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

Cities xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

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Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture Jennifer Foster ⇑ Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada

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Article history: Received 4 October 2012 Received in revised form 22 August 2013 Accepted 3 September 2013 Available online xxxx Keywords: Paris Abandoned railway Vacancy Urban sustainability

a b s t r a c t 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. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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

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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

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Please cite this article in press as: Foster, J. Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture. J. Cities (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2013.09.002

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Fig. 1. Petite Ceinture train line and stations, 1921.

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 Figs. 1–3).

Vacant, but not uninhabited The Petite Ceinture may be interpreted as terrain vague, a term popularized by Spanish architect and philosopher Ignasi de Solà-Morales (1996) to describe the ‘‘non-spaces’’ that fall outside 1

The seventeen research participants were initially selected based on active public involvement in the Petite Ceinture, then supplemented with recommendations that emerged through the research process. Participants included city planners, ecologists, social workers, elected officials, industrial historians, environmental activists and involved Parisians.

Fig. 2. Petite Ceinture sunken tracks (image by J. Foster).

the margins of conventional urban form represented in popular photomontages. He describes these as ‘‘territorial indications of strangeness itself, and the aesthetic and ethical problems that they pose embrace the problematics of contemporary social life’’ (122). Examples might include former industrial sites, abandoned

Please cite this article in press as: Foster, J. Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture. J. Cities (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2013.09.002

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Fig. 3. Petite Ceinture at former Ouest Ceinture station (image by J. Foster).

buildings, disused railways and portlands, or old cemeteries. Terrains vague are unregulated landscapes, vague both spatially, as ‘‘empty’’ and ‘‘indeterminate’’, and temporally, as spaces that are typically perceived to be between distinct and legitimate planned forms and cycles. They are spaces where former land uses have been exhausted, divested, determined redundant or simply abandoned. The social value of terrain vague, according to Lizet (2010), is its complexity – being simultaneously open and closed, exogenous and indigenous, forbidden yet transgressed – combined with uncontrolled ecological and social processes that exist amid both material and symbolic waste. As Lévesque (2002) explains, for many these indeterminate zones ‘‘represent unacceptable socio-economic deterioration and abandonment’’ and ‘‘run contrary to the desired image of a prosperous city’’ (6). Yet, for others these are treasured landscapes where ecological succession is allowed to flourish and atypical socio-ecological associations emerge. Terrains vague contrast with the dominant logic of urban development in critical ways. As untended, ‘‘unproductive’’ land without obvious fiscal investment or utilitarian concerns, their relationship with capitalist land markets is typically ambivalent. Solà-Morales (1996) describes these as spaces existing ‘‘outside the city’s effective circuits and productive structures’’ (120). Terrains vague are also places where alternative social assemblages are possible, often vibrantly occupied in creative and novel ways. And they are places where the sub-proletariat and homeless people find material subsistence, which Snow and Mulcahy (2001) explain ‘‘implies a rupture of the spatial bedrock and the associated cultural imagery on which the urban order rest, and thus accounts, in large part, for the alarm and unease that many domiciled citizens and officials feel about homelessness’’ (154). As green spaces, they are not encompassed within urban beautification programs, are not associated with identifiable designers. They disturb the dominant scenic or picturesque aesthetics of western parks, and convey no moral lessons through their design. Rather, these are places primarily shaped spontaneously by the independent agency of nature, where surface faults are exploited, old machinery and buildings ferment, and water pools at will. This is to say, they provide pockets of self-sustaining vegetation, range for wildlife, and connections to other habitat. Conceptualizations of forlorn urban landscapes that correlate with terrain vague include ‘‘second hand spaces’’ (Ziehl et al. 2012), ‘‘landscapes of transgression’’ (Doron 2000), ‘‘urban wastelands’’ (Savard, Clergeau, & Mennechez 2000), ‘‘green ghettos’’ (Gandy 2006), ‘‘residual spaces’’ (Villagomez 2010), ‘‘urban wildscapes’’ (Gobster 2012), ‘‘ambivalent landscapes’’ (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007), ‘‘urban voids’’ (Careri 2002), ‘‘found space’’ (Rivlin, 2006)), and the Italian disabitato (Mariani & Barron 2011). What these types of spaces have in common is that they function as refuge for people and species that would otherwise be unable to

