Contenu du sommaire

Paris and french university system : myth facing realities During the past thirty years, changes in the French university map indicate that the place of Paris within the system has been altered. It concerns specialisations in training as well as the universities' capacity to attract new students. Following these trends, the French Capital seems to have lost its leadership. But the picture is contrasted, given that the internal structure of the metropolitan area is composed of 17 universities. Paris is less the centre of the French university system than a self-contained entity. Indeed it has specific rules and its global attractiveness is weaker than expected.

Condominios at Maputo : social and spatial stakes in regard to the implantation of enclosed residential areas in the Mozambican capital city The Maputo condominios are protected and enclosed residential areas established on the north-eastern part of the municipality along the Costa do Sol. Those residential complexes reveal the deep contemporary transformations occurring in Mozambique. Indeed, in terms of space their establishment illustrate the neo-liberal policy the country has chosen at the end of the Eighties. After the opening of the programs of co-operation, the arrival of different NGO (USAID, PMA) and the strong exogenous investments (like the Mozal aluminium smelter), a foreign population have immigrated (diplomats, investors), looking for viable and safe residences in a poor and degraded city. Those enclosed residential areas, with strict safety protection in general, became the solution. It seems difficult to put aside the security problem as a major criterion in choosing this type of residences, a crime issue exists although it takes a different form than that of South-African metropolis. However, it is not the only criteria : commodity and privacy are put forward, even if the crime issue seems to be more and more important. Moreover, the emergence of the condominios operates within a rather opaque land framework, which has profited some specific actors (local people as well as foreigners). With punctual operations intended to drive off the poor local inhabitants, the dynamic leads to a homogenisation of this costal area, which suits to the new image of the town.

The European Union intervention in regional development. The example of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region If the European Union regional policy and its effects at the international and interregional levels have been the object of numerous studies in the social sciences, and in geography in particular, its enactment at the lower levels remains less known. In this article, I look at how this policy became integrated into the Nord-Pas-de-Calais (France) regional process of constructing a public-private strategy of development. It lead to a specialization rather than a concentration of the European Community structural funds. This specialization was obtained by the conjunction of three elements : an intraregional zoning, which associated the zones most in trouble (determined by the region itself) ; a multi-annual program of financing, adjusted periodically to integrate as much as possible EU leitmotivs (innovation, competitiveness, environment) ; finally, a mobilization differentiated by territories, which reflects not only the nature of their problems, but also their degree of control of the EU ways of intervention.