Étude du rôle des indicateurs et de l’expertise nationale dans la reconfiguration de la production urbaine

Résumé En

This article proposes to analyze the place and role of public action instruments developed from territorial data in a context of reconfiguration of urban planning practices in French metropolises. The recent Climate and Resilience Act of 2021 and its implementation decree issued the following year have given rise to a controversy concerning the types of land use with “artificial” or “non-artificial” status. The issues related to the definition of the phenomenon of artificialization are reflected in the debates on the social and political construction of its measurement indicator, which takes the form of a nomenclature attached to a geographic database for use by local public actors. In addition to the implicit imposition of a top-down planning model, the oscillation between a conventional and realistic statement of the phenomenon of artificialization raises the question of the impact of the classification on urban production methods and the way in which local actors problematize planning issues. The measurement indicator constitutes an accounting tool for monitoring the objectives set by the lawmakers but it does not appear to be sufficient to solve the problem of artificialization. Based on the case of the Toulouse metropolitan area, we show that local players are dependent on the planning model stabilised in the indicator for measuring artificialisation produced by the national expert body (Ministry of Ecological Transition). They are thus obliged to gather additional resources of expertise that they must combine with a strong political involvement in order to control the urbanization of their territory.