rapid industrialization propelled from outside and a governing class that was turned inward, in other words, a situation that was not in tune with the internal realities and which culminated in a revolution. The 1917 Russian Revolution is highlighted but not enough attention has been given to the revolution that took place in Mexico from 1910 to 1920 and which resulted in the establishment of an original regime led by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP), a name that is not correctly understood from the outside. The original feature of the Soviet Union was that of being a dominant centre from a political perspective, in the same capacity as the United States, but with a fragile economic base. Between those two, Western Europe had economic power comparable to that of the United States but was politically nearly non-existent. Only the United States had everything. Today, Russia has lost its political weight, a portion of its territory and its population. It is somewhat betwixt and between.

JS: Its ability to recover is a credible and even likely scenario. But in its current situation, it would seem highly questionable to count it among emerging countries.

AR: Russia is a special case. Since the fall of the USSR, Russia has been living off its raw materials and energy resources.

JS: Russia's economic profile is that of a well-off country, which is contrary to the idea of an emerging country. Truth be told, Russian is coming out of a collapse.

AR: China as well was coming out of a collapse but has overcome it. In the USSR, after the Stalin years, there was no economic boom and the problems were such that when Gorbachev attempted a complete overhaul, he failed and it all exploded. In the case of China, a few months after Mao's death not only had China transformed itself, it had transformed the world, too. After several decades of Maoism and terrible ordeals, China was able to turn around in very little time.

JS: Another point to be examined among the changes to discuss is decentralization. How do you see this from the spatial justice perspective? If it is a means for bringing citizens closer to power, decentralization can be interpreted as an advance in democracy but doesn't it also include the risk of producing territorial selfishness from the time that budget responsibilities are brought to bear on the regional or even local scale? This can paralyze the central government's discretion and limit its role as redistributor.

AR: Yes. There, too, the scales must be played on. Every time a territory has financial autonomy, this is a problem for transfers and redistributions among comparable territories. The hesitations occur at all scales, expressed by the idea Every man for himself. Agglomerations are the typical example. If there is a geographical object that appears to be unquestionable, it's indeed the agglomeration. We know fairly accurately where it stops. It is visible on the map and on the terrain. In France as elsewhere in the world, agglomerations are made up of 5, 10, 20, 50 communes or even more, which remain independent from one another. Of course, they have ties, but despite the cooperation between neighbouring communes, this municipal splitting interferes with spatial justice, that is to say, the automatic equalizations and impede democracy, i.e. direct elections. Exactly like at the European scale, those in charge are obliged to consider composite majorities, resulting in this case from the figure of representatives of each of the communes. In the United States, in the outlying areas of the agglomerations, where there is no communal splitting but just counties, there are subdivisions whose residents request a special status: that of a minimal city which only takes charge of certain public services. Result: low taxes for favoured populations, the rest being provided by the county - where the standard of living may possibly not be as high. So this is a matter of making the poor pay! Another example illustrating the role of government limits involves urban planning regulations. In Los Angeles, an immense urban blot, the communal boundaries are highly meaningful; when you go from one commune to another, the landscape often changes brutally simply because the regulations for urban development change. If the regulation prohibits, for example, building on a lot smaller than 1500 square metres, it's obvious that the choice was made to exclude middle and modest incomes. Although different, other municipal measures are the result of the same concern: rejection of the poor. In France, why else would communes thus prefer paying a fine rather than abiding by the quotas set by law for social housing?

JS: So, there are centres that try to get rid of their peripheries, or at least the burdens that they could cause. On a different scale, don't these phenomena have convergences with the practices of micro-State tax havens like Monaco or Liechtenstein?

AR: There are comparable mechanisms.

JS: Decentralization can therefore put up barriers against redistribution mechanisms. On the other hand, it can consolidate existing collective identities that are felt to a greater or lesser degree. This leads to another question. Your work envisions an essentially economic justice, in other words, the redistribution of property. Can this concept be extended to other areas besides the economic, that is, specifically the recognition of collective identities? For example, we can think about the fate of minorities and immigrant populations in Europe or elsewhere. Even supposing that the material conditions provided to them are fair, and it's far from being the case everywhere, does the recognition of their identity as a group come under socio-spatial justice?

AR: Yes, it's possible but there is less importance placed on this. This assumes that a group is gathered in the same area. Often, ghettos are left to their miserable fate and considered dangerous. In the same way as dangerous classes were spoken of, there are dangerous areas. In any case, the government is not really that interested.

JS: In 2006, in speaking about the configurations that the centre-periphery model takes, Pierre Veltz remarked that today the centres can choose their peripheries without being restricted to their immediate surroundings. How do you see that?

AR: It's a phenomenon of deterritorialization. The large metropolises end up becoming indifferent to what's going on around them and more interested in what's going on far away. Thus, in the 19th century, Chicago was indeed the Midwestern metropolis. Then Chicago became a world city and suddenly, what happened in the Midwest was of much less interest to Chicago. Management of the Midwest is entrusted to more modest cities, whereas Chicago concerns itself with relations with London or Shanghai.

JS: By the same token, might we then suggest that Paris is more concerned about what happens in other world cities and major economies of the world than by what goes on in Brie or Champagne?

AR: Yes. The situation is no longer that of the 19th century where cities attracted men and resources primarily from the nearby regions.

JS: This observation is essentially an answer to the argument heard occasionally that globalization would invalidate the centre-periphery model because current relations should be pictured more in networks than in spatial continuity. Criticism of this type seems to have misunderstood what a model is.

AR: Yes. That being so, although distant ties are necessary, so are those nearby. In the case of Paris, relations are on a world scale, but Paris also has a role in France and finds itself in the heart of a region that is, moreover, less important geographically than the region around Lyon.

JS: What you're saying is an invitation to pursue a multi-scale process that expresses centre-periphery relations on a world scale and relations that operate on regional and local scales. This form does not call the model into question. It is based on it and explains current configurations.

AR: There are two things that mustn't be confused: the fact of living in pleasant conditions and the fact of deciding. Certain urban phenomena tend to become homogenized. This means that in France, the small cities no longer have the provincial allure they had in the 1950s and 60s. Rural spaces are host to well-off retirees and have the advantages of living conditions comparable to those of the large cities, indeed, better, because there is less stress. On the other hand, decision-making and innovation are just as unequally distributed as yesterday, and perhaps moreso. Who designs the products? Developed countries and very large cities. Who manufactures them? Countries and cities on the periphery. Who consumes them? Everyone. I am struck seeing that it no longer automatically says on items made in but occasionally designed in (California, for example) and assembled in (China, for example).

JS: Your remark is along the same lines as the work by Laurent Davezies entitled La République et ses territoires [tr.: The republic and its territories] which develops the following idea: mobility in the broadest sense (travel from home to work, tourism, changes of residence related to the life cycle) lead to distinguishing the places where wealth is produced and the places where it is consumed. The former are centres and the latter, peripheries but peripheries where life is often better than in the centres. Therefore, the model must be considered not only through production as measured by GDP but also by consumption.

AR: This does not fundamentally change the inequality in decision-making power.

JS: Of course, but saying that Paris has decision-making power no longer allows us to say that the Parisians have, on average, a favoured position compared to those in the country. This statement has become obsolete considering the prices of land and real estate, in addition to many other material constraints. Thus, penalizing Paris to support the provinces goes counter to actual living conditions and places the burden of risk on the capital even though it is no longer in competition with Toulouse or Lyon but with London or Tokyo. Suddenly, it's making the provinces that benefit from Paris' vitality bear some risk, too. This conclusion means that socio-spatial justice requires that centres like Paris must be strengthened even if equitably redistributing the wealth produced is then necessary.

AR: It's the idea that support has to go to that which is working best.

JS: It's taking territories' competitiveness into account.

AR: There is something to be said for this idea but we have to be careful that this is not done at the expense of already weak territories. It's true that some areas are host to well-off retirees. This is the case for the Côte d'Azur, Périgord (with many English), the Costa del Sol and more. These people bring resources, wealth. Moreover, they take trips to their country or region of origin where they have kept ties. Certain places can thus be qualified as "associats", to use my term. But the phenomenon is really not significant as it only involves well-off populations.

JS: This fits in with the question just asked about the point of knowing if spatial justice is necessarily achieved through equalization or if strengthening certain centres for producing wealth that will be consumed elsewhere is not more beneficial to everyone. 

AR: That can be more effective. It all depends on the size of the transfers. If the transfers are massive, you end up weakening the centre, which becomes counter-productive. At any rate, that's not the current trend. Social and territorial redistributions are instead being reduced; social redistributions because the coffers are empty, and territorial redistributions because decentralization makes now-autonomous territorial communities contribute to the expenditures.

JS: We come across this recurring matter regarding development: Should certain places be favoured with the intention of creating hubs of development or should favour be "sprinkled" about in concern for equality?

AR: This is ineffective as there cannot be spatial indifferentiation. Concentration is justified therefore, but you have to know how to stop. In the distribution of roles, all are not equal. Reims would like to make us believe that the city has become a French metropolis, from whence the official name Reims métropole [tr.: the metropolis of Reims] to designate the agglomeration community, and even a metropolis on a European scale. Now, all you have to do is refer to a recent study by the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies somewhat naively reproduced by the city paper, to see that it's no such thing: 20% of the working population of Paris are employed in decision-making jobs, 15% in genuine provincial metropolises and - 7% in Reims; in other words, scarcely more than in Amiens. The truth is that Reims remains primarily a satellite city of Paris.

JS: There's nothing ultimately wrong with that, after all, and it gives the city a useful role that benefits its citizens. Conversely, wanting to operate in a niche that is unsuited to the city in consideration, isn't that missing the mark or putting the wrong foot forward?

AR: In any regard, it's harbouring a great deal of illusions.

JS: Another aspect of spatial justice to be considered is citizenship.

AR: Citizenship is exercised through elections. Now, the electoral boundaries are often ill-suited to reality, added to which is the pressure exerted on the elected officials by the technocrats. Last year I read something by two scholars in the field of development in Bratislava that, faced with the incompetence of the voters and the elected, structures should be created  "to avoid the dominance of the political powers over the administration and technical implementation"[1]!

JS: This is pleading in favour of technocracy, power to the technicians, against democracy and power to the people!

AR: And this was said in a country where democracy is recent! Of course, these authors say they want popular participation but add that the associations do not translate the wishes of the people and are not competent. If we come back to voting, the problem with indirect elections remains in intercommunalities. Add the problem of low voter turnout for municipal elections. If those voting are representative, in other words, if they are a sample in the statistical sense, they would translate the collective sentiment. But this is not the case and to the extent that some categories of the population vote more than others, sociologically and spatially, democracy itself is what's at risk. In Reims, there is 50% voter turnout for municipal elections but 70% in the periphery, while the Croix-Rouge peripheral neighbourhood only has 20-40% voter turnout, according to the offices. Fractions of population, and similarly, territories, are not represented.

JS: There is also the problem of how electoral districts are carved. It's a great classic of electoral geography but is worth recalling as it results in not all voices having the same statistical weight.

AR: In the United States electoral districts are fairly regularly redrawn to take demographic changes into account.

JS: Yes, however the problem remains of boundaries "made-to-measure" and suspected of favouring one camp or another. 

AR: That's true. It's the problem of gerrymandering...

JS: One last question but it's double. Regarding knowledge, does the concept of justice seem to you to be an effective grid for interpreting and analyzing territories? With regard to action, can geography help produce more justice?

AR: That's a broad question! With regard to the first, the concept of justice can drive arguments based on geography. Simply stated, if government gave up intervening, we would be studying something that no long exists, except if we were to study the opposite - spatial injustice. With regard to the second, which has been a question that has been around since the 1960s, geographers can present their supported information, and then it's up to the politicians to do what they think is best. The idea of geographers imposing their ideas would crop up only to lapse into technocracy.

JS: But like others, geographers can make a useful contribution to civic debate.

AR: No doubt, but I will contemplate the question differently and cautiously. Let's look at recent social movements in France. During the debate on the "first hiring contract" proposed by the Villepin government in 2006, we heard many scholars give their opinions. Outcome: the economists came out strongly in favour, whereas the sociologists were strongly against. This means that the economists aligned themselves with business and the sociologists with employees. What value should we place on the social sciences when there are such greatly opposed points of view, neither of which can claim to be objective?

JS: The social sciences are not exact sciences. Thank you very much for this discussion. 

Alain Reynaud, Société, Espace et Justice, Paris, PUF, 1981 (Society, Space and Justice, extracts)

Justice spatiale / Spatial Justice wishes to thanks the Presses Universitaires de France for authorising the reproduction and translation of these pages.

Examining the concept of socio-spatial class along side that of socio-economic class (or social class, if we wish to remain faithful to the vocabulary in use) presents a duel benefit: on the one hand, the use of the adjective "socio" roots this concept in society and prevents the frequent but unproductive opposition of social and spatial; on the other hand, this concept invites unification of the theory of social space differentiation at all degrees of the spatial scale. 

            A social group living on a space thus forms a socio-spatial class. The definition given by Armand Frémont of social space does not only apply to a "[translation] relatively limited but not isolated" space but pertains in different ways and with various nuances, to all degrees of the spatial scale: "a rather strong combination of people's relationships with each other and people's relationships with places is marked by a distinctive consistency of which the men and women in the group are clearly aware."

            By giving our attention to anthropologically "primitive" societies, very strong ties can frequently be observed between a population and the territory it occupies. According to Joël Bonnemaison, in the New Hebrides "[translation] each group does much more than coincide with its territory; it 'is' this territory. In the ideology of the traditional society there is an absolute identification between man and the soil and thence, a territorial fixation ideal." In Madagascar, Jean-Pierre Raison speaks about geographic societies, the definition of which is somewhat like the concept of socio-spatial class, as "[translation] the belonging to a given place expresses  belonging to a social unit defined as much by space as by family relations."

            Without reaching these extreme forms of attachment to places, where in certain cases people cannot leave their territory without giving up their identities, belonging to a same socio-spatial class ordinarily leads to two consequences: on the one hand, an at least partial trend to cultural homogenization, and on the other, the self-definition of the social group in relation to the other neighboring groups in terms of interiority, identity and frequently, superiority.  Without emphasizing purely local anecdotal parochial squabbles, one need look no further than the way in which Parisians of all socio-economic origins easily speak of "provincials", who give it right back to them with the proverb "Parisiens têtes de chiens, parigots têtes de veaux" "[translation] Parisians, dogs' heads, Parisians, calves' heads"[2]. To say nothing of the stereotypes that every people uses to describe neighboring peoples.

(...)

           To properly use the concepts of center and periphery, it must never be forgotten that these are no more than relative concepts and thus are adaptable to all degrees of the spatial scale. This means that Athens has a center and a periphery as a city. And if we wanted to push the analysis, there is no reason why we couldn't seek centers and peripheries on the scale of Athens' neighborhoods. But on the other hand, Athens is the indisputable center of Greece. At the same time, Greece is located on the periphery of Europe and therefore before long, on the periphery of the European Economic Community. However, despite its lag compared to France, the Federal Republic of Germany or Benelux, Greece is much closer to industrialized countries than to developing countries and therefore on the world scale, is part of the center.

            By the same token, when the center of a nation essentially corresponds to an abnormally over-grown city (Mexico City, Mexico; Athens, Greece; Lima, Peru), its strengthening at the expense of the national periphery (the regions furthest behind) translates into the growth of its own periphery in the form of marginalized, underequipped neighborhoods, and at the extreme, Third World shantytowns.

            This is not playing on words nor is it finding that the concepts of center and periphery are meaningless; it is being aware that similar mechanisms function at every level of the spatial scale.

The types of combinations between center and periphery

There are two major possibilities, both of which involve the concept of retroaction, typical in the general theory of systems.  Either there is positive retroaction, i.e. reciprocal actions that maintain and accelerate the procedures described in the previous chapter, and the chasm between center and periphery is exacerbated because the strengthening of the center correlatively results in an absolute or relative weakening of the periphery. Or there is negative retroaction, i.e. actions in the opposite direction which slow down, or even reverse the process at issue, and the periphery is in a position to make up for a portion of its lag; at times this occurs at the center's initiative, at others, at the periphery's own.

            Two components are of fundamental importance here: the flows of capital and the decisions on how this capital is used. The center willingly uses the capital it produces to its own benefit, but it can make use of capital originating in a dominated periphery, people then following the capital almost automatically; similarly, a greater or lesser share of the center's capital can be invested in an integrated periphery, limiting or reversing migratory movements in one fell swoop. As for the periphery, sometimes it allows its capital to leave without protest; at times the periphery is not even aware of it, and sometimes the periphery endeavors to invest its capital on the spot for its own development, having to make use of capital coming from the center but being in control of its use. In short, the periphery may be "passive" or "active" to use Jean-Paul Deler's words in a slightly different sense.

