Abstract EN:

Environmental concerns and sustainable development have been progressively creeping into studies and documents on city planning; just how these themes and preoccupations came into being over the course of time must be made clear. The rise of sustainable development is here analysed through texts produced in the field of city planning and environmental law, and through the urban policies developed in the Maritime Alps over the last half-century. Many are the themes that constitute the notion of sustainable development, themes that were present in city planning discourse well before the notion appeared as such; its significance stands out all the better when compared to the practices in city planning engaged in during two distinct periods: the one preceding the emergence of sustainable development and that which explicitly integrates this norm. The issue developed puts political power at the heart of the analysis: the social norm of “sustainable development” has legal effects and constitutes an essential element of a political strategy that best serves the middle classes. For half a century, a major part of the latter population group was able to pass from the mere dream of a lifestyle organised around individual home ownership and the realisation of that dream: henceforth, it is paramount to protect this “established right” rather than to continue “wasting” that space. Two elements of this strategy of sustainable development appear to be particularly significant: transfers of powers and inter-municipal links, on the one hand, and new conceptions of urban densities, on the other hand; both will give rise to relative analyses of agglomeration of the French Riviera, and notably the lower valley of the Var comprising an Operation in the National Interest (OIN/ONI Eco Valley). This will provide the opportunity to notice that the local power of the French State, far from becoming reinforced, on the contrary, is fading out in the redistribution that is taking place; thanks to inter-municipal links, the power of large towns has not stopped growing to the detriment of the smaller ones. At the same time, the growing success of the theme of “city planning projects” underlines the liberal orientation, adopted long since, in the area of city planning.