Dwelling in an Urban Wasteland: Struggles for Resources

Abstract

Wastelands in a dense urban context form temporary residual spaces including several resources. In Northern Paris, urban wastelands are used by inhabitants for different purposes: gardens, farms and settlements without a legal status, as well as business transactions in the gray economy. These inhabitants’ temporary uses transform urban wastelands into self-organizing niches for subsistence and recreational needs. With the contemporary renewal of professional practices, merging ecological and democratic expectations increase the integration of inhabitants’ uses into public green areas. Local authorities develop innovative management plans for these areas and are willing to delegate the management of urban open spaces to associations or to choose inhabitants. Stakeholders’ diverging expectations for wastelands cause conflicts of interest due to oppositions, where urban wastelands appear as an ambivalent resource and figure. The starting point is a double ethnographic survey focused on social uses and the professional practices of wasteland transformation in Northern Paris. Thanks to a spatial survey based on the materiality of these uses and on several interviews, this paper examines dwelling forms of urban wasteland and the power relations that occur in urban development.