L'enjeu métropolitain des Halles
in French Politics, Culture & SocietySearch for other papers by Thierry Baudouin in
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During the Fordist period, the state transformed the historic site of Les Halles,in the heart of Paris, into the agglomeration's chief mass transit gateway.Efforts to make the site into a veritable tool of social, cultural, and economicmetropolitan development are struggling because of governmental modalitiesthat remain very marked by centralism. A majority of citizens, notably thoseliving in suburban Paris, actively stake a claim to this metropolitan dimensionand to the rich possibilities of this tool. The article principally analyzes the territorializingpractices of suburban youths, whose multiple subjectivities arestill poorly integrated into the site. Les Halles thus reveals the question of thecorrespondence of these establishing metropolitan practices to the reality ofthe centralized institutions around Paris intramuros.