The phenomena of pure domination or the periphery at the service of the center

Dominant center and dominated periphery

The phenomenon of concentration to the benefit of the center and at the expense of the periphery appears at every degree of the spatial scale. Lively city centers compared to the under-equipped neighborhoods in the periphery is a common situation. The growing weight of certain metropolises compared to the "regional deserts" has raised concerns. Preserving, or at times even exacerbating, the gap between industrialized countries and under-developed countries has often been condemned.

            But it is with regard to the structuring of a nation into regions that evolution diverging from the center and from the periphery is likely to become greatest, the migratory flows and the flows of capital not being halted by the existence of political borders.

            The mechanisms were examined in the preceding chapter. There is no need to repeat them; they must just be given their temporal depth. Everything depends on how quickly the losses of the dominated periphery mount up. If the pace is slow, there is some chance that the situation will hold steady over the decades, the center gradually strengthening and the periphery possibly maintaining a stable population thanks to high birth rates. Emigration toward the center, which affects farmers first and foremost, even then acts as a safety valve by preventing excessive pressure on the land.

            At this stage, socio-spatial class-consciousness has not generally been greatly asserted by the population of the dominated periphery.  The domination is not really felt, although it exists. The departures are voluntary or in any case, easily accepted, the drain of assets is sufficiently slow and subtle not to give rise to disapproval and bias goes in favor of the culture of the center. In France, for example, the population of the dominated periphery, namely the West and the South, continued to grow during the 19th century and it is generally considered that the population was at its peak during the second half of the century. Then, the population began to shrink without the phenomenon gaining an alarming speed, at least at first.

            However, if the pace picked up, the life forces of the dominated periphery were in danger of attack, which corresponds with a new sub-model.

Overgrown center and abandoned periphery

 When the mechanisms that produce differentiation between center and periphery have been operating for a certain amount of time, the gap grows with regard to population numbers, and both production and growth rates. The ultimate phase of evolution for the living area is overgrowth and congestion; for areas on the periphery, it's the oft-used expression 'desertification'.

            The abandoned center can empty itself in the most physical sense of the term. In the past, Ireland whose population fell from 8 million in the mid-19th century to 4 million by the end, and more recently, Corsica, which had roughly 270,000 inhabitants in 1881 and probably scarcely 170,000 in 1960 (i.e. half of what it would've had if its migratory balance had not been drastically negative for a century) provide some extreme examples. But this general decline, which makes Corsica a good example of abandoned periphery, is further exacerbated by the region's internal organization, which remarkably illustrates at this degree on the scale also, the center-periphery model. Recently, the extreme north and south and the relatively dynamic areas located on the coastline are where the population and activities have been concentrated, thus playing the role of center, whereas the interior inexorably empties to the benefit of the "center" and continental France. "[translation] Skeleton villages and phantom hamlets" (Janine Renucci) multiply in what has become the periphery of a periphery. (...)

            In the face of such situations, the population in marginal areas often loses all faith in itself, does not try to react and gives up in resignation. At times, a significant portion of the population in the abandoned periphery appears to favor greater centralization. Guy Burgel notes how in the periphery in Greece, the small cities and rural areas wish to deal directly with Athens due to ongoing distrust of the regional capitals whose predominant role they refuse to recognize. "Athenian centralism seems as much driven by provincial will to Athens' benefit, as by a process of colonization of the province by the capital."

            But quite frequently, the population of the abandoned periphery - or at least what's left of it - becomes aware of both its backward situation and the underlying mechanisms at the root thereof. The population rejects the forced exile of its last children in the name of the right to "live and work in the country" and places responsibility on the center for the periphery's decline, such as in the case of eastern Quebec. Often, the recovery of its culture (particularly its language), now appreciated in response to the culture of the center, is a means for re-finding its identity, even if at the cost of equivocal, backward-looking nostalgia. The center, which has fed itself at the expense of the periphery, now loses interest because there is nothing left to be taken from the periphery, and this is the sense in which the periphery is abandoned. The periphery tends to become an isolate, turned in on itself because the ties with the center are very weak, and if desertification has gone beyond irreversible thresholds, the periphery will in fact become a blind spot.

            With regard to the living space, if a number of peripheries have thus been emptied, living space is in serious danger of being congested and becoming an abnormally enlarged center. At the same time, an oversized center struggles to reconcile everything when exercising decision-making and creative responsibilities but also production duties - forward-looking and common alike. Excessive growth results in diseconomies of scale and negative externalities. The overload of road systems multiplies the losses of time. There is a danger that the disadvantages of concentration and centralization will outweigh the benefits.

The redistribution of tasks between the center and the periphery, or unequal sharing

            In some cases, there is a reversal of the direction of flow and the living area sends a portion of its capital and inhabitants to work in the fringe area, which becomes an integrated periphery. Depending on the volume of the flow and the nature of the achievements, two sub-types can be distinguished: on the one hand we find the integrated and exploited periphery, developed from an abandoned periphery or a blind spot, involving flows of little magnitude to the nearly exclusive benefit of the center's inhabitants; on the other hand there is the integrated and annexed periphery, developed primarily from a dominated periphery or an isolate, involving high-volume flows from which the inhabitants of the fringe area derive certain benefits. But both sub-types of integrated periphery remain in a situation of dependence vis-à-vis the center and it is in this sense that the redistribution of tasks corresponds to an "unequal sharing". 

Dominant center and integrated and exploited periphery

In most industrialized and developing countries, growth goes hand in hand with a growing need for natural resources. The centers are therefore on the lookout for mining and energy properties to satisfy the needs of their industry, but also "landscape properties" to provide rest and recreation to their populace.

            With regard to the mining and energy properties, the dominated or abandoned peripheries that had been developed previously can no longer provide the desired products in sufficient quantities. Therefore, new spaces must be looked to. The states that have such spaces, which are generally located at the limits of the inhabited areas, attempt to develop them themselves but generally turn to the most powerful industrialized countries for capital and technicians. There is no shortage of examples: in Brazil, the Amazonia is a multi-national paradise; in Canada, the far north is host to American capital; in the United States, Alaska; in Sweden, the entire northern part of the country; in the USSR, central and eastern Siberia, which Japan was called upon to develop; in Africa, the countries of Sahel and Zaire; in China, the entire western part of the country, Qinghai and Xinjiang in particular.

            The designation integrated and exploited periphery refers to a very particular situation, especially typical at the upper degrees of the spatial scale. In all cases, this type of marginal area is characterized by a very low indigenous population, a difficult environment, outstanding scenery, abundant natural resources (particularly forests), metals and especially rare metals (uranium), and energy resources (coal, hydroelectricity, petroleum). These resources justify massive investments, gigantic worksites and new infrastructure, which brutally and drastically impact the fate of these socio-spatial classes. One word sums up these environments: fragility. Fragility as regards the human environmental interaction, as the aboriginals - Eskimos, Lapps, Indians, Asian nomads and the farmers, hunters and gatherers of Africa - are catapulted suddenly into the most advanced technological world with all the resulting risks of a too-rapid acculturation. And the fragility of the natural environment, as the ecosystems are subject to the consequences of heedless development, solely concerned with short-term profitability.

            These flows toward the exploited periphery, i.e. in the opposite direction compared to the cases contemplated previously, have little effect on the center - or centers - at their origin. The center finds useful, perhaps even indispensable additions to its inhabitants' development or quality of life but the center's organization is not upset.

Hypercenter and the integrated and annexed periphery

It is rare that the mechanisms of domination speed up to the point of reaching total desertification of the dominated periphery. At one time or another, in an assortment of contexts and for various reasons, a reversal of flow occurs that is of much greater scope than in the case of the exploited periphery, particularly migratory and capital flow.

            On the scale of the city, and especially the larger cities, the center often loses a portion of its resident population, which prefers to settle in the periphery, i.e. in the suburbs, occasionally even in rural communities from whence the frequently used term "rurbanization". The phenomenon is so general and commonplace that there is no point dwelling on it. But the city, considered as a whole, also loses a portion of its industries. Although the head offices may willingly remain, the production units have set up shop elsewhere. The movement is spontaneous, as observed in New York, London and Johannesburg. In fact, in all cases, the lack of space and the high price of urban property prompt manufacturers to leave in order to update their factories while also achieving a financially attractive operation.

            The area on the fringe, which benefits from these moves, then becomes an integrated and annexed periphery, whose characteristics are appreciably different from those of the preceding types. On the national scale, the periphery's migratory deficit is mitigated and may even go over to the plus side. In the United States, the South is a prime example: from 1940 to 1959, the balance was -3,500,000 individuals; from 1960 to 1975 the balance was +2,500,000 individuals. In France, the most recent census (1968-1975) confirmed the trends hinted at in the preceding census (1962-1968).

            The reversal of flows of capital is no less clear. In the integrated and annexed periphery, modern agriculture, industry and tourism are often the work of firms from outside the region, originating in the center. Thus, in the state of Arkansas, located in the southern United States, 62% of the 200,000 industrial jobs this state had in 1973 reported to an out-of-state head office, primarily in the cities on the northeastern seaboard of the United States, i.e., their center. In Italy, in the space of a few years Sardinia has gone from being a dominated periphery on the way to becoming abandoned, to being an integrated periphery: petroleum refineries and resorts stretch along a coastline that not long ago was half deserted.

            If such processes become generalized, does this result in a decline for the center? When a dominated periphery loses a share of its capital and activities to the benefit of the center, it is weakened, but the reverse is not true. The center that invests a portion of its capital in the integrated periphery and locates a share of its everyday activities there, derives additional power, since it maintains control of the subsidiaries created. It becomes a hypercenter, that is, a refined center, which in the best conditions, acts as coordinator, serves as a driving force and commands. All studies on the geography of decision-making show the power to command exercised by certain cities in the center, where corporate headquarters are clustered, and whose production units are scattered throughout the integrated and annexed national and/or international periphery. Far from being a mark of the center's weakening, investment in the integrated periphery is a sign of vitality, expansionism, the desire to "conquer" - in a word, "imperialism", to take up a term with distinct political connotations and which applies most especially to the relationships between the center and the periphery on the world scale.

            For the integrated and annexed periphery, the arrival of capital and migrants from the hypercenter is an inkling of socio-spatial justice, in other words, a start to redistribution in favor of the more disadvantaged socio-spatial partner. But this socio-spatial justice is nonetheless inadequate.

The reversal in the direction of relations : declining center and periphery counting on its own strengths

            The periphery can also become aware of its backwardness and try to make itself heard. There are several options open to the periphery. Many voices can rise to dismantle the mechanisms of backwardness and condemn under-industrialization, perhaps even de-industrialization, as well as the decline of agriculture, demanding assistance from the state or alternatively, to reject major projects imposed from outside, such as an oil refinery or nuclear power plant, for example, which seem to do more harm than good. Or, the periphery can attempt to transform its image in order to be more attractive to companies seeking a rewarding location, by dangling genuine or supposed advantages in front of them. On the national scale, Ireland and South Korea very actively strive to attract businesses. On a regional scale, Bavaria, the various states in the southern United States and just recently in France, the Ardennes and Aquitaine regions, are attempting to simultaneously play on two opposing themes: growing vitality and the preservation of a quality of life based on tradition. But in every case, the claims and image changes are only palliatives. While passivity leads to nothing, awareness is only the first step before attempting to better take charge of one's fate by "counting on one's own strengths".

            In fact, not all peripheries are sinking into an inexorable decline, of which desertification would be the final inevitable phase and the peripheries who escape from this prospect do not automatically become the dependents of a hypercenter seeking the benefits of decentralization. In a certain number of cases, areas that have long been on the fringe are demonstrating remarkable vitality without outside help, without natural resources and without large cities. Enough studies are stressing this type of evolution that there is an attempt to identify a periphery counting on its own strength model. The expression "counting on its own strength" is Chinese in origin. Its heyday was the late sixties and once it became an ideal, it became a slogan before becoming set in dogma until 1976. The expression must be very broadly interpreted here to refer to a socio-spatial class in a dominated periphery situation that shows its ability to check its decline through the will and initiative of at least some, if not all, of its inhabitants'.

What it is : the transition from dominated peripheries to integrated peripheries

            A leitmotiv has pervaded the chapters of the second part as, at every degree of the scale, a major trend has been affirmed for the last two decades. The integrated peripheries are replacing the dominated peripheries and as an aftereffect, the hypercenters are taking over from the dominant centers. In the city, lively suburbs with services and jobs extend the refined centers. Through rurbanization, the countryside gets a second wind in response to the cities that were stifling them a short time before. Marginal regions that once were abandoned reverse their net migration and welcome decentralized factories. Peripheral nations and former colonies become the location of choice for transnational firms.

            Everywhere, two antithetical processes are in contrast to one another which can be summed up by saying that "expiration gives way to inspiration" or again, that "explosion arises out of implosion". Behind the images of implosion and inspiration, a dominant center has to be imagined that, like a black hole, traps the flow of people, capital and goods to its own benefit, concentrates them and territorializes them. In some way, the flows are deterritorialized in the periphery and reterritorialized in the center. Nothing escapes from this type of center, which becomes increasingly attractive the bigger it gets. The process has often worked over the course of history but, while also still current, increasingly during our time it is moving aside for action headed in the opposite direction. In fact, through the process opposite to explosion or expiration, a center emits flows that are deterritorialized in that they are leaving the center but are reterritorialized in the integrated peripheries. The center, which has become a hypercenter, now coordinates and controls these flows from a distance.

            As for the integrated periphery, dependence becomes more subtle, because the signs of renewal and restarting mask their specific operating contexts in the eyes of many. The hypercenter, for its part, is placed under the sign of quality instead of quantity. It's no surprise then if the population decreases in the downtown areas compared to the rest of the agglomeration, plateaus in the cities compared to the surrounding countryside, diminishes in certain living regions like the northeastern United States and stagnates in central nations, like what has happened in Japan and the Federal Republic of Germany. Thus, across the scale, the consolidation of decision-making power, financial hegemony, cultural outreach and the ability to innovate no longer necessarily go hand-in-hand with demographic growth.

[1] Translator's note: Quoted in English in the French text. SWM

[2] Translator's note: This is simply a rhymed taunt that country people use to mock Parisians. SWM

Bibliographie | References

Bernard BRET, Université de Lyon 3, Alain REYNAUD, Université de Champagne -Ardennes
«Un entretien avec Alain Reynaud, avec des extraits de Société, Espace et Justice », [«An Interview with Alain Reynaud, with extracts of Society, Space and Justice », traduction : Sharon Winkler Moren, C. Tran. (ATIO)]
justice spatiale | spatial justice | n° 04 décembre | décember 2011 | http://www.jssj.org

Right to the City, Neoliberalism and the Developmental State in Cape Town.

Marianne Morange, university Paris 7 Diderot

 "... what I still had to understand - and it wasn't something that happened immediately - was that it is ridiculous to rail against something that revolts you if you fail to even lift a finger to fight against it. If I came to even slightly "commit myself" (...) [it is] because I was averse to such absurdity: to curse fate and build another life through writing, while doing nothing to build this life anew. All in all, less a matter of passion than logic."

Michel Leiris, Le ruban au cou d'Olympia, 1981, Gallimard, page 165

Reflections based on the work by S. Parnell and E. Pieterse, 2010, The 'Right to the City': Institutional Imperatives of a Developmental State, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 34, no. 1, p. 146-162

1. Urban policies and neoliberalism in South Africa: The context of a scientific debate

In February 2010, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research published a symposium on "Local governance and participation under neoliberalism: comparative perspectives", coordinated by Valeria Guarnersi-Meza and Mike Geddes[1]. Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse, professors at Cape Town University, co-authored an article entitled "The 'Right to the City': Institutional imperatives of a developmental state"[2]. This highly stimulating text - both theoretically and empirically rich - broached the issue of neoliberalism at the local level through the South African example, more precisely that of Cape Town. It was strongly marked by the controversy over the development of post-apartheid urban policies and by the very topical debate on the role of the South African State in the field of development.

Twenty years after the abolition of the apartheid regime (1991) and given the failure of the redistribution exercise promised by the ANC[3], the reviews are rather bitter. Spatial, social and racial inequalities persist[4] and whatever has been achieved has not lived up to the initial ambitions, political expectations and enthusiasm that set the country ablaze in the 1990s. This relative failure is sometimes attributed to the neoliberal turn taken in the mid-1990s at the national scale (e.g. the analyses by Peet 2002, Bond 2005a and b), and the shift towards neoliberal urban planning (sometimes described as simply entrepreneurial) studied in Johannesburg (Murray 2008), Cape Town (McDonald 2007, Miraftab 2004a and b) or Durban (Narsiah 2002 and 2010). The ANC's internal transition between Thabo Mbeki, a representative of the party's liberal arm, and Jacob Zuma, incarnating a more social liberalism in the absence of a truly socialist regim (in 2009), constituted an attempt at adjusting and responding to the immense disappointment among the people. However, the disappointment continues and is even worsening as South Africans are aware that they live in the only almost emerging African economy and, for many of them, in rich metropolitan cities.

