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Uneven Trajectories and Decentralisation: Lessons From Historical Planning Processes in Saint-Étienne
[journal article]
Abstract Once the industrial capital of France, Saint-Étienne has faced the closure of mining pits, steel plants, and textile firms in close succession, leading to population loss and social and economic challenges, and making the city an outlier in France as a large-sized shrinking city. There has generally... view more
Once the industrial capital of France, Saint-Étienne has faced the closure of mining pits, steel plants, and textile firms in close succession, leading to population loss and social and economic challenges, and making the city an outlier in France as a large-sized shrinking city. There has generally been a lack of temporal approaches to urban shrinking processes and calls to incorporate historical institutionalism in planning research. This research will use path dependence - a conceptual framework where a critical event causes a process that is marked by reproductive logic - as a central explanatory tool to assess historical planning processes in Saint-Étienne. This article identifies a critical event - the publication of the first spatial plan for the Saint-Étienne region - and then considers temporal self-reinforcing processes, reviewing subsequent local spatial planning strategies through a culturalist theory frame. It shows that spatial strategies have not adapted over time to the reality of shrinkage; local beliefs in growth displayed path-dependent features and resulted in decentralisation and deepening socio-economic inequalities both within the metropolitan area of Saint-Étienne and with its larger neighbour, Lyon. More broadly, for metropolitan areas to be able to adapt to future changes and be resilient, it will be crucial for urban planning policy and research to consider the extent to which planning strategies can self-reinforce and to find ways to adapt these strategies in the face of global urban transformations.... view less
Keywords
France; urban planning; urban development; large city; local politics; spatial planning; zoning
Classification
Area Development Planning, Regional Research
Free Keywords
Saint-Étienne; historical processes; path dependence; planning policy; self-reinforcing processes; shrinking cities; spatial planning; urban shrinkage
Document language
English
Publication Year
2022
Page/Pages
p. 63-74
Journal
Urban Planning, 7 (2022) 3
Issue topic
The Resilient Metropolis: Planning in an Era of Decentralization
ISSN
2183-7635
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed