Contenu du sommaire : Paris - New York

Systematic comparison between Paris and New York is not without its dangers. Filters be chosen, to examine the facets of the two world metropolises : economy, upon which they are founded, social space, which reveals them, cultural creation, which brings them closer up to these commercial drifts, architectural production, which reflects the transformations. The result is surprising, less by the diversity of processes than by their interpretation. Economic, legitimization of the global city is at least as present as its social necessity. The origin of residential space corresponds as much to the materialism of the town as to individual and collective mentalities. Art-show is also a modern form of culture democratization, and the contemporary monument conceals the society's political operating logic. But it is also in geographical configurations that the two metropolises remain quite different : agglomeration still concentrated in Paris, generalized suburbia in New York. Is there not a sign here of urban authenticity as much as possible guarantee in the French capital of an extra urban solidarity card to play ?

During a meeting with Guy Burgel, Marcel Roncayolo tackled the criteria of definition and operation of the «global cities». They are less recognisable for the mass of accumulated activities than for the valorisation of the places where decisions are made and spread. In these perennities of localisation, cultural phenomena take as much importance as the economic and technical constraints and changes : development and segmentation of the elite, accomplishment of artistic productions, increased precariousness, are the signs of emergence of an uncertain social system. Added to this, the spatial configurations of these megapolises remain a problem ; if, particularly in Paris, the distribution of the «chic areas» and the working class zones is less clear, one hesitates between a future dedicated to an American-style generalised suburbanisation and prolonged maintainance of a concentrated agglomeration. In fact, beyond these formal differences and traditions of assistance from the authorities or confidence in the laws of the liberal society, on both sides of the Atlantic, the major challenge is clearly the survival of democracy in the global city.

Four main mechanisms can be identified in the formation of the world towns. Firstly, the geographic dispersion of the manufacturing industry, which contributed to the decline of the old industrial centres, has created demand for greater centralisation of company management and planning, and for an increase in the specialised services which are indispensable for growth in the world towns. Then, the growth of the finance industry, and in particular some key sectors of this activity have benefited from governmental measures and from conditions which have actually been damaging to other industrial sectors, particularly the manufacturing industry. The overall effect of such development, once again, has been to encourage the growth of the specialised services situated in the large towns and to erode the economic base of other types of localities. Lastly, the conditions and arrangements underlying the two first transformations suggest a change in the economic relations between the world towns, the nations in which they are situated, and the world economy. Finally, the new growth conditions have supplied the elements for reorganisation of the social classes in the world towns. The professional structure of the most important expanding activities, characterised by the geographic concentration of the most important growth sectors in the world towns, in combination with the polarised professional structure of these sectors, has created and supported the development of two salaried classes, those with high salaries and those with low salaries. The combination of intensive speculation with the multiplicity of small companies which make up the centre of the complex of services to the production sector and financial services raises a question regarding the permanence of such a growth model.

The Parisian industry represents about 20% of the French industry. It is the first industrial area, but not the first area for industrial employment. This region has participated in the large innovations of the XXth century : car and aircraft as well as cinema or pharmaceutical products. It is common place to mention the desindustrialization of the Parisian area, the development of the service sector and its place amongst the world global capitals. The presence of the headquarters of national and international firms is well-known too. But this description is incomplete. We also underline the economic restructuring of the Parisian region : from the centre to the peripherical area. But here too the transformation of space is more complex. If the horizontal disintegration of the activity — the presence of many headquarters and to a larger extent the localization of many commercial and administrative offices — is a characteristic of this area, many firms are also producers. For example, the small and medium firms represent about 50% of the Parisian industry and 10% of the national industry. A high productivity, an intense economic growth, a producer of added value or an inflationnist area with diseconomies of agglomerations, and an average attractivity, those are the elements of debate. If this region has the greatest number of foreign firms, in relative tenus, other French regions do better ; and for the headquarters of multinational firms, Bruxelles or London are more attractive. The State as well as the Region, the Departments and many cities have the willpower to keep industry in the Parisian area. However, this willpower is not sufficient. The deindustrialization continues and the great debate on territorial development gives rise to questions. Nevertheless two processes of evolution are likely to limit or stop this trend. And last but not least, the local policies appear to us as a useful perspective to reinforce firms and particularly, the small and medium ones. The local policies and the economic powers favour the insertion of those firms in networks to benefit from the important strategy ressources of this region.

New York ranks first among the handful of global cities where the economic future of the world is decided. But the majority of the region's 20 million people have few significant contacts with the New York that the world knows. In 1920, however, the core absolutely dominated the region, and the authors of the New York Regional Plan of 1929 also believed that the dominance of the core would and should continue. New York did not in fact develop in this fashion over the next fifty years. The Great Depression and the reform administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced new government policies : housing policy, automobile policy, defense policy. These three policies favored the outer ring. Similarly, new systems of electronic communications, big social changes (growing black population, return of mothers to the paid work force) have negated the advantages of the core.