S. Parnell and E. Pieterse suggested ways to diagnose this failure and requested researchers and practitioners in the city to redraft a more just city program. They are well-known experts in the field of South African urban studies and very active within the African Centre for Cities[5]; they have specifically examined urban policies in Cape Town, which form the basis for an innovative and inspiring illustration of their statements. According to them, there is a need to break away from the post-neoliberal period in order to develop such a program.

Postneoliberalism may be defined in at least three ways that not only differ from each other, but are sometimes even contradictory. It may designate (1) the recomposition of local governance and the redefinition of the State's role after a neoliberal phase or, conversely, (2) the end of neoliberalism, likened to the return of the regulatory State, following a Neo-Keynesian change of direction forced by the financial crisis that began in 2008. Hence, "post" here refers both to a break with history and the political injunction to seize the opportunities offered by this period in order to transcend neoliberalism. In both cases, neoliberalism is understood in its relationship with the State (either by reasserting it or by calling for its transformation, if it is believed that there has been no roll back of the state), and from the economic policy perspective. At another level, postneoliberalism also refers to (3) going beyond neoliberalism as a theoretical analytical framework, deemed ill-adapted to the area observed or as being non-heuristic.

S. Parnell and E. Pieterse's article lies midway between the last two conceptions of postneoliberalism (2 and 3) and combines them in a rather complex manner. It has led to a counter-postneoliberal discourse on the rights-based city, by proceeding with a dual displacement in perspective: it suggests an "alternative" to "neoliberal aspirations" (p. 146), but also to the neoliberal understanding of the city through academic criticism. On the one hand, S. Parnell and E. Pieterse suggest replacing neoliberal "trends" by "a more radical rights-based agenda for cities" (p. 146), by repositioning the issue of public interventionism and the role of the State at the heart of the debate. This agenda refers to the debate on what is called the developmental (national and local) State in South Africa - a project dating back to the mid-1990s, but whose meaning has never been clarified, as the authors remind us (on this notion, see for example Van Donk et al. 2010). They offer to flesh out the "developmental" project. On the other hand, their approach is based on "A rights-based shift beyond urban neoliberalism" (p. 150). They maintain that by focusing criticism on neoliberalism, we would deprive ourselves of the possibility of bringing about changes in urbanistic practices and nurturing them: "We believe it is misplaced to only focus critical attention on the neoliberal tendencies of local states" (p. 150). At the same time, they question certain forms of political activism within the South African social movement whose attacks they deem counter-productive (p. 151): "Grassroots pressure that remains stuck in an oppositional mode without propositional demands tied to concrete institutional reforms ... is unlikely to effectively displace neoliberalism in practice at the local level". They call for a radical stand, but a propositional and not defensive one ("propositional politics", p. 158). In this text, neoliberalism is therefore considered something that is sought to be overcome in order to re-establish fair urban practices, as well as a marginal aspect in such policies, one that should not be placed at the heart of the analysis as it does not help in laying the foundations of a fair, post-apartheid city.

The text has chosen not to indulge in a theoretical debate about neoliberalism, nor does it define neoliberalism. It postulates that the reader is aware of these debates. It envisages neoliberal urban development broadly as a non-distributing or confiscatory form of action, engendering exclusion and pauperization. Hence, neoliberalism is sometimes associated with governance or government-related issues (managerial practices - p. 147, public-private partnerships - p. 158, "Lean and fragmented institutional state arrangements" - p. 148) and sometimes economic issues, above all through the notion of the recovery of the costs of urban services. Or else neoliberalism is defined in the negative, as something that is contrary to interventionism, redistribution and cross-subsidization - all in all something that is contrary to the social justice that the rights-based agenda presented here seeks to promote: "Increased emphasis on planning, defining public good, regulatory reforms, greater law enforcement, fiscal policies that enable redistribution and cross-subsidization" (p. 150). Neoliberalism is therefore envisaged in its relationship with the State as a form of partial State withdrawal or roll back.

This perspective must be re-positioned in the South African context and in relation to more general debates on neoliberalism. The concept of neoliberalism finds itself at the cross-roads of two areas that give slightly different definitions of neoliberalism:

1. Neoliberalism seen as the contemporary form of capitalism, forged to overcome the 1970-80 crisis of accumulation; it would result in a transformation of the State's role and a restructuring of public action to place it at the market's service. This definition refers to analyses at the national level and to work on the filiation of neoliberalism with German "ordoliberalism". It is particularly well-adapted to countries of the North. In this approach, adaptive mechanisms like a "roll back" (State withdrawal, dismantlement of the welfare State)/"roll out" (extension of new government practices and governance based on new values at the service of capital) exist, going beyond mere State withdrawal.

2. Neoliberalism viewed as an anti-interventionism ideology and a coherent and hegemonic anti-State project related to globalization and dictated to the countries of the South by the Washington consensus - a global discipline purported to be established through deregulation and privatization (structural adjustments of the 1980s in the South) and likely to engender "unequal geographical development" (Harvey 2005). This perspective - close to international political economics and the world systems theory - is particularly well-adapted to the countries of the South.

This dual approach has been theorized and translated at the urban scale by Brenner and Theodore (2002). They underlined the importance of the local variants of neoliberalism (of the "actually existing neoliberalism") and the adjustment processes to distinct and specific local contexts. These processes have sometimes been analyzed in terms of "creative destruction", a term borrowed from the Marxism vocabulary, or as hybridity and "variegation" (systemic variation as a constitutive mechanism of the neoliberalism process, Brenner et al. 2010). Local variants and "path-dependency" mechanisms (the idea of dependency on the "path" of neoliberalism in relation to the specificities of the local context) have therefore been studied in South African cities (Didier et al. 2009, Didier et al., under print, Didier et al. to be published).

However, the notion of neoliberalism ends up posing a problem because these local variations may make a generic neoliberal model unrecognizable (that is, if one exists) - a model believed to have come from Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair's United Kingdom, from Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton's USA or Augusto Pinochet or Michelle Bachelet's Chile. It triggers a discussion on the meaning (whether neoliberal or not) of the "Third Way" of British Labor, American Democrats, or German Social Democrats, for instance. Public action in South African cities is the subject of a similar debate and one can understand why it may be problematic to speak of neoliberalization if we limit ourselves to a narrow definition of the term, which refers to first generation Thatcherian anti-Stateism. That is what prompted S. Parnell and E. Pieterse to dispute the relevance of this theoretical framework for South African cities (Robinson and Parnell 2006): in South Africa, the State (national and local) never stopped playing a central role, especially with regard to urban planning issues, and no clear alternation between "roll back" and "roll out" has been observed, as in the case of the heartland of neoliberalism (Morange and Wafer 2011). Neoliberalization may have directly taken a third path whose meaning remains debatable. But this debate - quite heated in South Africa - has not been broached directly here[6]; however, one must be aware of this context to understand the interventionist perspective of this text. The second part lays emphasis on the importance of public planning and land control, implicitly opposing the triumph of market-led development in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and the rejection of regulation by government planners, for instance by someone like Reg Ward[7] (one of the expressions he used remains well-known until today: "I don't believe in the planning system. I'm opposed to land-use planning; quality does not flow from it"). In another text, S. Parnell and J. Robinson (2010) mentioned their "Postneoliberal interest in the role of the state" (p. 11).

At another level, the interest shown in neoliberalization seems to divert attention from the fundamental issues: poverty appears to be seen as an outcome of both the State's shortcomings (its inability to come up with fair and effective solutions) and its withdrawal, and problems of informality and poverty are seen as being related to development issues, not to neoliberalization. The article therefore suggests that the issue of urban policies should be broached through the prism of poverty and development - an approach deemed more appropriate to give an account of the specificity of South African issues, while also being in line with international development policies and the World Bank's discourse (see, for example, Lautier 2002 for a critical approach to the World Bank's pro-poor discourses).

Finally, S. Parnell and E. Pieterse place the emphasis on public action and on the "South": the State's regulatory capacity-building emerges as a necessary precondition to go beyond neoliberalism (the "paradigmatic shifts" sought, p. 151).

However, there is a third view of neoliberalism: in a Foucauldian perspective, neoliberalism is understood as a form of trans-sectoral rationality (economic, political, social, etc.) based on the naturalization of entrepreneurial values, competitiveness and competition, and the individual accountability of entrepreneurs themselves. Such a rationality engenders "self-led behaviors" and the institution of "monitoring technologies" related to new forms of governmentality (meeting between domination techniques and self-techniques, "behavior of behaviors") (Dardot and Laval 2009, p. 13): "Neoliberalism, before being an ideology or an economic policy, is primarily and fundamentally a rationality and...in this sense, it tends to structure and organize not just the actions of those who govern, but also the behavior of those who are governed". Foucault (2004 [1979]) speaks of "the activity that consists of governing the conduct of men". This transformation is at the service of the perpetuation of the capitalist regime of accumulation, but it does not mean the withdrawal of the State. It refers to the dissemination of neoliberal values in the whole of society and, therefore, also in the sphere of the State which, irrespective of its form, serves as an intermediary for their propagation and becomes one of the architects of this rationality, without necessarily being the main one. This line of thinking suggests envisaging neoliberalism as an overhanging rationality that seems to permeate the predominant values and perceptions, and therefore public policies and therefore invites us, on the contrary, to refocus our attention and not place the State at the core of our analyses.

The counter-discourse on the right to the city drafted by S. Parnell and E. Pieterse therefore opposes a certain form of neoliberalism (anti-interventionism), by once again placing an emphasis on the need for public interventionism, but it does not question the risk that public action may, sometimes, borrow from neoliberal rationality, even if only partially. If we envisage urban policies in Cape Town from the Foucauldian perspective, we can distance ourselves from the current debate as it is being conducted in South Africa and go beyond the problems referred to earlier: rather than questioning the way in which a 'grand neoliberal plan' would probably dissolve into Cape Town's specificities to produce neoliberalism - or perhaps not - we could seek to understand how neoliberalism, as a rationale, is from time to time infused into local action, even when the latter is genuinely aimed at establishing a developmental project. This approach invites us to interpret urban policies in terms of neoliberalism, but by moving away from the political economics' perspective, and considers the sphere of the ideological constraints within which urban policies are deployed. We can try to do so while taking inspiration from the two examples described in this article.

2. Transcending neoliberalism? Two examples

The text is based on two emblematic examples of development problems in cities of the South so as to explore an interventionist postneoliberal path: difficulties in access to urban services and the persistence of informality, which would lead to the inability of thinking of inclusive urban planning for poor areas (failings in land use management). The aim, through these two examples, is to show that a criticism of neoliberalism misses the fundamentals, because these injustices can probably be attributed less to neoliberalism than to deadlocks that can be overcome by institutional reforms.

The choice of these two examples enables the authors to cleverly take a stand opposed to the one upheld by literature critical of neoliberalism (especially in South Africa), while at the same time entering into a direct dialogue with it. Anti-neoliberal criticism is in fact focused on urban services (Miraftab 2004b, Smith 2004, Bond and McInnis 2006) that it considers as being emblematic because of the social effects of privatization-corporatization (with discussions on the degree, the nature or the sense of 'privatization'): water and electricity supply cuts, evictions. It is also politically very rousing. On the other hand, urban planning is of barely any interest to neoliberal criticism, which neglects the metropolitan scale and targets, for example, local economic development systems much more (free trade zones, City Improvement Districts, etc.), which produce territorial inequalities and exclusion in the name of economic accumulation (Miraftab 2007, Didier et al. 2009, Morange to be published in 2011), whence, according to S. Parnell and E. Pieterse, a certain degree of shortsightedness (the metaphor comes from us).

1) Urban services

S. Parnell and E. Pieterse stress the fact that public goodwill to "provide basic service support based on need, not ability to pay" is real, but hindered by "institutional barriers" (p. 152). The City is not seen as being "institutionally well-equipped to redistribute" (p. 153), for two reasons:

- It may lack financial means: To subsidize services, more cross-subsidization may be required; and to do so, the rich would have to consume more, which is not a sustainable model in environmental terms.

- The poor are seen as difficult to identify, because they are considered invisible, confined to informal housing areas. Informality is seen as a hindrance in fulfilling the right to the city because it reflects the absence of State monitoring, identification and enumeration machinery, among others (p. 153). The institution of forms of monitoring would be a pre-requisite to improve services: the installation of pre-paid water and electricity meters, for instance (fixed tariff for 6,000 liters per month for indigent households, a municipal policy that cannot be conducted without ensuring that the poor are seen by the state - known and supervised.

However, these highly relevant analyses include a number of constraints deemed insurmountable: the principle of covering global costs and the obligation of autonomy and budget balancing, which push local authorities towards entrepreneurial management and ever-greater competition among themselves to find the financial resources. In fact, it is difficult in such a context to imagine greater forms of redistribution between the rich and the poor. The authorities would rather bank on growth because urban competitiveness is at stake. It must also be recalled that the metropolitan merger and fiscal cross-subsidization that it brought about in the 2000s were strongly disputed and that social peace too is at stake. As for consumption-related control mechanisms, they tend to push poor households into practicing their own quota system as far as their consumption is concerned (we are dealing here with the neoliberal style of self-conduct), so that it does not exceed the threshold fixed by the upper echelons on the basis of financial constraints, and not necessarily needs (i.e. if they can be determined normatively). In both cases, justice is thought of in the structural scarcity imposed by a much larger context (which refers to a problem of decision-making levels and dependency on a macro-economic and political environment, often highlighted in literature), and adjustment is done in turn at the household and individual levels. It is the administrative rationale of local governments that the criticism of social movements attempts to break, so as to initiate a political debate on the limitations of a redistribution project under duress.

2) Urban and land planning

The immense landscapes of informality - seen here quite negatively as the cause and syndrome of urban wrongs - are considered to be linked to three problems:

Public action is guided by the need to find land that the "poor can afford" - land for which the poor can manage to pay. However, such land is hard to find.

 The dualization of city planning procedures seems to favor the growth of informality. The 1991 Act 113 (so-called the Less Formal Establishment of Townships Act) authorized local governments to free themselves from national and metropolitan urbanistic norms and rules in poor areas so as to accelerate procedures. This led to "second-class suburbs" (p. 155) in which informality compensated for the lack of facilities, particularly commercial facilities. For the rich - formal cities, for the poor - a malfunctioning informality. This unjust dualization cannot be considered to be associated with neoliberalization but with the replication of urbanistic practices inherited from apartheid and it is considered to stem from the difficulty of breaking with the colonial and apartheid periods: the 1923 Native Urban Areas Act prohibited commercial activities in townships (essentially for tax-related reasons).

Ž The more general inability to ensure the respect of city planning rules and municipal decrees in poor areas seems to reflect an unjust renunciation of their role by government authorities.

In this case too, these analyses imply a certain number of presuppositions: the land issue has been envisaged in terms of physical geography and the scarcity of buildable land (constraints related to natural sites and the need to protect the environment that hike up the cost of buildable land). The real estate speculation engendered by urban regeneration policies is not mentioned. The authorities' role is to steer the way in a free real estate market system that one does not envisage reforming or constraining in any way. As for two-tier planning, it too can be considered as a pragmatic response to the injunction of building at lower costs for the poor - a leitmotiv of international housing policies for cities of the South. This refers back to the well-known debate on how impossible it is to make the poor creditworthy within the context of international competition in which macro-economic wage policies are influenced by the need to maintain a level of international competitiveness (Osmont 1995). Moreover, as the authors have recalled, the deterioration of the housing stock in townships is partially the result of massive privatization of public real estate. This was fast-tracked in the 1990s in order to promote private ownership (we once again see the figure of individual entrepreneurs who must prosper if they know how to make their assets productive) and re-balance municipal budgets through public disengagement (Morange 2006). Finally, tolerance towards informality can be easily understood in a neoliberal framework[8]: informal employment, especially trade, plays the role of a safety valve that is tolerated in certain parts of the city (in poor neighbordhoods), but is prohibited in well-to-do areas (that is the significance of the spatial typology in the 2009 municipal decree on informal trade in Cape Town). Therefore, neoliberalization is perhaps not totally foreign to these difficulties.