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locate suitable surroundings. Ming Jay Kang (2010) uses the metaphor of wetlands for landscapes ‘‘in limbo’’ that are shaped by gradual natural processes, linking these to emotional ecotones (transitional areas between distinct ecosystems) existing in the ‘‘leftover area of the greater world’’ with ‘‘evidence of collective tactics instead of a common plan: some migrate, some squat, some respond to change of time and tide, and each feeds on the biological chain’’ (220). Clément’s (2004) concept of délaissé space, an essential form of his ‘‘third landscape’’, provides a sense of the ecological richness of post-industrial space and the variety of aesthetic possibilities that they furnish. For the purposes of this paper, terrain vague is employed to understand and articulate unique habitat prospects that are relatively undisturbed and unsurveilled, affording inhabitations peripheral to dominant mainstream urban experiences. Terrains vague have the capacity to channel aesthetic encounters that are atypical in urban settings, not only terms of environmental contact, messiness and ‘‘ugliness’’, but also in terms of the ways that bodies and mobility are regulated, the ready sensations associated with immersion and exposure to the elements, and differently mediated connections to industrial legacies. Their assemblages are not strategically oriented to respond to emotional dimensions of urban aesthetic experiences, such as popular desires for relaxing pleasure, physical safety, control over surroundings and signifiers of socio-economic wellbeing. Rather, they tend to emerge more spontaneously, as a combined result of ecological succession and clandestine human engagement. Because terrains vague are often expressed in locales that are somehow ‘‘defiled’’ and perceived as unclean, they are uninviting to the majority of people, usually not even absorbed into visual or experiential memories of urban landscapes. When urban spaces are perceived as between legitimate uses, Corbin (2003) warns, ‘‘public desire to fill emptiness can obscure or destroy local history, miss an opportunity to reconsider openness, or deny inevitable change’’ (14). Recognizing the values of vacant land not as uninhabited, but rather as terrain vague, with rich possibilities that do not necessarily require intensively coordinated planning and design strategies – as land that is already making vital and creative contributions to ecological and social resilience and vibrancy – is critical to progressive interpretations of urban sustainability. From an ecological perspective, these are flora and fauna refuges, advancing urban biodiversity (but not necessarily according to historically referenced ecosystems), contributing overall to carbon sequestration, and reducing urban heat island effects. From an environmental justice perspective, not only do terrains vague help reduce inequities relating to access to nature by affording contact with nature and open space beyond a city’s stock of gardens and parks, they also have the potential to enable realization of landscape values that differ from dominant ideals, histories, affinities, and desires. In this sense, Kamvasinou (2006) emphasizes terrain vague as multi-sensory ‘‘alternative public space’’ (257), responding to needs and desires disregarded in the rest of the city. Planning and design are the antithesis of terrain vague, and any efforts to manipulate them could work at cross-purposes with the self-realized evolution of dejected, decaying but vibrant spaces. Yet, Catherine Heatherington (2012) suggests that the ideals of terrain vague are being incorporated into some designers’ work as they emphasize continuous landscape processes over finished products. She explains that ‘‘the ecological narrative may be as simple as making visible the processes of decay and succession or a more complex reading of the slow production of soil on reclaimed landfill or the gradual cleaning of waterways through planting’’ (178). Ecologically, this makes sense. Allowing concrete, vegetation, water, iron and steel to intermingle as they spontaneously decay and regenerate sets the stage for beautifully messy,

Please cite this article in press as: Foster, J. Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture. J. Cities (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2013.09.002

