The Grand Projet Politics of an Urban Age: Urban Megaprojects in Asia and Europe

This paper presents a comprehensive study of large-scale, master-planned urban developments in Asia and Europe. Increasing in numbers all over the world since the 1980’s, these urban mega-projects—here referred to as Grands Projets—have become major drivers of urban intensification. Set forth to actuate urban renewal or to augment city expansion, Grands Projets have become spatial manifestations of cities’ larger economic and political agendas. In their development process, they have triggered a change in the urban condition beyond the very boundaries of their sites. As such, they offer a productive means of investigating current urban trends in a globally connected form of concentrated urbanisation. This research, based at the ETH-Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore, examines eight case studies in Asia and Europe through five analytical frames: a project’s conception, design, implementation, operation and implications. This approach addresses various spatial and temporal scales within different theoretical and material practices, allowing a comprehensive discussion of Grands Projets within and across varying socio-political contexts. This paper sheds light on the specific urban conditions of Grands Projets despite their global development trends, transnational owners or financing alliances and internationally regulated planning practices. Often dependent on exceptional regulations outside statutory planning procedures, they are subject to context-specific challenges, project-specific briefs and unique configurations of actors and stakeholders, all of which have created different manifestations of Grands Projets in space. This analytical framework, as presented in this paper, will form the basis of a larger comparative endeavour to be completed at a later stage in our work

Incorporation of urban differences in Tokyo, Mexico City, and Los Angeles

Reinvestment and intensification are common processes in many urban areas across the world. These transformations are often analyzed with concepts such as ‘urban regeneration’, ‘urban renaissance’, or ‘gentrification’. However, in analyzing Shimokitazawa (Tokyo), Centro Histórico (Mexico City), and Downtown Los Angeles, we realized that these concepts do not fully grasp the qualitative changes of everyday life and the contradictory character of the urbanization processes we observed. They do not take into consideration the far-reaching effects of these processes, and particularly do not address the underlying key question: how is urban value produced? Therefore, we have chosen a different analytical entry point to these transformations, by focusing on the production, reproduction, and incorporation of the intrinsic qualities of the urban. We found Lefebvre’s concept of ‘urban differences’ and Williams’ concept of ‘incorporation’ particularly useful for analyzing our empirical results. In this contribution, we compare the ‘incorporation of urban differences’ in the three case study areas and offer this concept for further discussions and applications

Towards a new vocabulary of urbanisation processes: A comparative approach

International audienceContemporary processes of urbanisation present major challenges for urban research and theory as urban areas expand and interweave. In this process, urban forms are constantly changing and new urban configurations are frequently evolving. An adequate understanding of urbanisation must derive its empirical and theoretical inspirations from the multitude of urban experiences across the various divides that shape the contemporary world. New concepts and terms are urgently required that would help, both analytically and cartographically, to decipher the differentiated and rapidly mutating landscapes of urbanisation that are being produced today. One of the key procedures to address these challenges is the application of comparative strategies. Based on postcolonial critiques of urban theory and on the epistemologies of planetary urbanisation, this paper introduces and discusses the theoretical and methodological framework of a collaborative comparative study of urbanisation processes in eight large metropolitan territories across the world: Tokyo, Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Dongguan, Kolkata, Istanbul, Lagos, Paris, Mexico City and Los Angeles. In order to approach these large territories, a specific methodological design is applied mainly based on qualitative methods and a newly developed method of mapping. After thepresentation of the main lines of our theoretical and methodological approach we discuss some of the new comparative concepts that we developed through this process: popular urbanisation, plotting urbanism, multilayered patchwork urbanisation and the incorporation of urban differences.随着城市地区的扩大和相互交织，当代城市化进程给城市研究和理论带来了重大挑战。在这个过程中，城市形态不断变化，新的城市形态在不断演进。要充分理解城市化，我们必须从塑造当代世界的大量纷纭歧出的城市经验中获得经验和理论层面的启发。如今正在产生的城市化格局千差万别，并迅速变化，我们迫切需要新的概念和术语，在分析层面和图解层面帮助破译这些格局。应对这些挑战的关键手段是应用比较策略。本文基于城市理论的后殖民批判和全域城市化的认识论，介绍并讨论了对世界八大都市圈城市化进程进行协同比较研究的理论和方法论框架，这八大都市圈是：东京、香港/深圳/东莞、加尔各答、伊斯坦布尔、拉各斯、巴黎、墨西哥城和洛杉矶。为着手探讨这些广大的都市圈，我们主要基于定性方法和新开发的测绘方法，应用了一套特定的方法论设计。在介绍了我们主要的理论和方法论进路之后，我们讨论了在这个过程中发展起来的一些新的比较概念：大众城市化、小块圈地式城市化、多层拼凑城市化以及城市差异的纳入