Governing the logistics development of the urban region

Talk title: Governing the Logistics Development of the Urban Region: Suburbanization, Urban Planning and Metropolitan Competition

Speaker: Nicolas Raimbault

When: Thursday, March 24, 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm

Where: HC 2250

This event is co-organized with SFU's Political Science Department

Due to the transformations of production, distribution and consumption systems, logistics activities gain in importance in global city regions such as the Greater Paris Region. This economic sector bursts in these urban regions, bringing in new economic and geographic logics. This development is embedded in a diversity of public actions from municipal policies (small transport facilities, logistics zones), almost invisible at the regional scale, to metropolitan policies (regional planning, port competition), including the management of specific public infrastructures (ports and airports, rail terminals). These different public actions, structuring the interactions of a variety of public and private actors, constitute the object of this research. This thesis demonstrates that the diversity of public actions involved in the logistics development of the Greater Paris Region corresponds to different coexistent modes of governance, to different coalitions of actors supporting this logistics development. The empirical aim is to analyze these coalitions while situating them among the multiple modes of governance at stake in the global city region. From a more theoretical point of view, this thesis draws some perspectives about metropolitan governance through the analysis of logistics development governance. It takes part in a better understanding of metropolitan governance in terms of modes of governance geography, in terms of participation of private actors in public action and in terms of social construction of a metropolitan agenda and governability.

Speaker Bio

Nicolas Raimbault is doctor in geography and urban planning from Paris-Est University since 2014. His doctoral thesis dealt with the governance of logistics industry development in global city regions. He is currently post-doctoral researcher in the Technological Research Institute Railenium and associate researcher in the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (Paris-Est University). He studies the diverse determinants and interfaces of the innovation processes in the railway industry. He also teaches courses in transport geography and urban planning in the University of Cergy-Pontoise.