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vibrant ecologies. But what of the social dimensions of terrain vague? If former industrial sites are to truly challenge dominant aesthetic ideals in the name of sustainability, these must include ‘‘vacancies’’ that are used for activities that might not conform with conventional greenspace preferences, for example allowing less regulation and reduced surveillance, creative expression, shelter and home building, sexual activity, and even illicit substance use (see Fig. 4). The exact term terrain vague was employed as a landscape category for the Petite Ceinture by almost half of the city planners, ecologists, social workers, elected officials, industrial historians, environmental activists and involved Parisians interviewed through this research. Seldom characterized in planning and development documents as terrain vague, the concept was engaged favorably in the field to suggest landscape indeterminacy and emergent possibilities, qualities that many claimed make the Petite Ceinture special. Every one of the 17 research participants describe the Petite Ceinture as a friche, an uncultivated field or fallow land that, as Gandy (2012) explains, may be ecologically recuperating to restore soil structure, nitrogen base and other biophysical features. There was also a high degree of continuity in their descriptions of the rail line as very biodiverse, polluted and littered with trash. Guy Ruck (2011), a supervisor of environmental training on the Petite Ceinture for the social services organization Interface Formation, describes the appeal of the Petite Ceinture for creative youth by explaining ‘‘Youth studying art, photography, fashion and other things, come here because it is propitious. It’s a corner of verdant calm, where we can take uncommon photos, mount a project, do lots of things.’’ Bruno Ballet (2011a), who has been conducting tours of the Petite Ceinture for over 20 years, further explains the appeal for youth: They find themselves in a space that is a bit out of the ordinary, a bit marginal, and exceptional. They are in their medium. I think that they are a bit isolated, that nobody will come to find them, and they can discuss. Use of the term terrain vague was often coupled with reflection on the rail line as ruins, as forgotten space that has taken its own course through simultaneous processes of deterioration and succession. The interplay of erosion and renewal is unmistakable; the scars of industrial decline are laid bare, and the place does not maintain a clear role in current civic preoccupations. Indeed, a central feature of the interpretation of the Petite Ceinture as terrain vague is freedom, or autonomy from the city’s mainstream forms of development and urban experience. Disengagement from consumer culture, from aesthetic conventions, and from surveillance are important experiential qualities that characterize the Petite Ceinture as a unique landscape feature in the densely settled city.

Fig. 4. Forked tracks of Petite Ceinture, 20th arrondissment (image by J. Foster).

Evolution of the Petite Ceinture An icon of Paris’ industrial era, the rail line once linked the network of car factories, abattoirs, wine depots, quarries and other industrial facilities around the edges of the city, providing a transit route for industrial materials and merchandise to circulate both within the city and out to the provinces. This was Paris’ first rail line, predating the metro subway system for passenger transit. Completed in 1845, its purpose was to serve the city’s industry. It is composed of raised and trenched tracks that wind across viaducts and through tunnels, some over 1 km long. The entire route is unencumbered by street-level contact. It incorporated twenty-nine stations, including the city’s eight railways stations, thus furnishing a reliable means of shifting freight to strategic points around Paris and beyond. As freight traffic fell into decline in the 1970s and 80s, the national rail company (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français, or SNCF) sought to sell the line in favor of more profitable truck carriage operations, but the state prohibited any such sale. Thus, it has remained undeveloped since the last train rolled from Bercy station in 1993. From that point, the rail line was left as is, stations and gates were sealed, and human access was prohibited. The evolution of the rail line since 1993 is remarkable in the melding of human artifacts, contemporary material adaptation and ecological succession. Stohmayer and Corre (2012) describe it as ‘‘a space of possibilities, potentialities’’ where ‘‘everyday space is both near and far, familiar and unfamiliar, bearing traces of past and present uses that never were designed to co-exist’’ (6). Today, the Petite Ceinture consists of varied landscape types, ranging from a predominantly mineral profile to abundant vegetation inundating almost all surfaces. It connects numerous major parks (for example the parcs André Citroën, Georges Brassens, Montsouris, Buttes Chaumont, des Batignolles and the vast new parc Martin Luther King) and gardens (such as the Coulée Vert (the ‘‘promenade planté’’), jardins du Ranelagh and square Charles Péguy) with other major ecological features in its vicinity (such as the bois de Vincennes, bois de Boulogne and parc de Villette). Many of these connected green spaces are the city’s former industrial facilities, including quarries, stockyards, factories and warehouses. A segment in western Paris is integrated into the regional transport network (RER C line) and in the north portions have been maintained as a link between three terminal stations for major national and international lines. Of the remaining 23 km 5.2 km is composed of vegetated embankment, 4.4 km of trenches partially covered in vegetation, 7.2 km of tunnels, 1 km of combined viaducts, and 5.2 km of open ground-level space (APUR, 2011). When it is noticed, the Petite Ceinture is typically perceived to be between valid uses, not quite a sign of urban blight, but certainly in a state of vacancy. It is this sense of vacancy, based on aesthetic expectations, that renders the rail line physically, ecologically and socially invisible. As the physical presence of the Petite Ceinture is obscured, so too are the outstanding ecological relationships and human inhabitations. This permits humans and ‘‘more than human’’ to hide in plain view, remain less regulated, and evolve outside the parameters of social and ecological expectations, beyond the gaze of surveillance that permeates the city. It affords essential life needs, most fundamentally concealed shelter that is integrated and connected to the broader city. Floral species of the Petite Ceinture are consistent with dry Mediterranean ecosystems and typical fallow land of the Île-de-France region within which Paris is located. There are over 1000 plant species and over 1000 species of lichens and mushrooms (APUR, 2011). A recent floral ecosystem study found high representation of therophytes, and concluded that the entire rail line is abundant in species that depend on insect pollination (Brunet 2008 in APUR, 2011).

