Seminar on Interdisciplinarity – Presentation on the Escapist City

This presentation aims to highlight the importance of adopting an interdisciplinary perspective on the city by examining the urban footprint of large-scale mobilities: migration, tourist mobilities, business travel, digital nomadism, and so on. Various research traditions have examined the urban repercussions of these forms of mobility through the lenses of “overtourism,” migrant centralities, accommodation for displaced people, and the environmental impacts of air travel. However, these approaches, which are often considered separately, need to be brought together. The presentation seeks to develop a comprehensive perspective that takes into account the interdependencies between the actors involved in these mobilities, both among themselves and with other urban stakeholders, as well as the challenges they raise in terms of urban policy and social and environmental justice. The presentation draws on the theoretical contributions of Ananya Roy, AbdouMaliq Simone, and other scholars associated with Southern urbanism, as well as on a range of empirical investigations conducted in the Île-de-France region and Singapore. The analysis highlights the “escapist” character of the urban experiences and forms of urban production engaged in by actors involved in these mobilities, whether they occupy dominant or vulnerable positions. These actors depart—temporarily or more permanently—from certain frameworks of urban order, in connection with the horizons and trajectories associated with their mobilities. This escapism also fully concerns public action, by making possible a form of exceptional urban planning geared towards dominant mobilities that evades the social and environmental objectives of public policies, while rendering invisible other significant forms of urban production associated with other large-scale mobilities.

Venue: Maison de la recherche SHS – auditorium

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