Transforming Places, Changing Deities: Spatial and Symbolic Negotiation in Marseille

Résumé En

Marseille has undergone a deep transformation since the Euroméditerranée national action that started in 1995. When Marseille was crowned the European Capital of Culture in 2013, local élites applauded it as the finalization of a process that aimed to internationalize its image in order to attract tourism and investments. Nevertheless, the urban regeneration led by the state and enforced by local administrators was widely contested. The inhabitants' complex system of practices reveals that attachment to the old representations of the urban space of Marseille is still very strong and can be identified in the use of the public space. I explore the symbolic production of space in the case of Marseilles' urban regeneration process and observe how different grassroot social groups appropriate, negotiate and resist the new symbolic regime proposed and asymmetrically imposed by powerholders at international, national and local levels. Moreover, the conflicting use of space is a result of a dialectical negotiation between forms of instrumental power masked by the labels of legality, formality and order, as opposed to the values of solidarity, spontaneity and informality.