Please cite this article in press as: Foster, J. Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture. J. Cities (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2013.09.002

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Hedgehogs, foxes, and feral cats are typical mid-size mammals that use the Petite Ceinture, often traveling to and from the city’s eastern and western woodlands but also creating dens in situ. Beech marten, winter wren, blackcap, common chiffchaff, and red admiral are well-established inhabitants (Mase 2009). Other prominent fauna include domestic and stray cats, hedgehogs, two species of tit, robins, redstart, all species of pigeon, ravens, crows, kestrels and various other birds of prey (Ruck 2011). A colony of 1200 rare and protected insectivorous bats is located in a tunnel under a hospital, and a population of protected wall lizards is growing along the tracks, both of which do not have viable habitat elsewhere in the city (APUR, 2011). There are over a dozen species of slugs and terrestrial mollusks, and over 1000 insect species have been inventoried (APUR, 2011). The City’s planning department contends that the degree of biodiversity is as important as that of the city’s two major woodlands, the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes, further noting that the importance of pollination and seed dissemination on the tracks suggests strong reciprocity between the rail line’s flora and fauna (APUR, 2011). The national rail company (réseau ferré de France, RFF) retains ownership and control of the Petite Ceinture, and active management of the line is sanctioned only along brief sections apportioned to five non-government organizations. These are social service agencies that combine assistance for people who are unemployed, disadvantaged and facing serious difficulties (such as addiction or recent incarceration) with training in greenspace stewardship. RFF Biodiversity Research Analyst Jean-Christophe Vandevelde (2011) characterizes the management approach as innovative but costly, explaining. It’s a new style of maintenance, with social responsibilities. It is the marriage of several goals. And it is expensive. It is the actions that are expensive in comparison to the rail agencies maintaining it themselves. We have this supplementary expense because we consider it to be an urban interest from the perspective of connections with citizens. Otherwise, the rail lines are simply friches. People wouldn’t go, it’s menacing. We have shown that it can also function as refuge. It can also be lovely. In effect, the rail company engages these agencies to maintain the tracks for possible future rail use, requiring that participants maintain the Petite Ceinture as a jardin sauvage (wild garden) and keep the rails clear of garbage, suppress woody vegetation from bridges, collect garbage and care for the vegetation that spontaneously appears along the track (Foster 2010). The social service agencies, meanwhile, combine this work with education and training in botany, project planning and other matters relevant to urban landscape management (see Fig. 5). They also help participants gain research experience through species surveys, planting nut groves, establishing plots to test and monitor novel ecological restoration techniques and gathering materials like fallen lumber for independent tradespeople (Ruck 2011). The presence of social service agencies on the Petite Ceinture is well established, and these are the groups that are most acutely aware of changing ecological conditions as well as evolving social formations on the tracks. There was also consensus among the interviewees that undocumented people form a significant presence on the tracks, but nobody from any of the insertion agencies working on the Petite Ceinture volunteered details or further information. Jean-Guy Henckle (2009) of Reseau Cocagne (an insertion agency working on agricultural development in friches around Paris but not the Petite Ceinture), however, offers insight into the changing political climate encountered during the Sarkozy era around working with undocumented people encountered: To have access to legal work contracts, if they don’t have papers they can’t work. So the law in France changed a few years ago. If I

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Fig. 5. Petite Ceinture wetland construction test plot, 20th arrondissment (image by J. Foster).