New York, a town of more than 7 million inhabitants, has over a third of its population of foreign origin. In composition it is the most varied immigrant population of all the American agglomerations ; 1/7 of American immigrants live in New York. Analysis of the immigrants' integration modes, of the institutions which reflect them, and their political expression in the American political community, allows the phenomena of integration, indifference or rejection which differentiate the various groups to be understood more easily. Settlements in the immigrant districts, social climbing, where house-moving follows the line of the New York underground, ethnic partitioning by blocks of houses, characterise the immigrant distribution. If we look at their economic vitality, they have always worked in sectors or companies which could act as a springboard to their economic mobility. The public sector offers them jobs, contracts and privileges -13 % work for themselves, some highly sought-after districts are the cause of fighting. Ethnic trading and companies form a micro-society in the image ol the home country. Spatial proximity of groups succeeding in their companies, and groups ageing, or on the edge of poverty, causes the strong antagonisms that New York's history is studded with. The way that a town applies the federal law in the redistribution of grants varies. Examples are described in New York : private partners awarded grants to cany out integration work, Churches, lawyers awarded grants by the federal State, ethnic associations, «self-help» groups, Dominican clubs, Colombian «instrumental» associations, the Pan-American football league, help associations... Political participation of those «born abroad» and «naturalized» depends upon the duration and the place of residence, their mastery of English, the ethnic group they belong to, the spouse's nationality, and local issues. They form support groups Caribbean support committee, New York Mayor, or lobby to support certain bills or fight against the gangs (Chinese), or Latin Puerto-Ricans, who canvass local mandates. Each group must structure itself, define its aims, before starting discussion with the dominant host society. Some groups have understood this, but the question of alliances with the black minority is complex. Territorial concentration of these populations allows them to sway the elections. The success and future of this strategy depends on the desire of the recent immigrants to naturalize, inscription on the electoral rolls, reduction in the number of illegal immigrants, and the capacity to remain united geographically and politically. In France the problems are posed differently, because of the integration policy of a united and age-old nation. The issue of the Koranic veil, which brought a storm of protest, would certainly have been dealt with differently in the United States. The French government funds the 4,000 immigrant associations. There is no fierce fighting between communities, and there is marked divergence between the France and the United States deal with immigration.

SoHo is certainly the most famous and most spectacular example of gentrification. In the international urban imagination it is this showcase in front of which many apprentice pioneers, and many apprentice speculators, stopped to boost the fantasy of their «successes» and their future careers. Others also, but with sharp and reproving looks, linger, but this time to hone the «critic's blade», to explain the disappearance of some through the success of the others, and denounce in this popular deprivation process the role played by a «social traitor» artist. The fact that this accusation brings to the narrator real symbolic status — he is seen to be more radical — is insufficient, however, to guarantee his truthfulness. This is what the author shows through close scrutiny of the demographic data available since the end of the war. In this respect, the lesson of Lower Manhattan and its evolution — and in spite of political incitement in terms of restoration — is that to host the professionals who flock to the south of the island it has been easier to house them in non-residential areas, or even to encroach into the sea (Battery Park), than to nibble away at pre-existing residential territories, especially if they were occupied by modest populations. Yet, if the gentrification story turns out to be inadequate, then it is the kingpin —the rent gap theory — which must be questioned. The author concentrates his criticism by showing that this economic model fails to take in the territorial dimension of residential settlements. However, to appreciate SoHo's evolution, it is necessary to leave not only the gentrification story but also its criticism : this still focuses attention on the phenomena of residential replacements, whilst it is due in fact to something quite different. SoHo is not only a «successful hobohemia», it is also an integral — and prosperous — part of the New York hypercenter. The question is, therefore, to know how the artistic professions could control to their advantage the «transition exit» from this "industrial slum". To the negative factors which explain this successful urban breakthrough by a territorial vacancy (no inhabitants already there) or also by indecision of the elite concerning investment strategies in the district, must be added a positive factor which is that of the identity content which this district will assume for a rising generation of artists. Very rapidly, and through vigorous urban struggles throughout the sixties, to value what they are and to value this district will be a single objective. Finally, in a last development, the author attempts to show that this urban breakthrough has, from the outset, taken the importance of a breakthrough in the cultural domain of contemporary art ; and that, as a result, the works of art from the «SoHo moment» bear the «physical» mark of the territory where these young artists tried to engrave their artistic pre-eminence : the history of contemporary art must include SoHo, and bears its mark.

Paris' position in artistic creation is situated at the junction of a long history of centralization of culture in France and the contemporary movement for internationalization of production of goods and cultural services. This evolution stands out first of all against a background of the differentiated demand in consumption of artistic and cultural events. In France, apart from television, there is a clear decreasing geographic gradient in all consumption, from the City of Paris, to the «petite couronne», the «grande couronne», and lastly the provinces. This spatial distribution is quite clearly different from that seen in the United States, where the ubiquity of the high level cultural offer contrasts with the relative concentration of popular culture in the large centers, particularly in the South and the West. New York is the exception in this picture through its noticeable presence in every type of culture. These concentration processes are also reflected in the concentration of cultural production : 70 % of the artists in France live in the capital, with two thirds of these in Paris City. This concentration only reflects the structural advantages of the big metropolises : flexibility and richness of contacts, unpredictability and indétermination in creativity, reduction in the transactional production costs. These characteristics, however, occur in France on specific and contradictory political trends : permanent praise to the capital, and an ideal of democratization leading to more geographic diffusion. In the eighties, administrative decentralization and tightening of State expenses on large Parisian cultural investments only served to aggravate these two logics, which can strengthen the discrimination in the qualitative and quantitative distribution of the demand. But the internationalization and world competition established since then in artistic production must relativize these iniquities, which are also sources of economic profit.

