La « ville durable », de l’incantation à la profession ?

Green cities: from mantra to profession?

Sociologue, Institut d’urbanisme et aménagement régional, UFR des sciences sociales, Université de Strasbourg, 67084 Strasbourg cedex, France

Auteur correspondant : phamman@unistra.fr

Reçu : 20 Janvier 2010
Accepté : 13 Février 2011

Résumé

Cet article s’intéresse à la place du développement durable urbain dans six grandes agglomérations françaises, sous l’angle de ses promoteurs. L’hypothèse est la suivante : à mesure que le répertoire du développement durable prend de la consistance dans la mise en œuvre des politiques urbaines, de « nouveaux » métiers de la ville et de l’environnement émergent au sein et autour des collectivités territoriales, prenant place à côté de professions désormais plus « classiques » de la « politique de la ville ». On repère une dynamique d’émergence, puis de consécration d’interlocuteurs dédiés, possédant des compétences qui se diffusent : celles dont il s’agit de se prévaloir pour être reconnu « expert », mais qui demeurent éclatées entre plusieurs types d’emplois (techniciens des collectivités, chargés de mission, architectes-paysagistes, salariés associatifs, etc.). Cette situation reflète la notion même de développement durable, fondée sur sa malléabilité comme condition de diffusion cognitive et pratique.

Abstract

This paper focuses on some salient issues of urban sustainable development in France with a specific accent on six urban agglomerations: Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Nantes and Toulouse. The reticular nature of these issues and the circuits leading to their realization are analysed with reference to the ways a multiplicity of actors conceive, plan and bring about the construction of cities, rather than through sectoral viewpoints. Thus, urban sustainable development appears within a (locally variable) set of linkages that sets these issues firmly in areas of interrelations and intersections. Based on a large body of documentation and field work (observations and interviews) this approach helps trace the complex relations between discourse and the reality of on-going dynamics, including the implementation of sustainable development urban operations such as mutations in the domain of public action as exemplified by urbanisation. These relations converge in articulating the issues, with urban sustainable development – in the diversity of its usages – becoming a “portmanteau”, much like “governance”. In this context, technical experts and the “city professionals” can be seen as intermediary representatives: actors/go-betweens who contribute to the development of links and modes of combining practices between usually separate worlds. On this assumption, we consider that nowadays novel professions directly linked with urban areas and environmental issues are emerging at public local level (cities, metropolitan institutions, town-planning agencies, semi-public companies, associations acting as service providers, etc.), in proportion with the development of an urban sustainable development “repertoire” in urban politics. New specific competences and scopes of activities extend and define the field of sustainable development experts. Nevertheless, these competences remain broken up between several kinds of jobs and functions (civil servants and local government officers, project leaders, urban architects, consultants, employees of associations, etc.). Indeed, the limits of this professionalization process are significant of the success of urban sustainable development itself, which can be interpreted as a malleable concept, a property considered as a central condition of its cognitive and practical diffusion.