Doctoral Dissertation Research: Urban Designers and the Production of Public Space in Belleville, Paris, France

尽管社区和政府领导人经常推广可以导致城市主要部分发生重大变化的项目，并使用“公共”一词作为形容词，但对“公共空间”、“公共工程”和其他形式的“公共”活动感兴趣的不是一个公共群体，而是许多不同的群体。这些不同的群体对什么是最适合“公众”的可能有根本不同的看法，他们组织空间和彼此互动的方式可能会对各个群体和整个累积产品产生深远的影响。这份博士论文研究改进奖提案概述了一名博士生研究贝尔维尔公共空间转型的计划。贝尔维尔位于法国巴黎东北部，目前主要由相对贫穷的新来移民主导。这名学生将使用民族志方法来评估该街区的公共空间是如何发展的，这是20世纪90年代该街区重大重建期间城市设计师与当地居民之间斗争的结果。这项研究将集中在城市发展过程本身，特别关注移民对政治和代表性的斗争是否以及如何影响设计过程。学生将进行档案研究，并利用参与观察当地居民和从事重建工作的设计办公室。这个项目将为不同群体构思和处理公共空间的方式提供有价值的新见解。特别是，它将揭示城市设计师和直接居住在受影响社区的居民以不同的方式参与关于公共空间政治经济学的辩论。这项研究将为研究区域的居民和设计师提供有用的信息，其见解可能对其他社区的可比行为者具有实际好处。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

Although community and government leaders often promote programs that can lead to significant transformations of major parts of cities with terms that use the word "public" as an adjective, there is not one public but rather many different groups who have interests in "public space," "public works," and other manifestations of "public" activity. These different groups can have fundamentally different views of what is best for "the public," and the ways in which they organize space and interact with each other can have profound consequences for the groups individually and for the overall cumulative product. This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award proposal outlined plans for a doctoral student to examine the transformations of public space in Belleville, a community in northeastern Paris, France, that now is dominated by relatively poor, recently arrived immigrants. The student will use ethnographic approaches to assess how the quarter's public spaces have developed as a result of the struggles between urban designers and local residents during the major redevelopment of the quarter in the 1990s. The study will focus on the urban development process itself, paying particular attention to the determining if and how immigrant struggles for political and representation have influenced the design process. The student will conduct archival research and use participant observation of both local residents and the design offices engaged in redevelopment efforts.This project will provide valuable new insights into the ways that different groups conceive of and deal with public spaces. In particular, it will shed light on the varying ways that urban designers, who often are situated far away from the sites where their designs are to be implemented, and residents based directly in affected communities participate in debates on the political economy of public space. The study will provide useful information to residents and designers in the study area, and its insights may have practical benefits for comparable actors in other communities. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.