An invention of the Renaissance, the art museum became truly established with the Lumières period. However, a French specificity appeared with the Old Regime, that the French Revolution amplified : centralized State control, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, much more marked by private or princely sponsorship. This model, where pedagogic vocation gave way to aesthetic delectation, operated more or less unchanged until the sixties, when widespread upheaval in urbanization conditions upturned the modus operandi, especially since the French museums, less used than their American counterparts to private relations, did not know how to, or could not, resist the fascination of money. Using the examples of the Georges Pompidou Center, the Orsay Museum and the Grand Louvre, the author demonstrates and denounces the union of State sponsorship and marketing, where the pedagogic and democratic project is too often used as an alibi for commercial designs : launched as a mediatic product, the museum becomes a monument, that has to be visited, more than a place of knowledge and pleasure. Whilst cultural success -library, conference series, particularly at Beaubourg -is sometimes welcome, presenting works of art and re-using historic buildings such as the Orsay museum or the Louvre, is much more debatable. Is it possible in a mass and pleasure-driven society to dream of a museum which would pay tribute to the reunion of time and space ?

The XIXth century marked a break with the hierarchy traditions of artistic genres established by the Academy. Since Gustave Courbet, modern art asserts itself both as an aesthetic autonomy movement of tastes and as a social claim against bourgeois etiquette. But the permanent problem remains appreciating the effect of the new, without being ridiculous, and without the avant-garde actually turning against convention. This is what seems to threaten the museums in New York since the sixties. Since the artist's economic success has become an aesthetic criterion, priority in the museums is given to presentation rather than to the research effort : it is the consumerization of art, where by pure deception, the museum compromises its moral authority, where the anti-art is emptied of its subversive contents. In the American culture, which does not make the difference between the sacred and the profane, the museums are threatened with disappearance under the corruption of thirst for money.

This article examines the birth and genesis of the decisions to launch what is known in France as the grands projets by François Mitterrand during the first septennat, in the period between July 1981 to March 1982. Our ambition is to answer two questions. The first is a result of our surprise, that is, how was it possible, in such a remarkably short time to formulate and launch such a huge and costly operation ? Furthermore what are the conditions required from the outset, to insure that the many decisions linked to a project of this magnitude, be made in a rapid and efficient manner ? The second question leads to a reaxamination of the evidence at hand : or more specifically what is the meaning of the term, grands projets. The answer is not as evident as it would seem. It is our hope that by bringing a sociological approach to the questions we should be able to identify a process of public policy in France. Both questions have the same answer. That which identifies what came to be known as the grands projets, and which also explains the rapidity of its conception and execution is that essentially a «package» of a number of disparate decisions, 1) were swept along in the saine logic of action and 2) by and large became the object of exchange between the Socialist Élysée Palace and the Paris City Hall under Jacques Chirac. In the first part, we wish to demonstrate that the choices connected to the grands projets were made within a dynamic that must be understood from the distinction of a «logic of decision» and a «logic of action». The second part is partially influenced by game theory. Here we analyze the relationship between the mayor of Paris and his staff with François Mitterrand and his entourage. The success of the grands projets required cooperation from the State and the Capital of Paris. Their support was not inevitable because the leaders of the former and the latter were opponents in the national political arena. Cooperation, nonetheless was possible because the grands projets offerred a common interest to both and because of the action of a third player.

New York is not only a global city, with its economic objective and infrastructural characteristics, it is also a «communication cybercity», where the faces of the town are built to transmit the illusion, where, in the seventies and eighties, the major urban projects, particularly in the BIDs (Business Improvement Districts), were an immense masquerade, to dissimulate under the logic of rationality the maximization of private profit at the expense of collective good. Four emblematic building sites illustrate this picture mercilessly. At South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan, close to Wall Street, is the restoration as trompe-l'oeil of a warehouse district dating from the start of the XIXth century, converted into a pedestrian area. On the other side of the peninsula, on the Hudson and the embankments of the World Trade Center, is the brand new district of Battery Park, where the skyscrapers, inner squares and promenades with a view across to the Statue of Liberty are attempting to rebuild the classic images of a New York to live in, work in, buy in and eat in. At Times Square, much further north, traditional blend of vice (honky-tonk in 42nd Street) and Broadway theater, there are now, under the pretext of eradicating the one and saving the other, the silhouettes of the Marriott hotel and office blocks. Lastly, further north again, in the Upper West Side, the gentrification, at work in the condominiums on the banks of the Hudson, has broken the ethnic and economic blend. This urbanism of facade and artifice clearly shows us a picture of the city fragmentation, at a time when the desire for a global town has never been so necessary.