Laurence Rocher

Climate-Energy Policies, Heat Provision and Urban Planning: a Renewal of Interest in District Heating in France. Insights from National and Local Levels

Abstract How do climate and energy objectives influence the renewal of the role of network infrastructures in urban planning and the running of urban systems? The example of the revival of interest in district heating networks provides a few possible answers to this question, which is central to the understanding and characterization of the conditions for carrying out the urban energy transition. In this paper, we study this example by analyzing recent changes in French regulations and the process of creating an intercommunal energy-related competence in the Lyon metropolitan area. Emphasis is placed on the institutional and political conditions surrounding a change in governance as well as the underlying justifications in the reconsideration of an existing infrastructure in view of new energy, climate, and social challenges within a specific urban context. Our study has been carried out in reference to several discussions on urban planning and on institutional, political, and spatial factors that shape urban infrastructure regimes.

Governing metropolitan climate-energy transition: A study of Lyon’s strategic planning

Given that in-depth place-specific studies are needed for a better understanding of the role of cities in coping with climate change and implementing the energy transition, this paper, based on the case of Lyon (France), brings empirical evidence of how climate and energy are being governed at a city level. A comprehensive understanding of this is achieved with emphasis put on the modes of governing enacted by the local authority, as well as the positioning of the city at broader scales. The framing and localising processes involved in the policy-making process are at the core of this analysis, with a particular focus on two interrelated questions: how are climate and energy making their way as new urban issues that call for specific responses, and how do they reinforce – and are they also reinforced by – metropolitan-wide governance in a context of institutional change?

Entre secteur et territoires, la gestion des déchets au prisme de la planification

L’article repose sur une histoire de la planification des dechets en France qui embrasse l’origine des plans a la fin des annees 1960 jusqu’aux changements intervenus en 2015. L’analyse met en evidence une articulation etroite entre les dimensions sectorielle et territoriale propres a cette politique publique. Le choix recent de la regionalisation des plans jusqu’alors departementaux est mis en perspective avec une analyse sur le temps long qui correspond a la fois a l’histoire de la politique publique de gestion des dechets en France – et a la constitution d’un secteur specifique – et a celle de la planification qui releve de sa territorialisation. L’analyse de ce domaine singulier (marque par une forte conflictualite, un desengagement politique, une faiblesse des outils de regulation) parti- cipe d’une reflexion sur l’action publique en matiere d’environnement et des dynamiques de (de)sectorisation qui la travaillent.