Within this framework, the spatial confinement of the poor to the peripheries with poor facilities does not pose much of a problem, in fact: all that is needed is to put the responsibility of their individual mobility back on their own shoulders. Neoliberal injunctions with regard to work-related mobility - through discourses on the right to mobility and the individual sense of responsibility of the unemployed - are not too far off (see, for instance, Fol 2005 concerning the same debate in France and North America), with a strong interventionist complexion here (improvement of public transport). Likewise, in terms of facilities (leisure, trade), public discourses emphasize mobility and accessibility to the city centre, for instance with urban regeneration creating "public goods" (Dubresson 2008): everyone will have access to the Green Point Stadium, built in the city centre for the 2010 Football World Cup, and it would have been economically counterproductive to build it in Athlone, a disadvantaged, mixed-race area. Finally, everything depends on the level at which the issue of justice is raised and the rights being referred to: the metropolitan level for employment opportunities and access to urban facilities, or the local level as regards the quality of life related to the immediate environment.

Promoting rights within the framework of economic globalization and globalized competition between cities is therefore necessarily limiting for the latter. In fact, the issue is to understand whether poverty is envisaged as the result of poor integration in neoliberal globalization or of an injunction forcing integration in globalization. This then brings us to the second definition of neoliberalism (see above). On the other hand, in the first perspective, if the City did not have the financial means to do better for its poor quarters, it was because it had not positioned itself well in globalization. To improve this state of affairs, it must show itself to be competitive, which would then limit its room for maneuver, especially with regard to expenditure. Therefore, the idea is to find "a sustainable model of urban poverty reduction based on job creation and economic growth" (p. 149). The choice of laying an emphasis on cities as preferred areas for economic growth (in accordance with the World Bank orientations in its 2009 report on development, see Giraut 2009) amounts to noting the fact that the State must come up with "a transformative agenda in an urban context sutured by capitalist modernity" (p. 158) and place itself at the service of this agenda. This boils down to an attempt at reconciling two agendas - pro-poor and pro-growth - in a globalized environment (Lemanski 2007). This point of view has been reconfirmed and accepted in the text's conclusion: "Making cities of the South work better purely in terms of becoming economic nodes in the global systems of trade, production and consumption is not going to help the poor in those city regions. But failing to make these emerging global nodes work for all their residents may hinder their global progress" (p. 159). The importance given here to accounts-based arguments can be understood - "Return on investment cycles, calculations about affordability and long-term operational maintenance" (p. 159) and, even more directly, competition: "This level of institutional change in urban government is essential if cities of the South are to function resiliently and compete at all in a global economy" (p. 151).

3. A reformulation of the "right to the city" influenced by the South African context

The second, very thought-provoking aspect of this article is the way it appropriates the notion of the "right to the city", which it has borrowed from Henri Lefebvre so as to produce an agenda that is very far removed from the "experimental Utopia" dreamt up by the latter[9]. The reference to the right to the city is assumed by the use of inverted commas and the singular noun (in the title), but its author's name never appears. The authors do not claim to be followers of H. Lefebvre. They reappropriate his expression and reinterpret it personally with great originality.

First of all, the notion of rights is interpreted through a liberal prism, translated to the plural and often added to: right to freedom of movement, to urban services, a secure environment, etc. Rights are referred to in the plural: legal, economic and political rights whose respect must be ensured by a regulatory and legal framework. No longer is it the right (in the singular) to the city, but more the citizens' right to take ownership of the city by "making efforts" in "daily life". The aim is to give this right an operational content, though it has a more open and vague dimension in H. Lefebvre's works: "We give particular emphasis to defining those rights whose meanings arise from settlement planning or management-based policies and interventions, what we call 2^nd and 3^rd generation rights or 'the right to the city' (p. 147)". These rights, in the plural, are interpreted in terms of the fight against poverty and "poverty reduction"[10] and the notion of the right to the city is placed at the service of a definition of the developmental State.

This leads to a typology based on the periodization of the development of the contents of these 'rights' in international agendas, since the 1950s:

- 1^st generation rights: Political, social and economic rights seen as individual rights; it was the era of the "welfare State", which promoted educational, health and other related policies.

- 2^nd generation rights: Rights seen at household and district level; it was the era of "fundamental needs" (water, housing, electricity, etc.), the fight against informality and poverty in cities, the Millennium Development Goals.

- 3^rd generation rights: Rights viewed at the metropolitan scale, transcending the sphere of urban services; security, mobility, the urban environment in the broader sense, transportation, public areas, etc. were to be considered.

- 4^th generation rights: City-dwellers were to be freed of the threat and risk of war, economic volatility and climate change; the contents of the 3^rd generation rights expanded.

The 3^rd and 4^th generations are goals yet to be achieved. They borrow from the spheres of sustainable development and environmental justice. This typology implicitly falls within the framework of the international debate on development that emerged in the post-war period (and above all, the 1970s, around the notion of human development), but it too was influenced by the more specifically South African context, of which it would be useful to explain some aspects:

- The fight for political rights was fundamental under the apartheid regime, as testified to by some of its more well-known slogans (e.g. "one man, one vote"), although economic demands were important and influenced by a Marxist interpretation of apartheid as an exploitative capitalist system. In 1991, attention focused on democratization (the patient joy of long waiting lines during the 1994 elections, after almost civil war-like images, was carefully staged). The political claim was consensual and avoiding exposing the internal tensions within the ANC and the tripartite agreement between the ANC, the Communist Party and COSATU (the Confederation of South African Trade Unions) with regard to economic orientations. Twenty years later, as political rights were deemed attained, the debate turned towards the ability to draft a more nuanced agenda of multiple rights. Economic issues, overshadowed for some time, re-emerged and criticism of the neoliberal shift strengthened. These four generations of rights therefore followed one upon the other without replacing each other. The impression given is that of them gradually stacking up and being displaced: economic and social rights were later added to political rights.

- The text is based on a classical interpretation of development - linear and progressive - refuting J. Ferguson and A. Escobar's post-modern attacks on developmentalist mythology (p. 153). It proposes a developmental agenda whose purpose is to lead, in particular, to growth and, implicitly, at the service of human development ("developmental outcomes such as growth", p. 158). It does not discuss the limitations of this conception of development, which has, in fact, been criticized and historicized (Rist, 1996). This perspective has to be accepted to be able to broach the text. In fact, it is assumed by the authors and is in line with their being rooted in South Africa's political debates, marked by the desire to invent a totally new development model, based on the idea of the exceptional nature of South Africa - one that could perhaps even be exported.

- The debate's spatialization (the shift from individual/household rights to 'district' rights) reflects the strengthening of local authorities in terms of their say in development issues - a movement linked to decentralization. The 1996 Constitution established Cities within the sphere of autonomous government (along with the State and Provinces). The incorporation of cities is perceived as a fair historical process. It results in considerable faith in the capacity of the metropolitan level to serve the public good and transcend any intra-urban egoism.

- The reason these rights were not attained seems to lie above all in the institutional weakness ("weak state", p. 150) of institutional and political frameworks postulated as being good. This weakness is presented as being linked to South Africa's post-colonial context: "Obvious in post-colonial contexts where local and provincial governments are rather belated constructions, with limited fiscal and human capacity and with incomplete administrative systems" (p. 150). Cities of  the North serve as a counter-model, with their strong capacities in terms of control, statistical measurement, political supervision, etc., where the necessary conditions to ensure that justice is achieved are available. At local level, the State in South Africa is partially exonerated for its inability to provide services to the poor due to its relative youth, which the State in the North is not.

This perspective is far removed from the revolutionary content of the text drafted by H. Lefebvre in 1967, just a few months before the May events in France, and the idea of the citizens in general and the working class in particular taking over urban issues. Here, revolutionary horizons have only been mentioned in metaphorical terms (p. 151): an "institutional revolution in the city". The "paradigmatic shift" that they are hoping and praying for (p. 151)  is based on a reformist conception of the right to the city, as a project for the regulation of capitalism. This posture has clearly been accepted: "At this point it is important to clarify our confidence in the role that regulatory reform can play as an element in a larger radical project" (p. 158). The authors speak of collective rights (p. 149) whose unifying factor - whether it is a neighborhood or a socio-economic identity (the poor as a social group) - is not a class identity formulated within the framework of a power struggle with the dominant class. They did not indulge in a Marxist interpretation of "the production of space" (promoting the value of the use of urban space as against its exchange value, which is a priority in the capitalist production of space) and did not position themselves in the field of power geography. They have not referred to any power struggle in the city, nor mentioned any effects of dominance and exploitation. Just urban policies that work or do not work. Tensions between opposing economic interests are hardly visible. The right to the city would emerge from collaboration between parties, explicitly opposed to the egoism of public-private partnerships (p. 158), without a clear explanation of the modalities of these arbitrations, which of course is not the subject of the article.

In this project, change is operated by the State, whereas H. Lefebvre based his views on a radical criticism of official city planning in the 1960s. He denounced the havoc caused by functionalist and bureaucratic city planning, which was alienating and dehumanizing, the Athens charter and certain State action with regard to cities that repudiated "urbanity", the capacity to appropriate the space and time of city life, and referred to the alienation caused by modern life, particularly for the working class, which was relegated to urban peripheries. H. Lefebvre was radically wary of city planning and the idea of planned cities that is being defended here. Equity, balance and redistribution are never questioned by him; rather, he speaks of a political right that has nothing to do with institutions or the State - and obviously even less with governance, an anachronistic term in 1967.

Finally, S. Parnell and E. Pieterse proceed to translate the MDGs' universalist agenda to the local scale, through a re-interpretation of the right to the city, which is finally above all the State's business, which is very original. Their radicalism stems from a highly voluntarist and universalist humanism (a term they several times lay claim to), which seems inspired by the UN's style, and which they characterize not as radical, but as "more radical" (p. 146, 147, 158). They endorse a "moral platform" (p. 147) rather than a radical agenda in the literal sense (one of systemic criticism and of going back to the roots of problems). They reassert the value of the State's regulatory role, often perceived as weak in DCs, against the idea of self-help by the poor. This change in tack goes hand in hand with a certain international literature (the authors quote a 2000 World Bank report in this regard).

This postneoliberal stand in favor of regulatory State interventionism was popularized by the financial capitalism crisis that occurred in 2008, and was an option explored by certain leftist political movements, or was disputed by certain radical geographers (Peck et al., 2010). The restoration of State legitimacy has been viewed as something that would make it possible to establish an anti-neoliberal agenda, if neoliberalism is seen in its narrowest terms, as being synonymous with the withdrawal (even if partial) of the State. Here too, as part of a neoliberal perspective, one should bear in mind and consider that a powerful metropolitan government may have a neoliberal agenda: for example, the creative and entrepreneurial Greater Paris or Cape Town agenda. And that the metropolitan level has also been selected in the name of competitive regionalism for reasons of positioning in globalization and not of redistribution (or rather, for both reasons in proportions and according to the interactions that must be explained in each local context). And finally, the fact that it is actually in a certain North that neoliberalism is the most marked at the local level, perhaps actually because of the existence of high control capacities (the "roll out" was effective).

4. Perspectives

Be that as it may, this article sets two highly stimulating challenges before radical geography:

1. The need for an in-depth study of certain theoretical analyses of neoliberalization

For example, the linkages between neoliberal reforms of the State mechanism ("roll out") and the weakness/strength of public institutions still need to be examined in greater depth first and in varied contexts, because they are not mechanical. The North-South disparity here is of crucial importance because of financial and institutional constraints specific to the cities of the South. The South African case in particular - mid-way between political ability and powerlessness - makes it possible to consider neoliberalization in terms of political room for maneuver, in fact by re-placing the State at the heart of analyses and, in a way, faced with its responsibilities. The South African State's supervisory capacities are considerable as compared to the rest of the continent and its cities enjoy a strong tradition of urban development and planning as shown by decades of apartheid (1948 - 1991).

This article also raises the difficult question of political intentionality. David Harvey already raised this issue with regard to the entrepreneurial city without actually resolving the problem (1989). In fact, local governance institutional mechanisms are never homogenous nor accepted as such in neoliberalism, any more than local governments are (the authors refer to Larner and Leitner with regard to this point, p. 157). Hence, injustices are not merely related to a cynical gap between discourses and practices. S. Parnell and E. Pieterse very rightly recall how much the discourse on justice has been clear and constant in Cape Town, especially in the 2002 Indigent Policy and the 2006 Economic and Human Development Strategy (see Parnell and Boulle 2008). They underline the importance of "commitment from all spheres of government" in this regard (p. 151). The gap between the discourse and practices would therefore be due to the manner in which political arbitration and power is exerted, according to them. The idea would be to examine the areas of tension between the points of view of different actors to promote greater justice (in fact, a definition of participatory democracy could even perhaps be found in this way). In any case, an examination of arbitration modalities and tensions is definitely central to any understanding of neoliberalization processes, something that is rarely studied, as a matter of fact.

Finally, we still need to assess to what extent the arbitration carried out would call the neoliberal rationality into question, if at all. For instance, neoliberalization does not deny the fundamental rights discussed in this article. It claims to serve these rights by guaranteeing that growth would reach all citizens through the trickle down effect, as long as competitiveness is assured. This adaptability (or flexibility) of neoliberal rationality may be considered as one of neoliberalism's structural strengths, which has been theorized in the form of "variegation" (Brenner et al. 2010), as the very basis for its stability, or else as the necessary plasticity for social adjustments (the Third Way), depending on the perspective. The question of the neoliberal rationale's content and modes of dissemination therefore remains unchanged. However, the rationale is by definition vague, necessarily unequivocal, mixed with several other elements and internal contradictions, and is not based on any harmful intention or assumed political discourse. If M. Foucault speaks of rationality, it is obviously to designate an evanescent reality - diffuse and difficult to work out. The difficulty in identifying it does not, however, mean that it does not exist. But while it may be possible to dissect a "constructed" discourse, it is more difficult to analyze manifestations of governmentality. Here, we once again come across self-led behavior (as compared to directly repressive or restrictive ideological and political domination). This raises methodological problems concerning the interconnections between the collective and the individual, discourse and practices, and even between the conscious and non-conscious, and the theorization of power (between fluidity and concrete and physical domination based on media control, economic power, academic domination, etc.). Hence, this text invites us to think about the utility and limitations of an urban policy approach in Foucauldian terms and to reflect on its geographical operational nature as well as the relevance of its expression at the urban scale.

McDonald and Smith (2004) have tried out this exercise (although they do not refer explicitly to M. Foucault, unlike V. Watson, who in the same way did very edifying work on the ups-and-downs and destiny of spatial planning in Cape Town in the 1990s, as inspired by Foucault). They traced the dissemination of neoliberal values in Cape Town, through a qualitative survey of the City's technical staff in charge of urban services. They describe a "self-reinforcing loop of neo-liberal discourse and practice" which they sought at different levels of government. These approaches offer very fruitful openings while simultaneously raising just as many problems: why be confined to the public sphere, how can the interconnections between the various levels be envisaged, what neoliberalism indicators should be selected when the term itself raises so many problems, how can the sectoral approach be transcended (only services), how can multi-disciplinarity be incorporated, since it is so necessary for such analyses, etc.? Studies then focused on the role of democratic participation in this exercise of power (for instance, in the same IJURR symposium, see the article by Blakeley 2010 on neoliberal governmentality in Barcelona and Manchester, or Morange on democratic participation and the neoliberal control of informal trade in Cape Town - to be published). At the urban level, participation is undoubtedly an obvious channel for the dissemination of the neoliberal rationale, but undoubtedly not the only one. And that leads us to think about a geography or power in the city that transcends the level of direct and visible political confrontation, while also embracing it.

2. Taking up a political challenge

Finally, as S. Parnell and E. Pieterse put it so well, this critical decoding program (as conducted systematically, for example in another context by Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999) can be useful. But it does not necessarily make it possible to go beyond neoliberalism in terms of a political project. M. Foucault formalized the French Left's inability to propose any form of counter-rationale to neoliberalism, not so much in terms of the content of political programs (redistribution, social, etc.), but in terms of a raison d'être in the world. It may be imagined that for him, a program aimed at redistribution, the mitigation of inequalities in urban services, or the improvement of the urban environment, however urgent it may be, does not suffice to re-establish a political project likely to knock "neoliberal reasoning" down. From this point of view, he would perhaps agree with S. Parnell and E. Pieterse on the critique of South Africa's social movements, although for other reasons.

The problem in terms of radical geography is therefore twofold: Must we go through this stage of de-construction to undertake counter-construction? Can we develop a counter-rationale without first determining the functioning of the predominant rationale? The question, in short, is of knowing whether or not (partially or totally) the absence of a counter-rationale emerges from the weakness of our critical machinery. But is such a de-construction, even if it is necessary, sufficient? The highly ambitious and valuable work of displacement that this article undertakes shows to what extent vigilance against the naturalization of some of the values and manners of envisaging a just city is difficult. The authors themselves said it: "Implementing a rights-based agenda at the subnational scale necessitates a radical critique of the instruments as well as values of the local state" (p. 159), and, of course, beyond all that, values ingrained in all the citizens.