want to prepare a certificate saying ‘‘I will employ mister or misses’’ the prefecture would give them the papers so they can work. Today, the legal issues have to be worked out before working. . . In the first garden that I mounted there were 35 workers, with 18 different nationalities. These people had many family members without papers. So, we were often connected. But today we can’t even approach somebody without papers. But the law is changing quickly. The current French government is obsessed with these issues. Foreigners! Foreigners! Foreigners! Small portions have also been converted to non-rail uses, and the City of Paris signed a protocol with RFF in 2006 to guide its actions on the Petite Ceinture. In the elite residential sixteenth arrondissment, a full kilometer has been transformed into a nature trail. This was inspired by resistance to a planned parking garage, where the local community lobbied for a peaceful nature trail that could be integrated with the city’s parks system (Foster 2010). The naturalization of this portion of the Petite Ceinture was completed in collaboration with the social service agency Espaces in December 2007, and the path is now known as the Sentier Nature. Construction is currently underway along another stretch in the city’s southern 15th arrondissment, to enable limited human access to a portion that already hosts a private tennis club. The idea is to formalize access to a foot path along a stretch that is already frequently visited (Molinar 2011). There are also several portions of the Petite Ceinture that have been converted into community gardens. Because the soil is heavily contaminated from coal, industrial chemicals and herbicides (Ballet 2011a; Ruck 2011), the City must install isolated raised planters and employ remediation techniques such as removing 50 cm of soil and replacing it with 20 cm of drainage gravel and fresh soil (APUR, 2011). Any such change requires contracts with SNCF, including rental fees at the expensive rate of constructible land and the strict stipulation that any alterations must be easily and quickly reversible to make way for potential active rail use (Ballet 2011). The only permanent infrastructure introduced to the rail line is a ribbon of fibrotic cables circling the city to fulfill Paris’ technological demands (see Fig. 6). The Petite Ceinture is officially off limits to civilians, and over the years the City and the rail company have mounted various barriers, locking contraptions and razor wire to seal these from the public (see Fig. 7). However, furtive access points abound. Some are easily spotted with a bit of concerted effort, but others are carefully concealed to protect them from over-use. Limitations on human access, combined with an overall ‘‘hands off’’ approach to management, has certainly contributed to the ecological vibrancy of the Petite Ceinture. And, like the ecological evolution of the rail line, the constellation of social formations on the Petite Ceinture

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Fig. 6. Petite Ceinture raised tracks, beside fuel storage, with homes and gardens beneath (image by J. Foster).

Fig. 7. Razor wire and fortified fencing at clandestine entry point to Petite Ceinture (image by J. Foster).

juxtaposes a degraded and discarded city with fertile and vigorous human uses. Despite an outward appearance of neglect, spontaneous ad hoc visits are a regular occurrence. Some visitors are merely curious wanderers who stumble upon a hole in a fence and explore. Others seek out illicit excursions, for example hunting for entry points into the caves and tunnels of the city’s famous catacombs. Some partake in organized meetings devoted to prohibited or underground subculture activities, such as simulated combat or musical events. Ballet (2011b) notes that the typical ‘‘heavy’’ visitor (as opposed to occasional visitor) is attracted to the line’s isolation, marginality and unusualness, explaining It’s like a refuge and I think it feels out of the ordinary, outside of the normal world. They are in a peaceful zone. It’s a zone where most people don’t go, because it’s a place that some fear. It is forbidden. So, I think that they feel more at ease, more comfortable. Meanwhile, André Cuzon (2008) of the citizen organization France Nature Environment, describes the presence of youth on a friche associated with the Petite Ceinture and the perceived threat that they pose to visitors The argument from the government and local associations is that it is dangerous because there are young couples, heterosexual and homosexual, who could go use these friches for sexual adventures. . . and so it is dangerous. The rail line is also populated by settlements of people, mostly from Eastern Europe, who set up temporary homesteads with protective dogs (Dupont 2009; Ruck 2011; Vandevelde 2011). Julien

