Militer pour l’agriculture périurbaine : le projet CARMA sur le Triangle de Gonesse

Abstract

The article investigates changes undergoing in the relations between urbanism and agriculture in the particular frame of urban development projects – a collective process that materialises into new urban areas – and in a context of increasing public interest about food system relocation, urged by civil society mouvements. Through the case of the activist project “CARMA”, on the Triangle de Gonesse, the paper reveals the tensions and hybridisations that result from a decade of controversy centered on the place of agriculture in urban production. Hybridisations involve mental frameworks about the future of both food systems and urbanism in a context of ecological crisis, urban stakeholders and professional practices and, eventually, urban morphology. They also caracterise the strategies underlying the relations between activists and institutional players, which range from confrontation to interpellation and negociation. These hybridisations should not, though, hide the persistence of a “developer ethos” that still does not look at agriculture in equal terms with a territorial development based on urbanisation.

Keywords

• controversy
• periurban agriculture
• urban development projects
• agri-food systems relocation
• activism