Acronym: OTW
Title: On the Waterfront: The (Re)production of Urban Space in Marseille
Theme: urban redevelopment
CARTELLI Philip
Harvard University (USA)/l’EHESS (Paris)
pcartelli@gmail.com
Key Words: cultural revitalization ; urban space ; publics ; museums ; Mediterranean ;
France ; Europe
Discipline: urban sociology/visual anthropology
Abstract
In January 2013, Marseille assumed the title of European Capital of Culture for a
year. As in other working-class cities, urban re-development in Marseille—promoted as
a solution to the city’s socio-economic inequalities—has rapidly accelerated in recent
years. More specifically, Marseille’s status as Capital of Culture coincides with
EuroMéditerranée, a multi-year urban renewal project that aims to introduce a Central
Business District into the city’s downtown, particularly in the space between the city’s
Vieux Port and its modern Grand Port Maritime. My dissertation research explores social
and symbolic interactions around the J4, a concrete-and-stone pier that is located
between these two port spaces.
The J4 has been an anomaly in Marseille’s downtown for a number of years: it has
provided a wide swath of open space in a city center sorely lacking in parks and plazas;
at the same time it has existed on the downtown’s periphery—located between two
operational ports, it has rarely been a tourist destination and has not been prominently
labeled as a public space; nor has it been oriented towards exclusionary uses in recent
years, existing rather as what Franck and Stevens call a “loose space,” one where “people
pursue a very rich variety of activities not originally intended for those locations” (2007:
2).
Since September 2011, the J4 has been officially closed to the public for largescale renovation. In June 2013 it re-opened as a re-designed public space centered
around two new institutions, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations
(Mucem) and the Villa Méditerrannée. Beginning with preliminary fieldwork with local
spatial users in 2010, I continue to track the transformation of this space from a nonpurposed common space to one that maintains public access and use, but sharply reconceives which publics are welcome, when, and how.
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Instead of a traditional paper presentation, I propose to screen a 15-20
minute video featuring footage that I have recorded between 2009 and 2013 at the J4. A
prime methodological component of my fieldwork on the J4 involves video and sound
recording. Pursued as part of a joint-PhD (cotutelle) in Visual Anthropology and
Sociology, my audiovisual work is intended to complement my written dissertation as an
innovative approach to research and transmission. The video that I propose to screen is
composed of a sequence of images of the space of the J4 before, during, and after its
transformation. These images appear without commentary in a largely chronological
order. More specifically, they situate and re-situate past and present users within
evolving spaces (and buildings) in such a way as to transmit to viewers the lived
experience of these transitions, their structural dimensions, and my ongoing analysis of
both. I plan on providing a brief oral introduction to the film in order to contextualize
this methodological approach. [I would be able to upload the video to Vimeo or another
site by the February deadline for written papers.]
I argue that the commoditization of urban space in cities like Marseille is linked
to efforts to push working-class residents aside and re-convert public space for touristic
purposes under the banner of “culture.” The situation of the J4 in Marseille is similar to
that of other post-war European urban spaces that are being effectively “(re)produced”
towards ends beyond local use or production to increasingly target tourist and
bourgeois economies of leisure and exclude working-class and marginalized city
residents to the urban periphery. The local singularity of the projects currently under
way in Marseille lies precisely in the cultural diversity of this Mediterranean port city
that is being superficially vaunted but ultimately whitewashed to bind it ever more
closely to the rest of France and Europe. As the products of Mediterranean "civilizations"
are placed in museums and spaces designed for transcultural dialogue, these same
societies' descendants face increasing restrictions on movement and access in their daily
lives. In my video presentation, I explore how a directed strategy and rhetoric of urban
planning, architectural design, and cultural revitalization has visibly and audibly altered
and redefined uses and interactions in a common space in downtown Marseille.
Bibliography
Franck, K. and Q. Stevens. 2007, Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life,
London: Routledge
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