Roche (2009), a supervisor for the social services agency Espaces, explains that although there have been serious assault and robbery problems associated with drug users along the tracks, most of the train station inhabitants are young people living on the margins of society seeking temporary refuge from the street. Others have discretely lived in shelters along the tracks for over 10 years without problems, not bothering anyone (Ballet 2011b; Roche 2009). One such individual is sixty-five year old Daniel (2011), who has lived in an old 12 square meter rail storehouse for fifteen years and reports that all of his needs are met. He explains that he prefers the Petite Ceinture as an alternative to ‘‘the forces of globalization, a culture of waste and a broken political system’’. He reports that it is sometimes difficult to live on the Petite Ceinture in the winter, that he has had to defend himself during ‘‘incidents’’, and he has known people to die on the tracks. But Daniel insists that he will not leave the rail line, and will not go above ground before dying. There are also unauthorized gardens scattered throughout the rail line. In some instances these are cases of encroachment from neighboring residents seeking to extend their domain. In other cases informal gardens are shared between organized groups of people, such as the garden in the 12th arrondissment where local youth gather and an apiary has been established. Others appear as artistic arrangements or installations that express alternate worlds and possibilities. Exploring the Petite Ceinture reveals a wealth of creative expression. Artists and creative collectives have set up self-described squats in disused railway buildings, creating studio space, living compounds and event venues, particularly in the north and eastern portions of the rail line. A group called Gares aux Gorilles, for instance, formed in a north–east station to resurrect the Petite Ceinture with a novel rapport to time (Azadé 2010). The tracks are a magnet for graffiti artists, who may develop detailed, large scale detailed murals without harassment, exposure to surveillance cameras or social monitoring. Thanks to these autonomous creative enactments, the embankment and building walls bounce with color, pattern, and political and cultural messages. There are also numerous complex and provocative sculptural installations, such as the gate that is embedded with vintage disassembled and brightly painted French, British and German military pistols, rifles and armaments (see Figs. 8 and 9). A few buildings are legally occupied. Since the rail line’s closure, RFF has selectively rented out portions of stations and old railway buildings as studio and living space. Recently, however, the train company has begun evicting these and other residents. Official tenants and squatters alike have received eviction notices and been removed over the past two years (Azadé 2010). In the meantime, the SNCF and police intensified efforts to eject homeless people living around the tracks (Molinar 2011; Prochasson 2011), remove multi-family encampments (Ballet 2011b) and reinforce fence gaps. All of this appears to be undertaken with a view to controlling the Petite Ceinture more strictly, both in terms of safety and exposure to liability, but also in preparation for re-investment and valorization of the line through new visions and plans for its future.

Possible futures Despite diverse backgrounds and affiliations, those interviewed through this research agree in sum on a number of critical urban ecological issues that typically provoke contentious debate. Roche (2009) asserts ‘‘everybody who knows the Petite Ceinture defends it, at least to keep it as it is.’’ In this respect, all emphasize the importance of retaining the physical continuity of the rail line and including humans in any vision of its future. As Marc Prochasson (2011), Sustainability Coordinator for the 20th arrondisment

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stay the same. They don’t want a promenade with people who amble. Because it’s a nuisance, it’s noisy.

Fig. 8. Petite Ceinture at former Rue d’Avron station (image by J. Foster).

The ASPCRF prefers a combination of passenger transit and freight, focusing on enhancing circular transit options in a city dominated by radial lines in and out of the city rather than around it. This is envisioned as a means of preserving the city’s industrial heritage and small stations while serving the greatest number of people, particularly in the city’s periphery and suburbs. ASPCRF secretariat Bruno Bretelle (2009) believes that this is compatible with nature preservation, and points out that there has not been much rail investment over the past 30 years, while the existing transit lines are working at capacity. The City has suggested numerous alternatives, including using portions as garbage transfer stations or transforming it into a continuous garden. While the first option has only been suggested parenthetically and has not elicited public reaction, the idea of transforming the line into a continuous garden with recreational amenities does enjoy keen support among Parisians, for example as a planted promenade or a cycling track (Terrier 2009). However, as both Dupont (2009) and Bretelle (2009) explain, with many narrow and deeply trenched sections, as well as long tunneled passages (some over one kilometer long), this is not a feasible option. Others oppose any options that accommodate more visitors on the grounds that these would diminish the value of the rail line as a biodiverse sanctuary. Formal community gardening is a divisive issue in this respect. Prochasson (2011) explains: If we make gardens, and we use all the space for gardens, we will totally transform the setting. Certain people’s demands are contradictory. Theys say "we need to preserve biodiversity, but we must make community gardens". These are not at all compatible, since gardening is contrary to biodiversity. Ballet (2011b) further argues that

Fig. 9. Petite Ceinture fence installation (image by J. Foster).

(an eastern district with dense living quarters, a working class legacy, and concentrated immigration) states ‘‘we are not in the middle of the countryside. We are still in Paris! And to leave a space totally inaccessible is a luxury that I don’t think we can afford".While none argue for increased human access, cultivation or removal of exotic or invasive species, where they disagree is on the desirability of active management of the Petite Ceinture. Possibilities for the future of the Petite Ceinture have been quietly envisioned and proposed since the line was decommissioned. Until the Mayor and the Minister of Transportation initiated a study for a tramline in the south of Paris in 1995, the future of the Petite Ceinture was only of interest to specialized transportation experts (Zittoun 2009). After intense political debate, the resultant tramline was located along an existing roadway instead of the rail line, on the immediate southern outskirts of the city. Since then, numerous other visions have been floated. For example, the State has maintained a long-term ideal of returning freight passage to the rails in order to reduce the amount of truck traffic in the city and minimize related congestion, pollution and costs of delays. While there is strong public support for this idea in principle, in practice there is a lot of resistance from people living in neighboring areas who do not wish to live alongside a conveyance route. Alternately, the State has also suggested using the line for tourism in the southern portion of the city, an idea that has also garnered resistance from locals. As the president of the Association Sauvegarde Petite Ceinture (ASPCRF, a citizen rail heritage organization) Jean-Emmanuel Terrier (2009) explains There are areas where apartments are very close to the line. And they often say that they don’t want it to change. They want it to