In such a case, how can we not lose sight of the fundamental aim of all radical agendas: the transformation of the world? By positioning themselves very explicitly within the framework of a progressive project that seeks to transform the city, S. Parnell and E. Pieterse return to this initial and ambitious intention. Whether or not the critical analyses of neoliberalism have abdicated the desire for transformation is far from certain. This raises the issue of the political commitment of research scholars, but above all the forms of their commitment. The denunciation of oppressive systems enables them, to some extent, to barricade themselves within a critical analysis that is detached from immediate issues, and while we may sometimes be tempted to do just that here, we do acknowledge its limitations, along with them. Conversely, failing to consider the structural reproductions of different forms of domination that limit reformism means running the risks related to pragmatism and confining oneself to one's own limits in the reformist field.

Finally, formulating a counter-rationale by drawing inspiration from theoretical frameworks developed at other times raises a problem. Right to the city and Foucauldian governmentality agendas were developed at a time when political mobilizations had another dimension and took on other forms. That calls for re-placing these theoretical contributions in perspective in terms of current issues and, particularly, distancing oneself from the notion of the "right to the city" by taking a look at all it through the prism of current realities, as S. Parnell and E. Pieterse have done in a truly inspiring way. Critical or radical geographies will undoubtedly have to continue these discussions in the future.

[1] Outcome of an international research seminar on urban governance, public services and participation, held in March 2007 by the Local Governance Research Unit of Montfort University and the Local Government Centre, Warwick University.

[2] Parnell S., Pieterse E., 2010, The 'Right to the City': Institutional imperatives of a developmental state, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 34, no. 1, p. 146-162.

[3] African National Congress, the freedom party. See its electoral manifesto during the first democratic elections in 1994, the Reconstruction and Development Program, RDP, inspired by the 1955 freedom charter.

[4] The article does not give a detailed description of these but refers, for example, to the analyses by Seekings and Natrass.

[5] Established in 2007, this inter-disciplinary network of research scholars based in Cape Town University proposes fundamental research and discussions between the academic world and the political and administrative spheres in Cape Town.

[6] The issue is discussed earlier by S. Parnell and J. Robinson (2010) in an article in which they affirm that speaking of neoliberalism does not allow us to understand the totality, nor even the majority, of the South African urban dynamics. What has been contested here is the univocal and systematic mobilization of a theoretical framework conceived in the North and related to the cities of the North, to interpret the changes of post-apartheid urban policies in a context in which the State is strong.

[7] First Director of the London Docklands Development Corporation in charge of the regeneration of the London docks in early 1980s.

[8] The figure of the small, individual, local entrepreneur is even highly promoted and there are local policies that aim at supporting the "second economy", although the latter is destined to gradually be incorporated into the "first economy", according to a national discourse.

[9] The reference to the Utopian dimension has not been used here, as it may have been in another, older article with similar contents (see Parnell and Boulle 2008).

[10] Poverty reduction, poverty reduction target. The text refers constantly to this international goal.

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Marianne Morange, Universit� Paris 7 Diderot
«Droit à la ville, néolibéralisation et Etat développemental au Cap», [«Right to the City, Neoliberalism and the Developmental State in Cape Town», traduction : Sureeta Narula,Vandana Kawlra, FITI PVT. LTD]
justice spatiale | spatial justice | n° 04 d�cembre | december 2011 | http://www.jssj.org

JSSJ : David Harvey, merci beaucoup ! Nous sommes très heureux, et en même temps émus, de vous accueillir à Nanterre et de pouvoir réaliser cet entretien pour la revue Justice spatiale / Spatial Justice. Frédéric et moi-même allons nous partager les questions. Et puisque nous sommes à Nanterre, mais aussi parce que c'est une de nos principales références communes, ma première question concernera Henri Lefebvre. À la fin de votre livre Social Justice and the City, vous dites « je viens de lire Henri Lefebvre, après avoir terminé les premiers chapitres de ce livre », puis dans la postface de ce livre, dans la dernière édition, vous avez ajouté ce texte «The right to the city 2008 ». Ma question est donc : quel était alors le sens de la référence à Henri Lefebvre, et quel est son sens aujourd'hui ? Votre interprétation de Lefebvre et l'usage que vous en faites ont-ils évolué ?

DH : Eh bien, à mon avis, il me semble qu'on pourrait dire qu'à la fin des années 60, Lefebvre réagissait à un état des choses. Lorsqu'il a dit, au sujet du droit à la ville, que c'était « un appel et une exigence », il réagissait aux événements. Et quand moi-même je suis venu à Paris pour la première fois, en 1976, il y avait beaucoup d'agitation urbaine dans divers quartiers de la ville, et je pense que cela avait joué un rôle très important dans les événements de 1968. Mais une des caractéristiques de la pensée de gauche, c'est qu'elle néglige très souvent d'intégrer la dimension urbaine de la politique. Il y a à gauche une tendance à penser aux usines, aux travailleurs, et la communauté est en quelque sorte secondaire, mais j'ai toujours pensé qu'il était très important de toujours faire le lien entre ce qui se passe à l'usine et ce qui se passe dans la ville. Il me semble que Lefebvre comprenait cela très bien à son époque, et que c'est ça qui le faisait réagir. Je pense qu'aujourd'hui nous vivons une situation similaire, et que les conditions de la vie urbaine sont du point de vue politique tout aussi importantes, et même par certains côtés plus importantes, parce que sans doute dans les pays industrialisés, la classe ouvrière traditionnelle s'est affaiblie, au point d'avoir en grande partie disparu ; tout est parti en Chine.

Donc je pense qu'il réagissait aux événements. Et il me semble qu'à gauche nous devrions réagir au contexte concret qui nous entoure, en y étant plus attentifs que nous ne le sommes. Et par conséquent, si le thème du droit à la ville est en train de réémerger, comme on peut le voir par exemple au Brésil, ou qu'il a réémergé aux États-Unis, ce n'est pas parce que les gens ont lu Lefebvre, c'est plutôt à cause de la situation concrète. La ville néolibérale est devenue tellement divisée entre les classes, et son pouvoir oppresseur se fait sentir si fort dans la vie urbaine quotidienne pour tant de gens qu'il me semble qu'il serait absurde de ne pas y prêter attention au même degré que Lefebvre en son temps. De mon point de vue, le relire aujourd'hui est une façon de nous dire que nous devrions réagir à notre situation contemporaine comme il avait réagi à la fin des années 60, en envisageant l'urbain très sérieusement dans ce qu'il recèle de potentiel révolutionnaire.

JSSJ : Vous définissez le droit à la ville comme un « droit humain précieux et négligé ». Pourriez-vous développer ? Pourquoi un « droit humain » ?

DH : Parce que je crois que, dans une société émancipée, nous devrions tous avoir notre mot à dire sur l'orientation que nous prenons, et je pense que la relation qui existe entre l'urbanisation et le genre de société que nous fabriquons devient importante. Ou, pour le dire autrement, la question « quel type de ville désirons-nous ? » ne peut recevoir de réponse si nous ne nous posons pas cette autre question : « que voulons-nous devenir collectivement ? ». Et le fait de poser cette question sur les potentialités de l'humanité, et sur le développement des capacités et des pouvoirs humains, me semble en rapport avec ce que Marx appelle le droit à « l'épanouissement humain ». Et c'est pour moi un droit fondamental, qui est en partie reconnu par la conception bourgeoise du droit, et c'est pourquoi il me semble qu'il faut que nous nous emparions de ces conceptions bourgeoises pour les projeter dans cette nouvelle dimension. Bien entendu, parler du droit à la ville revient à créer ce que j'appellerais un signifiant vide. N'importe qui peut se réclamer du droit à la ville : c'est ce que font les promoteurs, c'est ce que font les gens de la finance ; nous avons à New York un maire milliardaire, qui proclame son droit à la ville. Mais ce qu'il y a de bien avec un signifiant vide, c'est qu'il pose la question de savoir qui doit le remplir de sens, et cette question devient le pivot du débat, et c'est pour cela me semble-t-il que le droit à la ville a été intégré dans la constitution brésilienne ; en réalité, il est maintenant un peu partout. J'ai vu des groupes qui travaillaient sur ces thèmes à Zagreb, à Hambourg, partout. Ils ont chacun des conceptions légèrement différentes de sa signification exacte, et c'est inévitable. Mais le fait de le désigner comme un droit, c'est le placer au centre même du discours bourgeois, et donc, c'est à la fois quelque chose d'interne à ce discours bourgeois, mais cela a aussi la capacité, comme quelqu'un comme Lefebvre pourrait le dire, de faire éclater ce discours. Et c'est pour cela que j'aurais tendance à l'appeler un droit humain tout à fait fondamental.

JSSJ : En Afrique du Sud, mon terrain de recherche, ce lien entre la ville et l'usine a vraiment été important dans la lutte contre l'apartheid, et cette question est à nouveau actuelle. Mais vous avez mentionné New York et son maire : qu'avez-vous à dire au sujet du droit à la ville à New York aujourd'hui ?

DH : Lors du Forum social américain de 2007, il s'est créé une Alliance sur le thème du droit à la ville. La plupart des groupes qui ont rejoint cette alliance, par exemple, n'avaient jamais entendu parler d'Henri Lefebvre... Ils ont juste vu une situation où travailler sur les sans-abris, militer contre les brutalités policières, ou travailler sur ce genre de choses, se faisait plus efficacement en coopérant, et en ayant une espèce de programme plus vaste. C'est ainsi que l'Alliance pour le droit à la ville a essayé de mettre au point une plate-forme en proposant des voies alternatives pour l'urbanisme. Et il me semble qu'un des problèmes qu'ils ont soulevés, qui est à mon avis crucial ces derniers temps, est celui de savoir pour quel public est l'espace public. Lorsque le maire Bloomberg décide d'expulser une partie du public de l'espace public, il est évident que ce n'est plus de l'espace public. J'aime bien assimiler l'espace public à la possibilité qui existe d'en faire un véritable bien commun, un lieu de débat politique. Et ce qui se passe aujourd'hui dans la plupart des villes, c'est qu'il est de plus en plus difficile de trouver un espace public qu'on puisse utiliser comme bien commun. A Londres, Paternoster Square [place près de la bourse de Londres], est entièrement administrée par des sociétés privées. Bien que le public y soit admis, c'est entièrement privatisé, même s'il y a une autorité responsable. C'est pourquoi le mouvement londonien Occupy s'est replié sur les marches de Saint-Paul, parce qu'alors que le monde des affaires les aurait immédiatement expulsés, l'attitude de l'église était plus ambivalente. Une des questions soulevées par l'Alliance du droit à la ville a donc été celle de la nature de l'espace public à New York : qui le définit, pourquoi le maire prend certains espaces publics comme Washington Square, qui étaient autrefois des lieux de rassemblement, pour en faire des endroits aseptisés, destinés davantage aux touristes qu'aux habitants. Telles sont les questions que l'Alliance pour le droit à la ville s'est efforcée de poser. Pour diverses raisons, cette alliance n'a pas été très active depuis environ deux ans. C'est le propre des mouvements sociaux, après le premier élan vient le temps des remises en question et des conflits de personnes. Donc ils n'ont pas été très actifs, en particulier dans leurs relations avec le mouvement Occupy Wall Street, mais d'un autre côté, l'idée du droit à la ville a bien été reprise par Occupy Wall Street, sans employer l'expression.

JSSJ : Il y a aussi la question de la violence dans les espaces publics. J'écoutais des nouvelles du Caire ce matin, et la violence dans l'espace public est extrêmement politique. Mais dans certaines parties du monde, peut-être presque partout, il existe de nouvelles technologies de contrôle de l'espace public. Et cela doit avoir un effet.

DH : Oui, et je ne sais pas si vous avez ça ici, mais à New York, il y a ce que l'on appelle des « Business Improvement Districts », dans lesquels des sociétés privées se mettent à exercer un contrôle sur l'espace public au sein duquel elles exercent leur activité. Maintenant, à New York, nous avons la même chose à Central Park, qui est sous l'autorité d'un conservatoire, formé par un consortium de donateurs privés, qui prend des décisions. Et si nous voulons organiser une grande manifestation contre les républicains, un meeting politique, ils ne nous permettent pas d'entrer dans Central Park, parce que le conservatoire explique qu'ils ont dépensé beaucoup d'argent pour soigner le gazon, et qu'ils ne veulent pas qu'on l'abîme. Et c'est comme ça que le droit du gazon l'emporte sur le droit des gens à se réunir. En fait, la constitution américaine, naturellement, garantit le droit de réunion, mais le problème à présent c'est que ce droit ne vaut plus rien puisqu'il n'y a plus d'endroits pour l'exercer. Certes, le droit de se rassembler et de s'associer existe, mais vous ne pouvez pas vous rassembler parce qu'il n'existe aucun endroit où le faire sans avoir besoin d'aller voir le maire pour lui demander : « S'il vous plaît, Monsieur le maire, auriez-vous l'obligeance de nous permettre de faire ceci ou cela ? ».

JSSJ : Vous venez de dire « nous » au sujet des mouvements sociaux : cela signifie que vous vous engagez, que c'est important pour vous. Et pour vous citer, vous avez dit récemment « c'est notre devoir en tant qu'universitaires de changer notre mode de pensée » ; et à une autre occasion, en parlant de théorie marxiste, vous avez dit « c'est une nécessité de participer, de s'engager, même si vous ne connaissez pas toute la théorie, vous savez au moins que cette question de la lutte des classes est fondamentale ». Ma question est donc : à vos yeux, quel est notre rôle d'intellectuels et d'universitaires ?

DH : Je pense que nous sommes forcés d'être un peu schizophrènes. D'abord, un de nos rôles en tant qu'universitaires est de nous efforcer de maintenir à l'intérieur même de l'université des espaces où des formes de pensée radicalement différentes peuvent s'épanouir. Et je suis sûr que vous savez que cela n'est pas chose aisée : il y a fort à faire pour combattre les orthodoxies néolibérales, les pratiques managériales, et bien sûr les restrictions budgétaires et toute cette sorte de choses. Notre rôle d'universitaires engagés est donc de préserver des espaces où des choses peuvent se produire. Mais il me semble que cela fonctionne mieux lorsqu'il existe un lien entre ce que nous faisons et ce qui se passe hors de l'université. C'est pourquoi il m'a toujours semblé particulièrement important d'avoir un pied hors de l'université. Je ne suis pas un organisateur, beaucoup de mes collègues qui travaillent de cette façon ne le sont pas non plus, mais nous nous efforçons de faire ce qui est en notre pouvoir pour faciliter certaines choses : des discussions, des rencontres... Ce que nous pouvons faire également, je pense, c'est d'aider les gens, du moins s'ils le souhaitent. Par exemple, sur la question du droit à la ville : nous pouvons, collectivement, travailler à en articuler le sens. De mon point de vue, jamais je ne penserais dicter à un mouvement social ce qu'il doit faire et comment il doit le faire, mais s'ils veulent discuter de ce qu'ils font en relation avec les grandes forces qui sont à l'œuvre dans la ville, etc., afin d'être capables de mieux se placer par rapport à tout cela, alors je serai toujours prêt à m'asseoir avec eux pour essayer de les aider. Mais il me semble aussi que nous devrions vraiment nous efforcer de rendre compte au niveau général de ce qui est en train de se passer, afin de permettre aux gens de mieux comprendre quelles forces sont en jeu, et de voir clair à travers les excuses par lesquelles le pouvoir politique se défausse toujours. En ce moment, bien sûr, c'est l'excuse de la dette : cette dette qui signifie que tous ceux qui sont pauvres doivent devenir plus pauvres. Vous ne pouvez pas seulement dire : ce n'est juste ni techniquement ni moralement. À partir de là, vous pouvez développer une rhétorique politique plus générale et construire une position politique.

JSSJ : Toujours au sujet de l'engagement : comment les différentes luttes peuvent-elles s'articuler ou s'intégrer ? Vous distinguez d'un côté des luttes de travailleurs de type classique, et de l'autre des luttes contre « l'accumulation par la dépossession » : pensez-vous que ces deux types de luttes peuvent se rejoindre, et, question annexe, la notion de justice peut-elle servir à cette unification ?

