Transformation Processes in the Parisian Urban Borderlands—Reinventing the Canal de l’Ourcq

Formerly considered suburban, the area along the Canal de l’Ourcq in the metropolitan region of Paris has for several years now been subject to far-reaching transformation. In the course of the metropolitanization of the Métropole du Grand Paris, urban development projects have brought new housing, offices, public spaces etc. to former industrial sites on the Plaine de l’Ourcq, entailing both structural and social upheavals. How these transformations along the Canal de l’Ourcq are discursively negotiated is the subject of this essay, which—applying principles of discourse analysis based on the theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe—examines articles from the daily newspaper Le Parisien, as well as open, episodic interviews. A mapping also depicts the physical changes along the canal. Three lines of discourses can be distinguished: the canal as a recreational area, the Plaine de l’Ourcq as a residential area, and the Canal de l’Ourcq as a mobility axis. Multiple demarcations run through both media coverage and interviews. These include material (e.g. infrastructural) borders, as well as immaterial demarcations such as social and everyday (in)visible boundaries. They change local life and are framed discursively in various ways.