Contenu du sommaire : La ville et l'expertise

The growing autonomy of expertise in french postwar town planning. Dunkirk under fordism? Expertise and urban decisions are studied here in the post second world war french period. To understand this historical moment of urban expansion and city building called ‘‘Trente glorieuses'', which is the largest national mouvement in town planning, what kind of model could be used? Does the urban production of the sixties work as a linear production line including analysis, decision, realisation? Is fordism a good model to understand this topic? Studying the local case of Dunkirk (North of France), despite it has been a symbol of the French national town and country planning, shows a more complicated situation, where is growing the autonomy of expertise.

Expertise the city: engineer, expert and private owner in Fascist Milan This paper focuses on an ordinary case of expertise when the Fascist Municipality of Milan decided to cover the canal of the city. In transforming the canal into a circular Boulevard, it obliged the private owners near the canal to contribute to the cost of the public works. I proceed through an analyse of the expertises and the counter-expertises produced during litigations in order to define the amount to be paid either as a contribution to the public works or as a compensation for them. Focusing on the expert's position and their instruments, we observe the tension between the expertise's procedures as a defined description of urban reality and the expertise process. As the expertise goes on (5 years), the relationships between experts and non-experts (litigations, law pursuits, compromises...) takes an influential part in the results and transforms the expert into a mediator. The aim of my investigation is to provide a new reflection about the urban actors, in order to include – beyond the technical professions (engineer, architect, geometer) and so called legitimated experts – the figure of the private owner. In fact the expropriation's Laws in Italy (1865) provide the private owners the opportunity to take place within the process of the expertise. So, one can observe the plurality of voices, a plural grammar of expertise, founded on different visions of urban growth, its costs and benefits. In expertise of buildings, experts also provide an expertise of the urban project and the definition of the centrality in fascist city.

The Archeologist and Ginevra's urban project during the 20's and the 30's Louis Blondel was the architect and archeologist of the Ginevra's province from 1920 until 1965. He claims a new kind of historical expertise in contemporary town planning starting during the 1910's, entirely to be invented in its contents as well as in its practical and conceptual tools. He elaborates this new know-hows through field surveys, but also by participating in the works of academic societies or by publishing: Origine et développement des lieux habités (1914) et Les faubourgs de Genève au XVe siècle (1919). Urban change is crucial in its demonstration, as well as geographical, economical and historical factors of development, though he demonstrates that they operate in terms of competition rather than complementarity. The knowledge of this new ‘‘urban science'' is translated into maps, et it is precisely this kind of media that allows the information to circulate and to be used, as for Ginevra's urban development planning in 1935, or to a lesser extend, in 1938.

Drainage reform in the debate on sanitation improvement in the French capital From the 1860's onwards, the drainage reform became a central issue in the debate on sanitation improvement in the French capital. Several solutions were explored, each of which provided a particular view of what should be done with wastewater once it had been collected. Should it be disposed of in the Seine river or directed to an outlet further a field such as the Channel? Should one treat it chemically or use it as a valuable resource to irrigate the land? Decision makers voted for mains drainage and sewage farms after numerous debates and conflicts prompted by equally numerous commission meetings. There are several reasons why this choice was made for Paris but we believe that civil engineers played a decisive role. Being the experts within the technical services organized and reinforced by Haussmann, they were at the heart of the matter. What with solid methodology, capacity to experiment and scientific varnish, they were always one league ahead of their detractors. Physicians' theories about malaria carried little weight at the time and their alternative plumbing propositions were somewhat unrealistic. This opposition was quite pronounced in the 1870's, particularly during the working sessions of the 1876 commission, which is the main focus of this article.

The Conseil des édiles and the urban dévelopment of Turin The Conseil des édiles is considered as one of the principal actors of the urban modernization from the end of the XVIIIth century and the town plannings of the 1850's years. A detailed study of this commission from its origines to the 1848 crisis, and its preceedings during the piemontese period from 1773, showed that its influence is less important in the devlopment of the turinese projetcs. The prestige of the Conseil des édiles is due to its ordinary missions in administration and reglementation, much more than in expertise for the urban plannings.

Expert evaluation and railway planning in the Paris region in the 19th century: public enquiries on projets for a line between Paris and Meaux, 1838-1841 The documentation produced in the course of public enquiries on projects for a line between Paris and Meaux is a rich source of information on a period which was a turning point for railway planning in France and the Paris region.The national lines were expected at the time to follow flat plateaus. In this context, four rival entrepreneurs proposed to serve the Marne valley with a local line. The first two projects represented competing public and private engineering approaches. The two others proposed to build a line on the towpath of the Ourcq canal, raising technical questions: how to safely take the tight curves of the path? The system developed by C.Arnoux was later used on the Paris-Sceaux line,but here it was opposed by the canal operator Hainguerlot, who had also refused to let the city of Paris run a train along the canal to transport night soil to a treatment center at Bondy. The project supported by Hainguerlot seemed about to be accepted, but in the end the government plans changed: the Paris-Meaux link was included in the national line between Paris and Strasbourg, built to follow the Marne valley after all.

Water in Brussels' court gardens. Technological invention and urban dynamics (1600-1850) The early 17th century Brussels hydraulic machine was a remarkable work of its time and yet it remains largely unknown. Though a number of historical contributions have provided the broad outlines of its development, the specific contributions of those involved in its inception nonetheless remain somewhat obscure. While providing a summary of what is already known and what has still to be explored, this article aims at reopening issues around the concept of modern ‘‘invention'' and ‘‘creation''. It also aims at rethinking the relationships existing between a city and its water and, in doing so, between a city ands its suburbs.