DH : Il me semble que de telles luttes peuvent converger. D'expérience, ce n'est pas compliqué pour le pouvoir politique de diviser pour régner, si bien que nous sommes constamment confrontés à la difficulté de maintenir un front uni contre le pouvoir politique, quand le pouvoir politique consiste essentiellement à séparer, par exemple la question du logement de telle autre question... Par conséquent, je ne vois aucune raison qui empêcherait a priori ces deux luttes de converger. Mais en pratique, c'est souvent difficile. En réalité, même la création d'une alliance pour le droit à la ville efficace et puissante n'est pas une chose si simple. À dire vrai, je ne crois pas que dans l'histoire nous ayons jamais réellement essayé de le faire. L'autre jour, des syndicalistes me disaient : « au lieu d'organiser des lieux de travail, nous devrions peut-être penser à organiser la ville entière ». Et ils se demandaient : « comment fait-on pour organiser une ville entière ? ». Et je me suis soudain aperçu que je n'y avais jamais vraiment sérieusement réfléchi. Mais si vous considérez l'histoire, vous vous rendez compte qu'il y a eu des périodes historiques pendant lesquels les villes ont été organisées, même si elles étaient divisées en factions. L'exemple le plus évident est la Commune de Paris, mais il y en a d'autres ; aux États-Unis, par exemple, la grève générale de Seattle de 1919 a été, fondamentalement, une forme de Commune de Seattle. Et plus récemment, un des exemples qui me fascinent le plus est celui d'El Alto en Bolivie. En considérant cela, je me dis que nous devrions peut-être réfléchir à la façon de s'organiser à l'échelle d'une ville entière. Naturellement, une des raisons de penser de cette façon, comme l'expliquent les gens d'Occupy Wall Street, c'est qu'une ville ne devrait pas être fondée sur les niveaux d'inégalité que nous connaissons actuellement. Par conséquent, il est important d'affirmer que la justice, la justice sociale dans la ville, constitue une part essentielle de ce qui devrait être les préoccupations d'une alliance pour le droit à la ville, et que cela devrait faire partie des buts que l'on se donnerait pour organiser l'ensemble d'une ville.

JSSJ : Vous suggérez de créer : « de nouveaux espaces où pourraient naître de nouveaux processus politiques », et « de mettre en œuvre une occupation stratégique des espaces afin d'élaborer un outil politique pour résister aux forces dominantes qui nous environnent ». C'est presque un programme d'organisation de la ville. Comment voyez-vous cela en pratique, et pensez-vous que les mouvements sociaux actuels aillent dans ce sens ?

DH : Je n'ai pas de conception bien arrêtée sur le sujet. Mon propos est plutôt de lancer cette idée comme un ballon d'essai et de voir ce que les gens en pensent. Mais ce que nous avons souvent vu par le passé, ce sont des réseaux d'actions communautaires. Il y a ainsi un livre intéressant sur ce qui s'est passé en Italie au début du siècle dernier, lorsque l'on a créé des espaces politiques que l'on appelait des « maisons du peuple » qui étaient des centres d'actions communautaires où se sont décidé beaucoup de choses concernant les stratégies politiques, et qui ont été à la base de la mobilisation en faveur des conseils ouvriers. D'après l'auteur, nous connaissons bien l'histoire des conseils ouvriers, mais personne ne s'est intéressé à la relation entre ces conseils et ce qui se passait dans les maisons du peuple. Les maisons du peuple étaient des foyers d'action, qui étaient liés de multiples façons avec les conseils ouvriers, et la puissance de ce mouvement s'explique en partie justement en raison des liens qui existaient entre les conseils ouvriers et les maisons du peuple. Et en Argentine, où il y a toutes ces usines reprises en autogestion par les travailleurs, ce qui m'a frappé c'est que presque toutes, de simples usines, sont devenues à la fois des lieux de production et des centres communautaires. Et lorsque les anciens propriétaires, quand l'Argentine est revenue dans le jeu économique, sont revenus et ont dit « nous voulons reprendre nos usines » ou « nous voulons récupérer nos machines », et autres réclamations de ce genre, c'est la communauté tout entière qui s'est dressée pour dire : « ce n'est pas possible ». S'il ne s'était agi que des travailleurs, ils n'auraient pas eu ce pouvoir. C'est pourquoi je pense que ces lieux, et les choses qui s'y passent, sont politiquement très importants. La protection des usines autogérées en Argentine est intimement liée à la relation qui existe entre l'usine et le quartier. Selon moi, cela fait partie des formes d'organisations que nous devrions commencer à construire consciemment en tant que force politique. Il ne s'agit pas uniquement de défendre les usines, mais véritablement de s'emparer d'un nombre croissant d'usines par les mêmes mécanismes. Je crois qu'il y a une dimension géographique à cette stratégie. Une stratégie géographique qui consisterait à libérer des espaces à l'intérieur desquels certaines activités pourraient se mettre en place de façon alternative est peut-être une des solutions. Par exemple, à Baltimore, il y a un groupe qui s'appelle les Baltimore Workers. Il ne s'agit pas d'un syndicat, mais d'une organisation de défense des droits. Ils ont pris un morceau du centre-ville, ont tracé une ligne autour, et se sont donné pour but de libérer tout cet espace et d'en faire un lieu où chacun aurait un revenu pour vivre et où l'exploitation serait considérablement réduite. Leur militantisme est donc territorial, plutôt que de concerner telle ou telle usine ou tel secteur de l'économie. Ils mettent en œuvre une stratégie du territoire. Périodiquement, ils se mobilisent et encerclent toute la zone, en manifestant à l'extérieur pour protester contre les conditions de travail à l'intérieur. Bien sûr, ils ont maintenant produit un vaste corpus de rapports sur les conditions de travail à l'intérieur de la zone. C'est donc ainsi qu'ils militent. Je pense donc que l'on peut mettre en œuvre des stratégies géographiques.

JSSJ : Vous parlez de « stratégies géographiques » ; ma nouvelle question concerne la géographie : l'espace, le lieu et l'environnement occupent une place tout à fait centrale dans vos analyses. Je ne vous demanderai pas si vous êtes géographe parce que ce n'est pas la question, mais au sujet de la crise, vous dites ceci : « la géographie de la crise est fascinante. » « C'est très important de suivre l'ensemble de son développement géographique »... Comment donc articulez-vous les questions du lieu et de l'espace dans une perspective marxiste ? En quoi ces notions sont-elles cruciales pour la compréhension du monde actuel et de la crise présente ?

DH : Parce que les manifestations de la crise ont toujours un ancrage spatial, et que vous pouvez voir des schémas spatiaux, des mouvements. Une crise qui a commencé dans les marchés immobiliers de la Californie du Sud, de l'Arizona, du Nevada, de la Floride, est ancrée dans des lieux précis. D'autres régions du monde sont concernées, avec l'immobilier espagnol, irlandais, mais c'est toujours précisément localisé. Par conséquent, lorsque vous voulez expliquer la crise, son origine, il faut vous intéresser très précisément aux conditions qui régnaient dans ces lieux particuliers, ce que négligent la plupart des analystes. Ensuite, il faut comprendre comment cela s'est propagé d'un lieu à un autre. Comment une crise qui se développait à tel endroit a-t-elle subitement engendré une crise dans une municipalité norvégienne, qui se trouvait avoir investi dans des CDO, et se voyait tout à coup ruinée à cause de leur faillite ? Comment cela s'est-il propagé ? Et avec quelles conséquences ? Par exemple, pour notre municipalité norvégienne, les conséquences étaient qu'ils ne pouvaient plus régler leurs factures, qu'ils ont dû licencier des enseignants, réduire les services publics, etc. Là encore, l'impact a été tout à fait spécifique, ce qui signifie que la réponse politique doit nécessairement être différente à cet endroit-là de ce qu'elle doit être à l'endroit d'où la crise est partie. Il faut donc penser aux relations. Comment cela se répand, et pourquoi cela se répand de telle façon, et quelles sont les réponses politiques ? Un ami explique que les Chinois répondent à la crise de façon très différente parce qu'ils ont été touchés par la crise de façon très différente. Pour eux, les problèmes viennent de l'effondrement soudain de leurs exportations. Avec 30 millions de gens sans emploi, que vont-ils faire ? C'était ça leur problème, et cela n'avait rien à voir avec le problème initial en Californie du Sud. La nature de la crise change lorsqu'elle passe d'un lieu à l'autre. Et ce changement de nature me semble impliquer un changement nécessaire de la réponse politique. Ainsi, si vous pensez en termes de stratégie militante de gauche, il me semble qu'il est important que la gauche comprenne qu'elle ne peut pas avoir de réponse universelle à la crise. Il faut développer des analyses spécifiques sur le fonctionnement de la crise pour chaque lieu, en comprenant les formes qu'elle prend, quelles sont les réponses politiques de gauche appropriées, et considérer tout cela en relation avec ce qui se passe dans le reste du monde. Pour moi, penser en termes d'espace, de lieu, d'environnement, c'est absolument fondamental pour comprendre les processus d'accumulation du capital, les processus de développement géographique inégal, et les inégalités géographiques dans le développement des réponses politiques. On ne peut pas s'attendre au même type de réponse politique, par exemple, dans une municipalité norvégienne et à Dubaï, quand Dubaï World fait faillite. Ce sont deux situations d'un genre différent, même si elles sont liées par la nature de la crise. Développer une plus grande attention à la relation entre les inégalités de développement géographique et la façon dont fonctionnent les crises et l'accumulation du capital est une partie importante, selon moi, de la contribution que je peux apporter en tant que géographe à la compréhension de la genèse des crises et à l'action politique.

JSSJ : Ce qui nous amène à la question de ce que nous pourrions appeler, pour autant que l'expression ait un sens, la « justice spatiale ». C'est le titre de notre revue, et c'est à l'origine d'un débat entre des gens qui diraient qu'il ne peut pas y avoir d'espace juste, mais seulement une société juste qui a des effets sur l'espace, etc. Vous-même, vous ne parlez pas de « justice spatiale », mais de « justice territoriale ». Que diriez-vous à ce sujet ? S'agit-il d'une notion utile ? Quelle peut être son efficacité ? Il me semble, dans notre approche, que c'est une affaire d'interactions : le social a des effets sur l'espace, mais l'espace affecte aussi le social.

DH : La raison pour laquelle je me tiens à l'écart d'un concept comme celui de justice spatiale, c'est que je me pose cette question : qu'est-ce que l'espace ? Voyez-vous, il y a chez Lefebvre cette distinction entre l'espace perçu, l'espace conçu, et l'espace vécu. Quant à moi, je distingue espace absolu, espace relatif et espace relationnel. Je dois donc me poser cette question : dans laquelle de ces dimensions de l'espace envisage-t-on la justice ? Il me semble que parler de justice spatiale est source de trop de confusion. Je pourrais imaginer une situation où, du point de vue de l'espace perçu, on pourrait avoir quelque chose de juste, mais en considérant l'espace conçu et l'espace vécu, quelque chose de totalement injuste. Ainsi vous pourriez avoir la justice d'un côté et l'injustice de l'autre. Et ainsi de suite, avec l'espace relationnel, etc. C'est pourquoi j'évite de parler de justice spatiale.

Mais si je parle de justice territoriale, j'ai une idée très claire de ce dont il s'agit, à cause de l'importance des configurations territoriales dans la façon dont les sociétés s'organisent. Et il peut s'agir de communes autonomes, si nous nous référons aux idéaux des anarchistes radicaux. Mais comme l'a dit un des critiques des idées de Murray Bookchin, qui défend les communes libertaires autonomes, le problème avec ce système est que rien n'empêche telle commune de devenir extrêmement riche et telle autre de s'appauvrir énormément. Et, à moins d'avoir un système de redistribution entre les territoires, il n'y a pas d'issue. A ce propos... Je réfléchissais l'autre jour à ce qui était « commun » dans le Marché Commun. En partant d'une définition traditionnelle des biens communs, si vous y pensez en considérant la façon dont l'injustice territoriale émerge à l'intérieur de la configuration européenne, vous voyez poindre une espèce de critique d'une forme d'injustice territoriale que l'on peut exprimer et comprendre très clairement. C'est pourquoi « territorial » me convient.  Mais je suis frappé qu'on puisse se donner pour objectif la justice spatiale en général, c'est pourquoi je m'en écarte, mais j'affirme que le problème fondamental de la lutte anticapitaliste est d'avoir une définition du capital. Si vous prenez le volume 2 du Capital, vous verrez que Marx pose toutes ces questions : Qu'est-ce que le capital ? L'argent ? Non, parce que l'argent existait avant le capital. Est-ce la marchandisation ? Non, la marchandisation existait avant. Est-ce le fait d'acheter et de vendre la force de travail ? Non, échanger la force de travail contre des services se faisait avant... Et Marx passe en revue toutes les réponses et les rejette toutes sauf une. Et celle qu'il garde est la relation de classe entre capital et travail, et l'acte de production qui permet au capitaliste de dégager la plus-value. C'est cela qu'il faut abolir. Et la réponse de Marx est : ce que cela signifie, c'est que les travailleurs unis doivent déplacer cette relation de classe.

Il y a donc là une espèce de programme politique très fort. Mais aussitôt surgit un problème : si les travailleurs organisés en association dans telle usine produisent des biens à leur façon et en fonction de leurs propres décisions et que ces biens servent à telle autre usine, comment cette autre usine peut-elle s'assurer que la première produira en quantité suffisante, et ainsi de suite. À l'heure actuelle, des secteurs de l'économie solidaire organisent en fait des systèmes de production qui mettent en relation différents éléments de sorte que l'un puisse dire à l'autre « nous avons besoin de tant de boutons pour mettre sur tant de chemises », etc., mais cela demande de la coordination, et à un moment ou à un autre, on arrive à une forme de division du travail pour ajuster la production aux besoins, ce qui suppose que les flux puissent être organisés de façon systématique, et cela nécessite généralement une espèce d'autorité de planification, ou, à défaut d'une véritable autorité, une façon d'organiser la planification pour permettre au système de fonctionner. Dans ce genre de situation, la justice pourrait par exemple consister à soutenir les usines autogérée en Argentine, en précisant que c'est un point de départ, mais il faut maintenant que nous réfléchissions à la façon de nous attaquer à la manière dont la loi de la valeur fonctionne sur le marché mondial, afin de faire le même genre de choses partout. C'est pourquoi, selon moi, la justice devrait en bonne part concerner le processus de libération de l'humanité de la domination des relations de classe et de production, et non simplement dans le fait d'assurer à chacun le même revenu. Ce genre de choses peut aussi avoir son importance, mais fondamentalement, la société anticapitaliste serait celle où les travailleurs auraient la décision, à la fois à travers l'autonomie de chaque travailleur individuellement, mais aussi à travers des principes d'organisation collective fondée sur la collaboration entre les différents producteurs, afin d'assurer à tous un confort de vie décent.

JSSJ : Excusez-moi de revenir au thème de la justice spatiale. La complexité de l'espace, les trois dimensions de Lefebvre, qui sont le point de départ des trois dimensions que vous développez (relationnelle, relative, et matérielle), cela forme une théorie spatiale puissante et ardue. Mais n'est ce pas aussi une façon de comprendre la complexité de ce que la justice sociale pourrait être, dans sa dimension spatiale, localisée ? La question de la localisation est particulièrement complexe, à cause de la complexité même de la notion d'espace. Serait-il possible de prendre en considération toutes les dimensions de l'espace pour comprendre ce que devrait être la justice spatiale ? Ce serait une théorie complexe, mais serait-elle efficace ?

DH : Oui, je n'avais pas voulu lancer ce débat, mais c'est bien que vous le fassiez. C'est quelque chose qui pourrait intéresser votre revue, et ce sont des questions importantes à explorer. Je sais qu'un bon nombre de gens me critiquent, comme par exemple Edward Soja, parce que je ne parle pas explicitement de justice spatiale, mais ce que j'essaie de faire, c'est de vous expliquer les raisons pour lesquelles je n'emploie pas cette expression. Cela ne signifie pas que la justice n'a aucun rapport avec ce qui m'intéresse, mais je suis davantage concerné par la façon dont on peut l'atteindre. Il ne peut pas y avoir de justice dans un ordre social capitaliste, ce qui pose la question de savoir sur quoi doit porter principalement la lutte anticapitaliste, et, selon moi, politiquement, je préférerais, à la place de la notion de justice, employer la notion marxiste traditionnelle d'épanouissement humain : le développement devrait concerner le potentiel et les pouvoirs de l'humanité, ce qui est très différent de la croissance des richesses et des revenus. C'est pourquoi nous devrions nous détourner de la croissance et de l'accumulation. Ce que je veux dire par là, c'est que selon la théorie néolibérale, si vous lâchez la bride aux forces du marché et que l'accumulation du capital est laissée libre de jouer son rôle, cela devrait profiter à tout le monde. Mais ce que Marx montre dans Le Capital, c'est que plus vous vous rapprochez de cette idée utopique, plus les classes qui composent la société sont divisées. D'une certaine façon, l'argument néolibéral est une escroquerie qui conduit, comme on peut le voir, à quelque chose de radicalement différent : c'est très clair quand on regarde l'énorme accroissement des inégalités sociales qui s'est produit lors de cette crise. C'est à cela, selon moi, que la politique doit s'attaquer, et je pense qu'on peut mobiliser la notion de justice dans ce contexte et que sa géographie, sa territorialité, jouent un rôle. Par exemple, pourquoi en ce moment est-ce que ce sont les Grecs qui sont frappés si violemment et si brutalement ? Qu'est-ce que cela signifie ? Est-ce réellement une nécessité économique ? Ou y a-t-il un choix politique de favoriser l'accumulation par la dépossession, en s'attaquant aux Grecs qui sont un des groupes les plus vulnérables de la zone euro en ce moment ? Vous les dépouillez, puis vous continuez en dépouillant les Espagnols et Portugais, et puisque vous avez déjà dépouillé les Irlandais, vous vous en prenez aux Italiens : il y a une dimension territoriale intéressante dans la façon dont ces affaires sont conduites et vous pourriez considérer cela et dire que c'est injuste en employant cet argument pour provoquer une mobilisation. Mais une fois de plus, la question est de savoir comment nous comprenons la géographie de tout cela, et ce qui se produit dans cette géographie. C'est pourquoi j'aurais tendance à soutenir que l'essentiel de ce qui se produit en ce moment correspond davantage à une accumulation par la dépossession qu'à un accroissement des profits par l'exploitation du travail. Quand il n'y a plus beaucoup d'accroissement du profit, qu'est-ce que vous faites ? Vous dépouillez les autres, et ainsi de suite. Nous vivons une époque de prédateurs, partout dans le monde, et les exemples abondent en ce moment aux États-Unis.

