Suchergebnisse

The South Pacific is a region still unimportant in the world scene, where there are islands which are extremely variable in size and are often gathered in archipelagos. Since it was long neglected by the processes of colonialism, the region has managed to preserve a rich environmental and cultural heritage, abundant and unusual in the European hetero-perception. The region was first considered as a far and wild paradise to tame and exploit in the name of geopolitics and the economy, and is now divided into two linguistic areas, English and French. This situation has not prevented the creation of narratives, representations and stereotypes around this idyllic region and its elements of wilderness, mystery, remoteness, exoticism, isolation.This article focuses on the French islands in the South Pacific: New Caledonia, Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna. Beyond their stereotypes and hetero images (tropical paradises, smiling populations), such islands present some extremely varied forms of spatial organization and land management, depending on physical realities, cultural heritage, social, political and economical processes. While traditional tourism promotes the image of tropical paradise, their self-representations are trying to show a different vision, which increases the differences between the three French archipelagos of the South Pacific.

Paris is a widespread urban system: a space and a landscape which have progressively become polycentric, according to logics of spatial organization which are in syntony with the city's historical development, from the center towards its peripheral areas. The center has always been the privileged ensemble of famous places which record the succession of the different historical phases of the city. The peripheral areas, on the other hand, are spaces marked by social imbalance, ethnic miscegenation and segregation. There are therefore two Parises: the one of the symbolic landmarks and of the vivacity of its social encounters and the one of the immigrants and of their exclusion. Both these Parises, in spite of their striking differences, are involved in a process of renovation and reassembling. Through the years, several modernizing projects have touched various sectors of the city, and the criteria of intervention have been adapted to their changing problems. Among this criteria is the notion of lasting development, which should realize a link between the old and new areas of the city and, and at the same time, make the urban environment easier to access by all its inhabitants. The social and environmental commitment on the one hand improves the livability of the public areas and empowers traditional collective practices, while on the other helps contextualize the remains of the past on the basis of modern exigencies such as the improvement of the living conditions and a steadily increasing pollution safeguard. In order to understand the complex urban texture of a city like Paris we should proceed with an epistemological, aestetic, political and social interpretation which also takes into consideration the economic and territorial components, because all these interwoven aspects concur to the richness of the metropolitan landscape of Paris. The historico-geographic stratification of the French capital is the very basis of its inestimable value and can become a key factor of its modernity.