Sustainable urban development in Bordeaux: politics, policies and spheres of practices
Date
2016
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Editors
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Publisher
AESOP
Abstract
UN’s agenda to achieve the seventeen goals of sustainability for 2030 has been praised for emphasizing the need of the whole globe –north and south– to step up the transformation toward sustainable development. While also criticized for its vagueness and risk of missing the target, it provokes reflection on how issues of sustainability are dealt with in city regions across the world, where much of the work for a resilient future is to be done. My contribution to this track will be an initial tentative analysis of material from my fieldwork in Bordeaux, where I inquiry into planning processes aiming at turning ambitions for sustainable urban development (SUD) into practice. In this paper I first introduce my attempts to grasp these implementation processes in a specific development project driven by a coalition of actors and policies, to give the frame for my inquiry. Second, I connect my study to ongoing research on urban sustainability policy that aims at dealing with governance in planning practices as they are carried out by sociotechnical and political formations.
Three years before the recent UN agenda for sustainable development a webpage with the heading ‘Bordeaux 2030’ was launched. Urban development initiatives in the French city are communicated through this webpage, which is managed by the division of the city administration dealing with land use. The administration is the loci of my ethnographic research. I follow links from the work of the administration as a core governing institution, to policies from different institutional levels that partake in steering the implementation of SUD.
Description
Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south
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