Transportation and the Coordination of the Competitive Parisian Metropolis

This paper situates the Grand Paris transit-oriented development initiative within a political economic context of neoliberalization in order to analyze how the ideal of the competitive global city is embedded in local plans for intensification and densification around proposed metro stations. In particular, I focus on contrats de développement territorial (CDTs) as instruments to facilitate the coordination of transportation and land use and to mediate the overall vision of Grand Paris at the local scale. I argue that by and large, the networked and collaborative urbanism facilitated by CDTs emphasizes economic over social goals.