JSSJ : Je relisais hier l'épilogue de Spaces of Hope, écrit en 1998, dans lequel vous décrivez un rêve. Ce n'est pas très rassurant parce que vous mentionnez la date de 2013 comme celle de la grande crise économique, et, dans votre rêve, on glisse vers une situation terrifiante, vers un pouvoir théocratique et militaire. Puis vous revenez vers l'utopie en décrivant ce qui pourrait succéder à cette période. Pensez-vous que c'est cela qui se produit en ce moment ? Pensez-vous que nous devrions être terrifiés comme je l'ai été hier soir en lisant ces pages ?

DH : Ce n'était pas dans mon intention de faire peur. Juste une note au passage : ce texte n'a suscité pratiquement aucune réaction dans le monde anglophone. Les gens n'ont pas réagi, ils n'en ont jamais discuté. Mais en Amérique latine, ce texte est très lu et très apprécié et commenté ; quand je vais dans ces pays, on me demande toujours de parler de l'épilogue de Spaces of Hope ! Dans le monde anglophone, personne ne veut m'en parler, presque comme si je ne l'avais jamais écrit, comme si c'était gênant que j'aie pu un jour écrire une chose pareille. C'est donc intéressant que vous y fassiez référence.

Franchement, je n'en sais rien. À l'évidence, je n'ai aucune idée de ce qui peut se produire, mais il y a en effet des signes nets d'évolutions autocratiques. Quand vous voyez deux gouvernements qui, dans les faits, hors de tout processus démocratique, ont porté au pouvoir de prétendus « technocrates » pour résoudre leurs problèmes ; quand vous regardez ce qui se passe dans la zone euro, et la façon dont les décisions sont prises par l'Allemagne, la France, avec le FMI et la banque centrale, cela ressemble à ce que j'avais décrit dans The Enigma of Capital et que j'avais appelé le complexe financiaro-étatique, qui pour moi a émergé clairement aux États-Unis lorsque pendant la crise ce sont le Trésor et la Réserve Fédérale, et non le président, qui ont dicté la politique du pays. Ce que vous voyez maintenant n'est pas seulement un déficit de démocratie : la démocratie représentative est presque entièrement renversée. Et si vous considérez les mouvements de contestation et les réponses qu'ils suscitent, la militarisation est déjà avancée. Aux États-Unis, seuls les mouvements de gauche ont été réprimés ; le Tea Party n'a pas été inquiété, on l'a au contraire favorisé alors qu'on a réprimé la contestation de gauche. Je pense que nous sommes entrés dans une période très difficile où l'on risque de voir un usage massif du pouvoir policier et militaire pour contenir les mécontents. Que peuvent-ils faire d'autre ? Mais je ne sais pas si cela deviendra aussi violent que je l'avais envisagé dans Spaces of Hope.

JSSJ : Mais il y a aussi la seconde partie du rêve, dans laquelle les plus démunis se révoltent et font émerger quelque chose d'autre. A quelle part du rêve correspond l'utopie aujourd'hui ?

DH : On voit des signes de révolte un peu partout. Certaines révoltes anciennes continuent : le mouvement des sans terre au Brésil, l'insurrection maoïste dans l'Inde centrale, les campements d'étudiants chiliens qui représentent une force réelle, et ce que nous observons place Tahrir... Il me semble qu'en ce moment même, nous sommes au point d'inflexion. Prenez par exemple les étudiants chiliens. Quelle est leur lutte ? Ils se sont débarrassés de Pinochet, mais ils n'ont pas pu changer le système que Pinochet avait mis en place. Et ces étudiants s'attaquent maintenant à ce système, et disent : « nous voulons en sortir ». En Grande-Bretagne, Thatcher s'est retirée mais le thatchérisme est toujours très puissant. Et en ce moment même, ce qui se passe en Égypte, ce sont les gens qui se disent : « d'accord, on s'est débarrassé de Moubarak, mais on ne s'est pas débarrassé du système », et c'est un affrontement prévisible avec ce système qui se dessine. Puisque vous vous intéressez à l'Afrique du Sud, vous savez que vous en avez fini avec l'apartheid et que beaucoup de gens là-bas diraient « bon, cela veut dire que je peux aller dans des endroits où je ne pouvais pas aller avant, je peux aussi discuter avec des gens d'autres races, ce qui était impossible auparavant. Et pourtant, ma vie quotidienne ne s'est pas le moins du monde améliorée ». Dans tous les cas, il y a un système qui s'est mis en place, et il faut systématiquement s'y confronter et l'attaquer, et tout montre que les gardiens de ce système risquent en retour d'utiliser leur pouvoir politique avec brutalité et violence, comme cela s'est produit place Tahrir. Cela signifie que le système d'exploitation et d'accumulation par la dépossession s'intensifie plutôt qu'il ne s'atténue avec la crise. Je ne sais pas comment cela pourrait se dénouer pacifiquement, car je souhaite une issue pacifique, mais vous voyez une mobilisation incroyable du pouvoir des médias et de la classe dominante pour préserver le statu quo. Cela ne sauve pas le capitalisme, cela préserve la portion de la classe capitaliste qui possède toutes les richesses.

JSSJ : Il me semble que Lefebvre a dit quelque chose comme « une révolution qui n'a pas transformé le système et l'espace est une révolution inachevée ». L'Afrique du Sud est un très bon exemple d'un système néolibéral qui s'est parfaitement adapté à l'ancienne organisation spatiale. C'est ce lien entre système et espace qui m'intéresse.

DH : Oui, je pense que c'est fondamental. Nous faisons face à deux problèmes majeurs, l'un est l'appauvrissement global, l'autre la dégradation de l'environnement. Ni l'un ni l'autre de ces deux problèmes ne peut être résolu sans une reconfiguration radicale de la vie urbaine. Cette reconfiguration radicale implique de réorganiser l'espace de la ville. Et aux États-Unis, le problème de l'étalement est plus aigu qu'ici. Qu'allons-nous faire de nos banlieues ? Elles se sont développées comme un mode d'accumulation du capital, et les gens ont adopté un mode de vie qu'ils n'ont pas envie d'abandonner et qui pourtant est, du point de vue de l'environnement, désastreux. Du point de vue social, cette urbanisation est très discriminatoire et injuste, avec des riches qui sont de plus en plus retranchés dans leurs communautés fermées, à l'intérieur desquelles ils prennent des responsabilités envers leur communauté, tout en refusant toute responsabilité sur l'évolution de l'urbanisation en général. C'est donc un désastre politique. Quand vous voyez cela, vous vous dites que ce ne sera pas possible de changer quoi que ce soit aux États-Unis, à moins, comme vous le dites, d'accepter de transformer radicalement les relations sociales et l'organisation spatiale. Et je ne suis pas sûr que ces questions retiennent vraiment l'attention des universitaires, des techniciens, ou des politiques.

JSSJ : Merci beaucoup !

Pour aller plus loin

Les ouvrages de David Harvey commencent (enfin !) à être traduits en français. Dans son oeuvre riche et foisonnante, sont disponibles pour le moment : 

Harvey, David, Géographie de la domination, Les prairies ordinaires, 2008.

Harvey, David, Géographie et capital. Vers un matérialisme historico-géographique, Syllepse, 2010.

Harvey, David, Le nouvel impérialisme, Les prairies ordinaires, 2010.

Harvey, David, Le Capitalisme contre le droit à la ville. Néolibéralisme, urbanisation, résistances, Éditions Amsterdam, 2011.

Harvey, David, Paris, capitale de la modernité, Les prairies ordinaires, 2012 (à paraître).

Bibliographie | References

Frédéric Dufaux | Philippe Gervais-Lambony | Chloé Buire | Henri Desbois
«On Territorial Justice, Human Flourishing and Geographical Strategies of Liberation. An interview with David Harvey», [«Justice territoriale, épanouissement humain et stratégies géographiques de libération. Un entretien avec David Harvey», traduction : Frédéric Dufaux | Philippe Gervais-Lambony | Chloé Buire | Henri Desbois]
justice spatiale | spatial justice | n° 04 décembre | décember 2011 | http://www.jssj.org

NB: this article forms part of a project financially supported by the Brazilian CNPq, which, in 2007 and 2008, granted scholarships to introduce students to science. It takes place within the Laboratory of Human Geography in the Geography Department of the Federal University of Espirito Santo.

The positioning of a mass of people living on meager salaries or in part-time work, next door to a minority with very high incomes, creates a division in urban society between those with permanent access to goods and services and those who do not have the means to satisfy the very same needs. In turn, this creates quantitative and qualitative disparities in consumption. These differences are both the cause and the consequence of the existence, the renewal and the maintenance of two cycles of production, of distribution, and of consumption of goods and services within these towns.

(Santos, 2004, p. 37)

Introduction

            In dealing with the electricity supply network in the agglomeration of Vitoria (Brazil), this article will analyze a technical aspect of the urban area, through a socio-political and economic rationale. Following Milton Santos, for whom "the characters of society and geographic space, at one point in their evolution, are in relation with a given technical state" (2006, p. 171), a fragmented city is brought to the fore composed of two economic circuits, distinct and autonomous, yet interdependent (Santos 2004).

            A comparison will be made of electric energy in two distinct neighbourhoods of the Metropolitan Area of Grand Vitoria (RMGV)[1]. The first, Penha, is a favela[2] loosely occupied by migrants from the neighbouring states from the 1950's to the 1980's, and also by migrants from other cities. The birth of this neighbourhood illustrates the inferior circuit of the urban economy: lack of capital, technology, planning and functional zoning, but an abundance of creativity, self-learning and mutual aid in the construction of houses and public spaces. The area therefore remains marked by multiple usages: homes, shops, services, small workshops. The second neighbourhood, Praia da Costa, is bustling with economic dynamism, off the back of a shopping centre, bars, restaurants and other top level shops. Amongst the highest value areas of the Vitoria agglomeration, it is mainly home to the middle and upper classes and is a hub of real estate activity. The concentration of income in Brazil, amongst the strongest in the world, is particularly apparent in the price of land, which is 40 to 100 times greater in this neighbourhood than in the former. This neighbourhood allows the most characteristic processes of the upper circuit of the urban economy to be visualized: a relative level of urban planning (very often the rules and regulations of urbanism are bypassed for the benefit of real estate promoters) and buildings requiring capital and technology (the property sector is more and more associated with monopolistic capital, both national and international). Increasingly, exchange value trumps use value: unlike in the inferior channels, property here is not just seen as a dwelling but as a commodity and an investment.

This study therefore concerns the role of techniques: it involves understanding the socio-spatial fragmentation through the access to electricity within two socially and economically unequal neighbourhoods, and how this disparate access is conducive to social domination[3].

figure 1: Partial views of the Alto Bairro da Penha (left) and of Praia da Costa (right)

figure 2: location of the metropolitan area of Grand Vitoria

1. Urban fragmentation and the electricity network

            The concept of fragmentation has to be qualified, as it is the subject of multiple meanings and a certain level of ambiguity. In general terms it refers to a radicalization of segregation. Fragmentation would therefore point to "a separation which, beyond the 'residential' aspect, concerns 'public' or collective space: the town's central thread - social and functional - would be in question at least as much as the global, symbolic and social unity of the populating of the neighbourhoods (Navez-Bouchanine, 2002, p.62). But this unity, despite distinct circuits, inherently exists, as the different fragments of the town complement each other, as we will see.

            When this fragmentation occurs on a socio-economic level, in relation to the transformations of society and space, the application of the concept is not easy to grasp. The globalization of the economy leads to a differentiation between the centres and     the peripheries, between those who are connected to globalization and those who are not. But the disconnected amongst them contest the central areas. They lay down a challenge to what is an exclusive and reserved centre. Clearly dominated, they slip into the social space of modernity: street-sellers in the town centres, electronic equipment and televisions in some parts of the working class neighbourhoods, which represents a certain connection as it can reinforce the homogeneity of consumption and behaviour. This fragmentation creates laws and regulations. It opens the door for the connected areas to be protected by private militia. It leads to the appropriation of public spaces and the corruption of their usage. In doing so, it creates tension. And yet the those at the head of these controls are the same people we would find in working class neighbourhoods and who, paradoxically, contribute to the very law enforcement that exploits them (self-exploitation, and simultaneous adaptation to the dominant values and internalization of those values, complicating the simple view of indignation or the idea of a watertight seal between the two social sectors).

            The material expression of fragmentation is equally ambivalent, as we must not confuse poverty and informal dwellings. Differences in income are widespread in working class neighbourhoods, as is conflict between sectors and exclusive behaviour (Navez-Bouchanine, 2002). But beyond the residential question we must consider the networks that relay the different fragments and micro-fragments of the town. People are not locked up in their neighbourhoods. They circulate freely, work, and build relationships outside of their place of residence. Such is the case for bus drivers and domestic cleaners, for example. They may be exploited and dominated, but from this contact is born an awareness of the exploitation, a realization of the conflict, or a submission to the established order with which they are cooperating. Often, we notice strong links in these neighbourhoods between the dominant sectors of the dominated classes (shop keepers, association presidents, public servants, policemen) and the political and economic world within the town[4].

            Physical networks (electricity, water, telephone, optic fiber, road, rail and waterways) are relatively dense, their distribution varying according to the interest and need for their extension into working class neighbourhoods. Networks do exist in these neighbourhoods, but very often of a lower quality and with recurring technical problems.

            These neighbourhoods resist and want to change. Organizations have emerged to protect freedoms, where residents can participate in the political sphere. The image given and the stigma attached to these neighbourhoods by the press - as well as the acceptance by the residents themselves of the negative light in which society portrays them - can lead to  withdrawal. However, this situation cannot be allowed to develop into a contagion: the refusal of reductionism and the desire to break free from segregation is widespread. And yet "fragmentation" is the term that best describes the processes identified.

2. The recent evolution of the electricity supply network in Espirito Santo

            The establishment of Brazil's electricity network occurred in two stages. The first spanned through the 1950's and beyond, during which time electric power was primarily used in industry. Milton Santos puts it this way: "The State is in charge of all operations, as one of the conditions for obtaining external investment is that cheap electric power should be supplied to the industrial sector, the biggest consumers that comprise multinationals and large national firms. As such, large industry monopolizes affordable electricity production, whereas the people are not sufficiently supplied" (Santos, 2004, p.171). Santos' analysis is important; on the one hand it highlights how precarious the supply line is to the residential sector, given that industry has become the priority, and on the other hand it points out that the industrial sector's electricity supply is in fact financed by the residential sector. In the 1970's industry accounted for 24% of the electric power consumed in Brazil, yet 26% of the population was still without access. Today, and in particular in the state of Espirito Santo, the priority given to industrial energy consumption is still patently obvious. Industrial consumption is well below domestic consumption, but the latter pays 48% more for its electricity, therefore financing the former (table 1).

table 1 : volume of electricity sold by Escelsa in 2006 and earnings

source : Escelsa : Relatorio Administrativo, 2006

            The second important stage began in the mid 1990's and continues up to this day. It is dominated by privatization: electricity is no longer merely a necessary element of infrastructure for the economy, it is becoming an integral and constituent part of it, as merchandise produced by large national and international conglomerates. The firm Escelsa (Espirito Santo Centrais Eletricas SA), the electricity distributor in Espirito Santo, is managed by Holding Energias do Brasil (EDB), which also controls the companies that produce and supply electricity to the states of Ceara, Sao Paulo, Tocantins and Mato Gross do Sul. 62.4% of the EDB group is, in turn, held by the Energias de Portugal group (EDP), which operates in European countries such as Spain, Portugal and Belgium, as well as in various South American countries, the United States and China[5].

