For twenty years, cities have been inventing new public policies for reinforcing their economic attractiveness and regulating social tensions, yet their urban elites reweave the ties between themselves to create economic development and international positioning strategies.

European cities are also becoming veritable political actors endowed with a political exterior allowing them to assert themselves against international partners and/or rivals (Europe, the state, regions, and other cities). This work retraces the origins of large-scale urban projects in five European cities (Marseille, Nantes, Venice, Turin and Manchester), in which the operations of physical reconstruction and long term urban planning allows an analysis of the transformations which have impacted urbanism and urban governance.

Gilles Pinson is a Political Science instructor at Université Jean-Monnet de Saint-Étienne. He also teaches at Sciences Po.