There is a variety of settings that are very, very important in terms of border conditions. For richness of biodiversity the mix of these areas is very important. As soon as we modify and simplify through management we necessarily reduce biodiversity. . . What is truly contradictory is that this management is done in the name of biodiversity. We put management before biodiversity and we diminish it. The City’s Biodiversity Director, Philippe Jacob (2009) captures the shared concern about depreciation of biodiversity should the Petite Ceinture be adapted to accommodate more visitors: The stakes are High if it is designated as a greenspace, therefore open to the public. . . opening it to the public is the big problem. . . We talk about biodiversity, everyone talks about biodiversity. It’s nice, it’s pleasing to say "look at the little birds", and we respond "yes, they are pretty". And then we construct, we destroy, we manage, and we make greenspaces with rosebushes, maybe a bit of turf, but that’s all. Finally, while the narrow width of the tracks ensures low potential for housing, in the past some neighboring apartment complexes have sought to purchase portions of the line in order to expand property boundaries and increase property values. The idea has never been realized though, because the State does not want to sell and because owners dropped inquiries upon discovering that purchase prices would be extremely expensive (Terrier 2009). The City of Paris has a firm interest in the Petite Ceinture, and the municipal planning agency, Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUR), recently built on the 2006 protocol with RFF by conducting studies with a view to its future. In doing so, the City affirms the rail line’s unique flora, important links within the urban morphology, and coexistence with people of diverse socio-economic

Please cite this article in press as: Foster, J. Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture. J. Cities (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2013.09.002

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J. Foster / Cities xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

profiles as a basis for any future plans (APUR, 2011). These are all key attributes of a meaningful interpretation of urban sustainability, particularly in its emphasis on the equity and diversity dimensions of sustainability that often remain unexplored in planning for natural features. The City has not advanced any specific plans to date, and the rail company has not signaled any interest in disposing of the lands. But the City does have first right of refusal on any future sale. Anne Hidalgo, the Deputy Mayor charged with planning, is opposed to subdividing the Petite Ceinture into small sectors and supports retaining it as ‘‘an area for leisure, walking and getting some fresh air, keeping as much continuity as possible’’ (in Landrin 2013, 31). What the City chooses to do with the Petite Ceinture should the vacant lands become municipal property is difficult to know. As City Planner Chiara Molinar (2011) explains, there are many possibilities, and they press the question of interpreting urban sustainability, to which the City of Paris is officially committed. Would it be more sustainable to use the space for much-needed housing, for public transportation, for public recreation space, or for biodiversity conservation? Fabienne Giboudeaux is the Deputy Mayor charged with the city’s green spaces. Concerned about the growing gap between rich and poor neighborhoods in Paris, she argues that there is a stronger need for green space in the northern and eastern portions of the city, where poverty is highest and amenities are limited (Giboudeaux 2011). Due to demanding life conditions, she explains, these neighborhoods also have a higher aptitude for creatively using green spaces. With less money, smaller residences, fewer private outdoor spaces, no second properties outside the city and less vacation time, people in these areas benefit greatly from proximity with nature. She points to a municipal youth advisory group that recently focused on greenspace preferences for youth, finding a strong demand for wild spaces, fallow lands, and spaces that do not have a prescribed use. Noting that she often alters her vocabulary to describe terrain vague (such as that demanded by youth) as ‘‘zone naturelle d’évolution’’, she laments urban planners’ tendency to develop these spaces: I think we need to tell planners to leave terrains vague. For several reasons. Because these are spaces where nature exists spontaneously, so it is always interesting to see what happens. Because these are spaces where we do not intervene, where humans are less present, so there is a lifesystem that is interesting in terms of biodiversity. And to leave the possibility for projects we have not yet contemplated. Planners always want to fill space when they present plans, and people are anxious. They say ‘‘Ah, but what will happen? We are going to leave the space as is?’’ I think we need to educate people a bit to explain that yes, it’s interesting because these spaces might not have value for us, but they have strong economic value and value for birds, they need space that is not heavily used, and also tell them that uses and needs evolve and we need to leave space for that. Giboudeaux’s comments point to the need to shift the valorization of vacant lands from waste without controlling them through comprehensive site planning, design and management. The outcome of her vision is yet to be determined, but it does call for an enhanced and more nuanced understanding of vacancy, one that appreciates and permits the key attributes of terrain vague as legitimate and critical features of sustainable cities. A vacant, unkempt dimension of urban sustainability Clearly, the type of vacancy experienced at the Petite Ceinture presents ecological and social opportunities, and these emerge largely because the rail line doesn’t fit into the city’s conventional spatial categories. It is not a park, it is not a garden, it is not a