            The privatization of energy companies in Brazil[6], the sign of neoliberal modernization, came about without the need for social policy regarding tariffs. This is underlined by Bermann (2003, p.45): "the first auction of an electricity supply company - Escelsa - occurred on 11 July 1995, whereas the sector's regulator, the National Agency for Electric Energy (ANEEL) was only created on 6 October 1997 (decree 2335). By then, four electricity companies had already been privatized". Despite the policy that saw unprofitable companies switched to the private sector so that public services would gain in efficiency, what in fact happened was that the State lost its powers of decision-making and planning over a resource which is "a necessity of modern society, considered as essential as water supply, cleanliness, transport and public health" (Jannuzzi and Swisher, 1997, p.12).

3. Access to electric power: the neighbourhoods of Bairros da Penha and Praia da Costa

            The surveys conducted in the two neighbourhoods[7] informed us of the salaries and living conditions of the residents. In the Penha neighbourhood, family income does not exceed 3 minimum-salaries, whereas the majority of Praia da Costa residents (20 out of 24) have an income greater than 10 minimum-salaries. In Praia da Costa 2 out of 3 residents have studied - or are studying - in higher education, whereas in Penha the same proportion has not even completed primary education. As concerns professions, almost all of Penha's residents are domestic employees, workers or hold informal positions, whereas the majority of Praia da Costa's residents are self-employed, executives or retailers. The socio-economic profiles are very different, and we can use Bourdieu's (1980) terminology to identify the dominating classes of Praia da Costa and the dominated classes of Penha.

            The data concerning housing only confirms this split. In Penha's Alto Bairro, dwellings are small (40 to 60m2), overcrowded and of poor quality. We notice both a lesser quality in the energy used and an overconsumption. This paradox is due to the energy losses brought about by the usage of home-made electrical devices and the of old, dilapidated and energy-thirsty products within the home. The poor quality of the network is not only limited to households. Contrary to Escelsa's claims that it treats all of its clients equally, the network in Penha's Alto Bairro is precarious to say the least: rotten wooden posts haphazardly implanted, alleys with no public lighting (which explains the greater insecurity felt by residents), poorly assembled cables with no tension (which accounts for the frequent power cuts in rain or strong winds), and a meager number of transformers. This situation leads to many residents unplugging their household appliances when strong rain is forecast.

            The reality in Praia da Costa could not be more different. Households are generally apartments of 100 to 200 m2 occupied by a small number of residents in luxurious buildings with guarded access. The electrics are high quality and conform to technical norms. Household appliances are new, efficient, and less energy consuming. The quality of the public network is characterized by a sufficient number of transformers, posts made of cement, cables in good condition, excellent public lighting including on the beach, which has given the neighbourhood its name and its prestige. 

figure 3 : the state of the networks in the two neighbourhoods

above : electric post in the middle of the alley, obstructing the passage, base of the post rotten, low-tension wires liable to short circuit, in the Alto Bairro of Penha.

below: well placed cement posts, giving good public lighting, transformers in good condition high tension wires in Praia da Costa, nocturnal lighting often referred to as the jewel in the crown of the neighbourhood.

            Illegal access to electricity cannot be ignored. It is common in - but does not limit itself to - poorer social groups, and it must be noted that even amongst the disadvantaged, many pay their bills regularly. It can be explained by the difficulties in accessing electricity legally. These difficulties don't exist in the upper circuit of the urban economy. As such, in Praia da Costa, where the quality of life allows residents to pay their bills without hindrance, illegal access to electricity is not a widespread problem.

  Electricity theft in Brazil is known as gato[8]. It is a popular expression that refers to the consumption of electricity by illegally hijacking the current. The problem starts with the repeated non-payment of electricity bills, which leads the company to cut off the supply. But as families cannot cope without electricity in everyday life, they misappropriate it. The gato in Bairro da Penha can be seen in the installations outside of the network, and is confirmed by the managers of the distribution companies. Amongst the residents interviewed, only a handful recognized this method as a viable alternative to gain access to electricity, but denied - with no trace of irony or subtext - resorting to it. But some residents clearly admit to paying much less than their multiple household appliances should ordinarily warrant[9]. There are three forms of gato. In the first case, the gato is a direct connection to the network: two wires are placed on the network's aerial cables and are connected directly to the household. The second technique involves breaking the seal on the supply box and diverting the current from there. The third method is to dismantle the meter and install within it a mechanism that reverses the logging of electricity consumption, thereby concealing the actual level of consumption. According to Escelsa, the fight back against the gato is being won. Three methods are available to them. Firstly, checking all the meters, especially in the outer neighbourhoods: if a meter should produce a reading of zero for several months consecutively, that household will receive a fine. Secondly, replacing the exposed cables with covered cables, the insulation making it harder to attach a wire to directly. Thirdly, removing meters from households and placing them at the supply posts instead. As such, electricity theft has noticeably decreased in the outer neighbourhoods of Vitoria. Such are the particularities - especially topographical - of Penha, though, that operations to quell this wave of theft are difficult to undertake. It is a hill, the top of which has no streets but merely alleys which do not allow for traffic to pass through. What is more, the area is controlled by traffickers. Although Escelsa knows it can count on the Military Police if needed, it prefers not to, in order to maintain its image with the people.

            Gato is an alternative form of access to electricity in the lower circuit, in those areas where the spatial organization allows it[10], just as access to the ordinary electricity market is a particular feature of the upper circuit. But there are no reliable statistics that shed light on the phenomenon in the different neighbourhoods of the urban area of Vitoria. It remains that the majority of residents of the peripheral neighbourhoods and the favelas belong to a circuit of consumption, so that the demand for electricity increases. Even taking into account diversions of current, the legal consumption of electricity is increasing, and with it the profitability of the supplier.

            The residents of Praia da Costa have a moralistic outlook on the issue of gato, which became apparent in our meetings. "It's theft, we must stop it. Horrible. Illegal. We must be rid of it. It's theft, and we're paying for it." However, some residents are more understanding and free from prejudice, such as one lady who sees this practice as "a call for help for the social integration which we dream of".

            We could conclude that the precarious nature of electricity supply in the peripheral neighbourhoods results from Escelsa's commercial values, and a poor structuring of its network in an unprofitable area. The reality, however, is the opposite, and such a claim would only serve to disguise the feeling of domination that exists between the two circuits. The truth is that the lower circuit needs to remain connected to the system, but subordinated, so as to be a source of growth for the upper circuit. We cannot say that the outer neighbourhoods are inherently unprofitable for the supplier; the residents of these areas form the majority of the inhabitants of the urban area of Vitoria, and (mostly) they pay for the electricity they consume and subsequently contribute to the profits of the company. In reality Escelsa does not lose out because the hijackings are taken into account every year by the ENEEL (National Agency for the Electrical Energy) to determine any changes in the tariffs. Besides, as the company has itself admitted, losses from gato methods are calculated to be 5.4%, well below the 7.7% losses due to technical deficiencies in the network. And despite these losses, profits remain very high[11].

            The root of the problem is to be found less in the dilapidation of the network and more in the difficulties facing the poorest of the poor in gaining access to electricity. The tariffs are partly to blame. The average price in the urban area of Vitoria is 0.26 reals/kWh before tax, and 0.41 reals/kWh after. The average user - with a fridge, an electric shower, a television, an iron and 3 lamps - would use an estimated 148 kWh per month, which amounts to 60.68 reals. In the Alto Bairro da Penha neighbourhood, the majority of residents concerned have an income of between 1 and 1.5 minimum-salaries, between 380 and 570 reals[12]. The electricity bill would therefore account for between 10% and 16% of their income. In Praia da Costa on the other hand, the vast majority of incomes are over 10 minimum-salaries (3,800 reals). If we imagine a typical household to contain a fridge, two televisions, a DVD player, a radio, a games console, a washing machine, an iron, 3 electric showers, fluorescent lamps in every room, for a living space of 100m2, and given that the devices are more modern and therefore consume less, electricity consumption can be estimated at 175KwH with a bill for 70 reals, less than 2% of a monthly salary.

            The electricity bill is therefore far more onerous for the resident of Penha than it is for the native of Praia da Costa. In order to mitigate these disparities, and in conformity with the ANEEL regulations, Escelsa charges a more favourable tariff to those classified in the low-income categories. The discount is regressive and varies from 66.35% to 2.82%, depending on the level of consumption (see table 2).

here:

table 2: Favourable tariffs for low incomes

Discount on the bill

up to 30 kWh               à    66,35 %

from 31 to 80 kWh       à    42,04 %

from 81 to 100 kWh     à    41,70 %

from 101 to 180 kWh   à    12,54 %

above 180 kWh            à    2,82 %

            However, the very restrictive conditions for benefitting from this system, as well as the lack of information provided to the users, mean that these favourable rates almost certainly do not reach the very poorest : of the 22 people interviewed in Alto Bairro da Penha, only one was aware of the scheme and was using it. The inherent logic behind this project is criticized by Bermann (2003), who asserts that the level of consumption required for a normal life (which he estimates to be 220kWh/month) would mean that the purely commercial aspect of electricity supply should be surpassed. According to him, the favourable tariff should solely take into account family income, regardless of levels of consumption, and be supplemented by incentives to combat wasteful usage. But efficient - and therefore limited - usage goes against the interests of the suppliers. The precarious nature of the energy network in the peripheral neighbourhoods is the result of company policy, whose sole aim is to maximize profits. Because it invests derisory amounts in energy efficiency programs, it would not have the means to satisfy demand if electricity usage were more egalitarian and if, as a result, the poor had a greater level of energy consumption.

            Finally, the homogenization of behaviour leads to a sharp rise in consumption, giving legitimacy to the one way in which energy is produced and consumed. But this modernization is selective, and in semi-peripheral urban areas can crystallize socio-spatial fragmentation. By examining where these techniques operate, we can catch a glimpse of the domination relationship that exists between social classes. This relationship could, paradoxically, weaken the fragmentation. The techniques create an effect of homogenization and an increase in consumption. In the example given here, they spread to the poorest people the notion of the impossibility of living without electricity, a commodity which has necessarily become universal. But this unity which promotes contact, relationships, homogenization, and which therefore weakens fragmentation, also boosts social domination. The appropriation of electric power by the upper circuit, especially after the privatizations of the 1990's, and its transformation into a commodity to be consumed according to predominant norms - that is, in the simple terms of its monetary value - has led to prices which the poor cannot afford. The gato therefore becomes the only means by which they can access electricity, just as clamping down on it becomes a form of social control, maintaining social subordination. In legitimizing this repression and social control, the repression of the gato brutally highlights the reality of the domination to which the poor are subjected. Making gato a crime is nothing other than the dominating classes imposing a non-egalitarian and exclusive order. Through prejudice, this order stigmatizes the poor and portrays them as criminals (gato is punishable according to the Brazilian Penal Code), and only because they cannot take part in the consumption game, which, paradoxically, seduces and excludes them simultaneously.

            As such, this hijacking of electricity is deemed tolerable by society, in that it does not resolve the question of low salaries and unemployment, it does not automatically reduce electricity prices for the poor, and it does not launch an energy efficiency program which would durably lead to greater equality. However, these processes are essential for the position of the lower circuit as the subordinated, for ongoing inequality and the concentration of incomes, all fundamental aspects needed to maintain the system.

Conclusion

            Social domination in towns manifests itself through the act of despoliation, as workers struggle to live on low salaries. Inserted into the consumer model imposed by the upper circuit, but unable to conform to it, they make choices and establish priorities according to their income. As a result, household spending is neglected and the poorest end up in shanty towns. It is the same principle for electric power. It is used creatively and illegally because certain forms of consumption have been prioritized, notably for household appliances, considered essential for society's predefined way of life. This only worsens the extortion of which the poor are victims, and enriches the upper circuit through the sale of goods and services. In this way the poor are not useless in the consumer circuit. Despite the widening income gap, the poor constitute a profitable consumer market.

            The consequence of this model of social domination in the urban space is a fragmented and divided town, scarred by the concentration of public services and structures in certain central spaces, compared to the instability and poverty on the peripheries. However, the poor are not disconnected from the urban economy, as an erroneous interpretation of the concept of fragmentation could lead us to believe. They form part of this economy, but in a dominated position.

[1] The RMGV was officially created on 17th January 2005 (Constitutional Law 318) and comprises 7 municipalities: Serra, Vitoria (capital of the State of Espirito Santo), Vila Velha, Cariacica, Viana, Guarapari and Fundão. In 2007, its population reached 1,624,837 according to the IBGE.

[2] A favela, or slum, is defined by the UN as an area characterized by "overcrowding, poor or substandard housing, inadequate access to sanitation and drinking water, and insecure residential status". This definition limits itself to the physical and legal conditions pertaining to the occupation of the land, without reference to the social dimension which is harder to measure. More often than not, the physical insecurities are compounded by social and economic marginality. On the history of favelas and how they have been perceived in Brazil, opinion varies between labeling them as insecure areas and areas with a strong socio-cultural identity. Concerning the favelas of Rio de Janeiro since the end of the 19^th century, see Valladares (2006).

[3] The study comprised several types of work :

            - meetings with different employees of the supplier Escelsa (Espirito Santo Centrais Eletricas), and contact with other institutions such as the Division of Public Lighting of the Public Secretariat for Transport of Vitoria, as well as the Terra mais Igual project, also a subsidiary of the town of Vitoria.

            - on-site observation of the electricity infrastructures in the two neighbourhoods and an analysis of the network map, supplied by Escelsa.

            - discussions with groups of residents, undertaken in 2008 and 2009. As a means of verification, open and closed questionnaires were filled out in the two neighbourhoods (22 in Penha and 24 in Praia da Costa); this survey cannot claim to be representative of the population in a strict statistical sense, but it targets the most varied residents and takes into account differences in age, sex and longevity of residence.

[4] As early as the publication of "The Shared Space" (1975), Milton Santos discusses how the upper and lower channels of the urban economy complement each other.

[5] Energia dos Brasil website. Consultation in August 2008.

[6] Privatisation has mainly concerned the supply of electricity. Even today, a large proportion of Brazilian hydroelectric power supply is under State control, through large companies such as Furnas, Tucurui and Itaipu. However, the private sector is now being given greater incentives to build hydroelectric power stations.

[7] Surveys through questionnaires, see above. The reference to the minimum-salary is that provided by the IBGE. It acts as a benchmark for the subjects of the survey, making their assertions clearer and comparisons over time easier.

[8] Literally, the cat. But the word carries other meanings in Brazilian slang (NdT).

[9] The research did not lead to any article on the illegal access to electricty in Brazil or in South America. One reference (Ilanrewaju, 2000), however, mentioned illegal connections in Africa, in the shantytown of Ijora Badia, in Lagos, Nigeria.

[10] The Escelsa director in charge of combating energy losses told us of the gato phenomenon in the most varied of Brazil states, and of the techniques introduced to fight it.

[11] 139.6 million reals in 2006 (source : Relatorio administrativo da Escelsa, 2006)

[12] At the time of the interviews, in late 2008. 

Bibliographie | References

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NAVEZ-BOUCHANINE, Françoise (2002). La fragmentation en question : des villes entre fragmentation spatiale et fragmentation sociale ? Paris : L' Harmattan Nas fronteiras da barbárie. Uma leitura genealógica do discurso freudiano.

SANTOS, Milton. Economia Espacial: Críticas e Alternativas. São Paulo, SP: Edusp, 2003. 204 p.

______________. O Espaço Dividido: os dois circuitos da economia urbana nos países subdesenvolvidos. São Paulo, SP: Edusp, 2004.2ª Ed. Primeira reimpressão; 430p.

VALADARES, L. P. Passa-se uma casa: análise do programa de remoção de favelas do Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1980. 2ª Ed.

DAVIS, M. Planeta Favela. São Paulo, SP: Boitempo, 2006. 271 p.

BERMANN, C. Energias no Brasil: Para quê? Para quem? São Paulo, SP: Livraria da Física Editora: FASE, 2003. 2ª Ed; 139 p.

ILANREWAJU, D. O. Urban Infrastructure: a critique of urban renewal process in Ijora Badia, Lagos. Habitat Internacional, 2001.

ZANOTELLI, C. L'espace des Homicides e L'espace socioéconomique de l'agglomération de Vitória-Brésil. Cultures & Conflics, n. 59, Autono 2005, pp. 117 - 148. 

Cláudio Luiz Zanotelli, Université Fédérale de l’Espírito Santo, Brésil ; Victor Araújo Galvão, Université Fédérale de l’Espírito Santo et Université Fédérale de Rio de Janeiro, Brésil
«La ville fragmentée : l'accès à l'électricité », [«The Fragmented City: Access to Electricity», traduction : George Mc Gairl]
justice spatiale | spatial justice | n° 04 décembre | décember 2011 | http://www.jssj.org