MSCA-COFUND-CLEAR-Doc-PhD Position #CD22-17: In the nature of the logistics city: A French-German comparison of professional gardening in logistics parks

The general public is familiar with the logistics industry – a sector dedicated to the handling and transport of manufactured goods – through the recent development of e-commerce, but in fact it is central to the industrial reorganisations that have taken place in all industrialised countries since the 1980s. These reorganisations have led to the emergence of infrastructures specifically dedicated to logistics operations (container ports, freight airports, multimodal water/rail/road platforms, warehouse clusters), all designed to enhance rationalisation in the sector. In Europe, these infrastructures are mostly found on the periphery of big cities. Up to now, research in geography and urbanism has focused on the factors underpinning the development of these infrastructures and the challenges they pose for urban planning, development and governance at local and metropolitan levels. In contrast, there has been little in-depth work on the impact of these infrastructures on urban and architectural forms, on landscapes and natures in the mostly periurban areas where they operate.

Research conducted in France and in Germany on the morphological changes caused by the gradual “exurbanisation” of industries in French and German cities since 1945 has emphasised the effects of functionalism and zoning. They have resulted in economic development being concentrated in “Zones d’activités économiques” (ZAE – business parks), Gewerbegebiete in German, which are subject to less strict planning rules than apply to other urban development, with the result that the design of these business parks is often out of step with their immediate or larger scale environment. However, this is not all there is to the analysis of models of nature in these areas. At the level of local authorities, the renewed interest in the quality of industrial or business landscapes in the 1990s led, in France and in Germany, to a tightening of the regulations in favour of biodiversity or landscape conservation, as well as greater diversity in the actors involved in urban production and management, with nature becoming an integral component of urban and territorial economic development projects.

The primary aim of the thesis will be to situate logistics development within the history of morphological, social and ecological changes brought about by economic development on the edges of large French and German conurbations. To what extent does it perpetuate, disrupt, contradict or counteract that history?

To this end, the research work will be divided into three complementary and interwoven threads:

1/ Urban gardening.

Since the 1990s, a significant body of research has grown up around “urban gardening” (Loram, 2011; Torres et al., 2018, 2017; Ernwein, 2019). The thesis will contribute to greater awareness of the variety of the urban contexts in which gardening takes place. Indeed, there has been little study of the practice within business parks, although these spaces account for 30% of built-up land in France and 20% in Germany (Colsaet, 2021). In particular, it will examine the influence of the modes of production and management specific to logistics parks on the conditions, organisation and meanings of these practices for gardeners, without prejudging their status or the form of nature they produce.

2/ The logistics city

In return, the thesis will seek to examine the contributions of urban gardening to the production of the particular spatiality of logistics parks. According to some authors (Cowen, 2014; Lefebvre, 1974), this spatiality is the product of a gendered, racialising and depoliticised social order. To what extent do gardening practices contribute to this order? Do they help to reproduce it or, in certain conditions, to suspend or even oppose it? The thesis will thus make a contribution to current debates around the “logistics city” and the “logistics metropolis” (Dablanc, Frémont, 2015).

3/ Franco-German comparison

A final objective of the thesis will be to understand how and for what ends nature is taken into account. Are we seeing modes of relationship with nature, modes of defining urban milieux or environments that differ according to the contexts? In order to give its findings wider application, the thesis will draw on a comparison between two European regions, Ile-de-France and the Ruhr, chosen because of their strategic position in European and national logistics networks (each region alone accounts for more than 20% of its country’s logistics jobs), but also because of thinking about industrial landscape or business landscape that dates back to the 1990s. To do this, the thesis will produce an inventory of public policies favouring the protection of landscapes and biodiversity conducted in both regions’ economic development zones. It will situate the regulations that apply to logistics development within this inventory, and it will provide a typology of the different modes of producing and managing nature in logistics parks.

References:

Colsaet A., 2021, Laisse béton ? La responsabilité de l’action publique dans l’artificialisation des sols : l’exemple des zones d’activités économiques en France et en Allemagne, Thèse de doctorat en sciences économiques, Université Paris-Saclay.

Cowen D., 2014, The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Dablanc L. , Frémont A., 2015, La métropole logistique. Le transport des marchandises et le territoire des grandes villes. Paris : Armand Colin.

Ernwein M., 2019, Les natures de la ville néolibérale. Une écologie politique du végétal urbain, Grenoble, UGA Editions, 2019.

Loram, A., et al. 2011, Urban Domestic Gardens : The Effects of Human Interventions on Garden Composition. Environnemental Management : 48 (808).

Lefebvre L., 1974, La production de l’espace. Paris : Anthropos.

Torres, A.-C., et al., 2018. Small but powerful: The importance of French community gardens for residents. Landscape and Urban Planning : 180 : 5-14.

Torres, A.-C. et al., 2017. Specificities of French community gardens as environmental stewardships. Ecology and Society : 22(3).