promenade or hiking trail. As an urban void or sorts, a space that is an aesthetically uninviting wasteland that appears unsafe, the Petite Ceinture is either ignored or marked for redevelopment. But the appearance of being unsafe is often rooted in concepts of ‘‘others’’ inhabiting particular spaces in ways that disturb their orderly regulation, where homeless people and graffiti artists, for example, leave the most visible signs of inhabitation, even if their actual bodies are not visible. Combined with a sense of unkempt nature, these aesthetic signals suggest a departure from regular codes of comfort and beauty, presenting a complex of intersecting aesthetic modes. They contravene visual order by appearing disassembled, collapsed, untidy and vandalized. They can be disorienting, with low light, unfamiliar material, physical instability, and objects situated in unexpected places. Repellant scents such as rancid oil, diesel or urine are commonplace, and the surfaces of these spaces may feel unhygienic. And this type of space is also often at odds with standardized safety codes, leaving visitors feeling overor under-exposed, wary of sharp and contaminated edges and unstable passages. Serious attacks and robberies notwithstanding (and these are certainly risks posed across spatial types, and scales, from domestic homespaces to transnational commerce and war) such discomfort is not adequate rationale for elimination of socalled vacant space. Many of the creative and ecological opportunities present here have thrived simply because the space has not been disciplined in conformity with anticipated values concerning desirable, scenic and pleasing landscape features. What is needed is a logic that incorporates indeterminacy, openness and selfregulation and is not dismissed simply due to discontinuity with dominant aesthetic ideals. But how can planners and designers preserve neglect and invisibility? In advancing urban sustainability, any such strategy must permit aesthetically messy landscapes where ecological succession progresses without human control. As the foundation of new planning and design possibilities that do not confound vacancy with a need for redevelopment, rechanneling aesthetic expectations holds promise. These spaces do not have to be attractive and inviting to all. They do not have to make productive economic contributions at any scale, be it neighborhood, municipal or transnational. Rather, appreciation for their ecological richness is enhanced by limiting human access and beautification, especially if this is conjoined with an understanding that ‘‘unplanned’’ human uses of terrain vague are valid within an account of urban sustainability that accepts indeterminacy, landscape scars, ecological selfdetermination, along with human material subsistence and shelter for transient, homeless and undocumented people. Planners and designers do not have to invent such an aesthetic at each turn. There is much to draw on from existing work that conceptualizes attentive observations and learning as aesthetically fulfilling (for instance, Berleant 1997; Carroll 1993; Saito 1998; Carlson, 2003) to case studies where process, uncertainty and flux are prioritized (for instance Foster 2007; Heatherington 2012) to artistic articulations (such as Shitamichi Motoyuki’s images of the remains of Japanese bunkers from the Second World War). The work of planners and designers, then, is not to reconfigure terrain vague outright, but rather to facilitate the conditions for it to thrive, communicate its value as a critical dimension of urban sustainability, and help illuminate an aesthetic that emphasizes ambivalence, disorder and freedom. References Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUR). (2011). Situation et perspectives de la place de la nature à Paris: 3e atelier – La petite ceinture ferroviaire (p. 19). (APUR, May 2011). Azadé, A. (2010). Director. Que reste-t-il de la Petite Ceinture?, 25, 12 video Ballet, B. (2011a). Personal, communication. 28.06.11. Ballet, B. (2011b). Personal, communication. 13.12.11.

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Please cite this article in press as: Foster, J. Hiding in plain view: Vacancy and prospect in Paris’ Petite Ceinture. J. Cities (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.cities.2013.09.002