Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture

Highlights

• Urban vacant lands may contribute to biodiversity and landscape connectivity.

• Urban vacant lands may also present socio-cultural opportunities.

• The decommissioned Petite Ceinture helps advance urban sustainability in Paris.

• Terrain vague may be channeled for progressive urban planning and design approaches.

• Aesthetic conventions and experiences are key determinants in terrain vague.

Abstract

Vacant lands present rich areas for inquiry not only into the uses of urban space, but also the experiences, aesthetics and biophysical evolution of cities. These spaces often host socio-ecological formations and functions that are both irregular and unexpected in urban settings, rendered invisible by the disciplining of modern Western aesthetic expectations concerning what is desirable and appropriate in cities. These lands may be vacant, but they are not uninhabited. They enable forms of inhabitation that disrupt the logic of urban development and provide social and ecological prospects otherwise unavailable in cities. The concept of terrain vague is engaged in this paper to probe vacant lands as interstitial spaces that are peripheral to mainstream, dominant urban experiences in Paris, France. The case of the Petite Ceinture railway encircling Paris is explored as an outstanding example of terrain that is rendered physically, socially and ecologically invisible yet provides astounding ecological connectivity and relatively undisturbed habitat for countless species in the midst of one of the world’s cultural capitals. It enables alternate experiences of urbanity for many people, including different types of mobility, novel aesthetic encounters, and social engagement outside urban surveillance infrastructure. As the Petite Ceinture provides unique home for wildlife populations such as mid-size mammals and rare bat colonies, it also hosts undocumented migrant groups, assemblages of youth, urban flaneurs, homeless labourers, artists, and groups conducting prohibited activities. These types of inhabitations are possible because the Petite Ceinture has been fully decommissioned since 1993, unmanaged and left largely to successional processes. This paper investigates terrain vague as a critical dimension of urban sustainability and ends by suggesting key ways that the conceptual and material underpinnings of terrain vague could be channeled through progressive urban planning and design.

Introduction

A couple strolls along a quiet path; oblivious to the world beyond the sunken 20-m wide corridor, they wander. Several hundred meters down the same path, a group of teenagers scramble up a hill, through a hole in a fence, to an old rail station platform, where they hang out listening to music and smoking for a couple of lost hours before returning home. A bit further down the path, imprints of a recent settlement can be traced, the vacated home of a group of migrants from Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, a fox returns to her den in the ruins of an old stone block wall, among tall grass and shrubbery, after traveling a continuous, road-free 20-km route to and from a ten square kilometer woodland. Birds nest and reproduce, bats form extensive colonies in caves and tunnels, and wild orchids grow prolifically. Outside the 20-m wide corridor, hundreds of thousands of people cross over and under the path while conducting their daily routines, oblivious to its existence. This is the Petite Ceinture, a 32-km long circuit hugging the inner edges of Paris. It is a major ecological feature of the city, largely unknown and unheralded. When detected, it is typically dismissed as vacant, degraded land, empty and overgrown. It bears the visual hallmarks of industrial collapse and disintegration, and is typically avoided as a dangerous “no go” zone. It is an ecological and social refuge in what Harvey (2003) calls the Capital of Modernity.

This paper explores the Petite Ceinture as vacant land framing the city of Paris. A vast green ring within one of the world’s cultural capitals, the Petite Ceinture provides astounding ecological connectivity and relatively undisturbed habitat for countless species. While exploring the ecological prospects of urban vacancy, this paper also probes the socio-cultural opportunities that vacancy enables and illuminates the contradictions of both managing vacant lands in the name of biodiversity and accommodating public access in the name of nature appreciation. Interpreting urban vacancy through the lens of terrain vague, the paper situates aesthetic interpretation as a key determinant in the experience and politics of vacancy, particularly as it informs an understanding of alternate experiences of urbanity. The research is based on detailed site analysis of the entire rail line; extended interviews with professionals, mobilized citizens and people active in the Petite Ceinture (both in the field and across the city)¹; analysis of archival materials (such as maps, films, images, media reports, administrative statements, position papers, and materials generated by nongovernmental actors); and analysis of planning and policy documents.

The study finds that places such as Paris’ Petite Ceinture enable forms of inhabitation that disrupt the dominant logic of urban development. In doing so, these spaces are contested in terms of their current uses and possible futures, as they are discontinuous with conventional Western aesthetic expectations, urban habitational patterns and processes. These are the very attributes that render these ecologically rich and socially meaningful landscapes invisible. This paper finds that it is the perceptive qualities of vacancy – invisibility, disrepair and neglect- that enable social and ecological prospects to thrive. In terms of advancing a critical interpretation of urban sustainability, the challenge for planners and designers is to sustain the very dispossession that enables the city to retreat, nature to take over, and dominant forms of social regulation to recede. This paper suggests three channels for responding to this challenge: advancing aesthetic engagement with unruly nature; accepting “emptiness” as a planning and design possibility; and valuing vacant space as ecologically and socially decolonized from the limitations and order of urban development (see Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3).