Urbanisation capitaliste, justice urbaine et démocratie participative : pour une transformation quasi-perfectionniste des institutions municipales

This thesis strives to meet two targets. The first one is to prove that urban spatiality, specifically capitalist urbanization, createsand supportssomesocio-spatial injusticeswhich affect city-dwellers’ political liberty,aspolitical liberty is understood in neo-republican terms. The second targetis to defenda quasi-perfectionisttransformation of municipal institutions,which couldpromote city-dwerllers’diverse and active democratic participation. The first chapter shows that city is a vehicle of socio-spatial injustices, through social violence in public spaces, residential segregation and capitalist exploitation of urban environment (throughgentrification). In the second chapter, I examine four answersto those issues, proposed by political philosophers(Anderson, Young, Turmel and Ferdman). After emphasizing their limits, I draw two conclusions:ontheone hand, urban injustice issues mustbeinterpretedin power relation(domination and alienation) more than in distributive terms; on the other hand, urban politics mustassumea moral perfectionism. Chapter 3 studies HenriLefebvre’s proposal that human beings never stop to inhabit and to undermine those alienating spaces where they live in. I consider that this kind of liberty, which is recovered through spatial practice and which floods the interstices of urbanity, is not sufficient to overthrowbothmunicipalelite’sdomination andcapitalist alienation. Chapter 4 and 5 form the major positive contribution of this thesis. In chapter 4, I demonstrate that social and political domination of urban elites and capitalist exploitation of cities are none other than consequences of structural and institutional weaknesses. In fact, they are the results of a double institutional domination of cities and inhabitants. First, municipal democratic institutions are corrupt by privileged social groups which monopolize political and economical power positions. Second, cities are submitted to superior government stages goodwill (like states or provinces). This double institutional domination leads structurally to promote a capitalist urban development. Yet, the latter does not only reduce social equality between inhabitants, but also their ability to engage and to participate publicly, that means it reduces their civic virtues. I conclude thata quasi-perfectionist transformation of municipal democracy could secure inhabitants effective participation in the controland the public deliberations about urban planning politics, and could secure conditions of equal political liberty. iv   Chapter 5 applies thoselessons given by the later and defendtheinclusion of immigrants in the urban demos, thedecentralization ofpowers and the needto review cities’ legal status, and the arrangementofa participative democracyat the municipal level. I show that participative democracy could fight against corruption, enables demosto take smarterdecisions, and indirectlycultivatesinhabitants’civic virtues.

Keyphrases: Gentrification, City, Democracy, Spatial justice, Urban planning, Urban capitalism, Segregation, Deliberation, Participation, Political liberty