Contenu du sommaire

The construction of the High Speed Line South Europe Atlantic (LGV SEA) between Tours and Bordeaux started in 2011 and required about 9000 employees at the peak in summer 2013. To reach this goal the construction company and local stakeholders had to develop an employment and training policy adapted to the project. In particular, the recruitment of about 2000 local employees by the construction company has been possible through a partnership between both local and national employment and training stakeholders. Because of the lack of assessment of “employment-training” policies accompanying major transport infrastructure projects, this paper aims to analyze the plan for “employment training” implemented on this project in order to assess the effectiveness of local governance system that allowed the recruitment of these employees.

In the recent capitalism mutations, knowledge tends to replace natural resources and physical work as economic growth tools, and this deeply transforms modern cities. Progressively, contemporary cities fit their productive, spatial and organizational structures to new economy demands. One of the most evident sign of these mutations lies in the multiplication of projects such as “technological district”, “creative” or “cultural clusters”, “design districts” or “cyber districts”.These projects are all developed on a same model, the model of “Cognitive Urban Systems” (CUS). Those CUS emerge at the core of the cities as the consequence of strong public policies of socio-economic and urban revitalization, on areas of approximately 200 acres. The aim of the projects is to attract talents and innovative activities, paying an active role in the process of production of innovations. Another characteristic of the CUS is that they are built on the base of a strong technological determinism. The lay on the illusion that technological innovations would be able of stimulating by themselves the socioeconomic, urban and sustainable development of the cities.The object of this article is to discuss the impact and the limits of the CUS's technological perspective, through an analysis of four CUS: 22@Barcelona (Barcelona), Distrito Tecnológico and Distrito de Diseño (Buenos Aires) and the project GIANT/Presqu'île (Grenoble).

Sitting up an attractive territorial offer represents the main challenge of the Algiers 2030 metropolitan development strategies. Therefore, the knowledge of the optimal localization requirements in order to attract investment becomes essential. The paper aims to provide effective and real answers about the image the investors have of Algiers' strengths and weaknesses, based on a survey of a number of companies and metropolitan institutions located already in Algiers. The survey also testifies about the importance they attach to the different factors which guide their choice of localization, throughout the city and nearby. The obtained results should ultimately help to sketch up the new version of the urban development strategy, able to consolidate the metropolitan and attractive status of Algiers.

Metropolitan institutions (set up under the law MAPTAM in 2014) are supposed to play a major role on the economic and social plan, at the national and international level. As a consequence, the realization of their ambitious projects of territory requires high financial resources. But in these new metropolitan institutions, communes and their associations fall under the ordinary fiscal regime. The success that is expected then relies on a double assumption. First the dynamic of territorial development will be sufficient to ensure that revenues from local taxes will grow steadily. And secondly local politicians will use their fiscal autonomy in order to provide additional resources.In fact by analyzing fiscal data, it appears that the advantages of the major cities with their tax bases do not already stop them to impose a heavier burden on their taxpayers. In addition local elected representatives use sparingly the tax lever, even where tax bases do not really increase.The future of spatial planning and of metropolitan development would then be uncertain, mainly because of constraints on local budgets.

As a part of the geography of finance, this article shows, on the basis of several case studies, how the financial industry, by appropriating the concept of sustainable development in a particular way, has built its own approach to “sustainable financial value” within the framework of socially responsible investment funds (SRI). It explains how the financial industry self-validates its action on “sustainable” finance through the use of organizations (extra-financial rating agencies and NGOs), personalities (experts, opinion leaders) or Institutions (international organizations) which, by their reputation or position, legitimize “sustainable value”. However, if these actors manage to animate the media, scientific and political debate, they remain largely under the influence of the financial industry and do not call into question the very essence of financial products, the disconnection with the territorial context. The absence of territorialization and territorial contextualization prevents any strong approach to sustainability, based on local actors and an operationalization in a given territory.