Ce travail de thèse renouvelle l'exploration du sens du lieu dans le contexte urbain contemporain. Problématique centrale de la discipline géographique mais particulièrement revisitée depuis le constat des transformations qu'opère la mondialisation dans nos sociétés, le lieu ressort de cette étude comme un élément significatif dans la définition d'identités collectives et individuelles développées dans un contexte national largement fondé par les mouvements migratoires. L'équation identité–espace–mobilité est traitée par l'observation du quartier de Florentin, au sud de l'agglomération de Tel Aviv. Ancien quartier juif de Jaffa et premier espace commercial de la ville, Florentin se distingue du reste de la ville par son tissu social et son ambiance particulière mais également par une morphologie spécifique. Quartier intermédiaire entre Tel Aviv et Jaffa, longtemps abandonné des services publics, le quartier est réinvesti, dans les années 1990, par la jeunesse bohème de la Tel Aviv cosmopolite et par les travailleurs immigrés (européens, asiatiques et africains); l'une et l'autre populations y trouvant un espace d'hospitalité réciproque. Aujourd'hui, c'est une toute autre frange de la population qui investit le quartier et trouve à Florentin un quotidien exotique et authentique où rejouer, avec une certaine nostalgie, les transformations rapides de la société israélienne. Les particularités du quartier de Florentin, dont ce travail décline différentes facettes, nous informent en réalité sur les dynamiques à l'œuvre dans cet ensemble particulièrement complexe et stratifié que forme la société israélienne et permettent également de relire l'histoire de Tel Aviv.

L'immigration massive juive qu'a connu Israël a contribué à sa construction mais a aussi façonné les grandes villes israéliennes telle que Tel-Aviv. La répartition territoriale des immigrants provenant de différents continents montre que Tel-Aviv est scindée en deux : le Nord où vit une classe européenne aisée et le Sud où s'imbriquent les plus défavorisés venant des pays en émergence. Selon la littérature israélienne, ce découpage ne serait pas le résultat d'une ségrégation ethnique mais serait plutôt due aux importants écarts déjà établis entre les pays du Nord et du Sud. Certains sociologues décrivent Tel-Aviv comme une ville plurielle dépourvue de ségrégation ethnique sur le plan résidentiel, mais où subsistent tout de même de forts conflits ethniques. Nous avons donc questionné la cohabitation interethnique dans les espaces publics de Tel-Aviv. En effet, l'espace public comme espace de vie commun mais aussi comme espace démocratique et citoyen met à l'épreuve tout processus de cohabitation entre les différents groupes ethniques israéliens : Ashkénazes, Sépharades, Falashas, Russes et Palestiniens d'Israël. Nous avons donc mené une longue enquête de terrain durant laquelle nous avons réalisés des entretiens ouverts semi-directifs avec cinq acteurs communautaires, puis procédé à une observation participante du quotidien de quinze jeunes Israéliens. Enfin, à la lumière de ces entretiens, nous avons ciblé une série d'espaces publics et observé les dynamiques de cohabitation interethnique. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Ethnicité, relation interethnique, cohabitation interethnique, espace public, Tel-Aviv, Israël.

Garbage landfills are at the heart of debates over sustainable urban development. Landfills are the cheapest waste-disposal method, but have specific environmental problems and are a common target for citizen activism such as environmental justice and Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) protests. As a means of covering up the scars at recently closed landfills, it has been common for cities to redevelop landfills into parks. The ongoing redevelopment projects at New York City's Fresh Kills, Greater Toronto's Keele Valley, and Greater Tel Aviv's Hiriya landfills are uniquely ambitious and large-scale projects, because these three landfills were among the largest in the world at the time each of them closed around the turn of the twenty-first century. These three landfill-park redevelopments are positive projects, but there are more complexities involved than one would find discussed in booster rhetoric such as government press releases, local newspaper descriptions, and even museum exhibitions. The construction of Freshkills Park, North Maple Regional Park, and Ariel Sharon Park does little to address the ongoing waste-disposal policy concerns of New York, Toronto, and Tel Aviv; therefore, the redevelopments have more significance as “symbols” of a poor past policy being replaced by a “progressive” policy for a better future than as actual waste-disposal policies. Artists and landscape architects have created works based on the theme of parkland as a fresh start for these landfills, in gallery and museum exhibitions such as Hiriya in the Museum at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2000 and artwork created by acclaimed environmental artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles for Fresh Kills.

Après sa naissance en 1909, La ville de Tel Aviv continue son essor jusque dans les années 1930-1948 marquées par l'architecture modernes, sous l’influence de l’urbaniste Patrick Geddes. Celui-ci écrit son rapport à 1925, qui s’inspirent du modèle de la Cité Jardin. Le site comprend 3 000 bâtiments inspirés par des architectes modernistes européens : Mendelsohn, Le Corbusier, Gropius et autres. La déclaration d’indépendance d’Israël en 1948 entraîne l’établissement d’institutions nationales et la construction rapide de bâtiments publics et de logements. La prise de conscience de l’importance de la conservation de La Ville Blanche et sa patrimonialisation engendrent à leur tour un changement du tissu urbain et de son architecture (1977-2003). Nous tentons d’identifier ici les facteurs susceptibles de déclencher les mutations nombreuses qui ont pris place durant les années 1948 - 2003 et qui ont amené la ville de Tel Aviv jusqu'à son inscription au patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO. Nous avons analysé l’apparition de certains modes d’adaptation de la ville aux changements, à la lumière des principes de planification de Geddes, issus de la biologie organique. Les mécanismes d’adaptation sont analysés en fonction de 3 facteurs : Les processus de planification, les décisions d'ordre politique et la réception du public. Afin de comprendre les différentes représentations de chacun des trois facteurs, nous avons consulté les archives historiques des plans de la ville, les protocoles, les débats et publications officielles de la municipalité, ainsi que les représentations de la ville telle qu’elle apparait dans la littérature pour enfants, le cinéma, et la presse. Pour chacune de ces époques, nous avons identifié un modèle de comportement récurrent des changements. Ainsi sont discernés les modes d’influence des trois coefficients de planification - architectes, décideurs, et le grand public - et leur influence réciproque sur la ville est démontrée. / After its creation in 1909, the city of Tel Aviv continued to develop until the years 1930 – 1948 during which the Modern style was predominant. That took place under the remarkable influence of the urban planner sir Patrick Geddes whose vision on the extension of the city was published in 1925 inspired by the ideas of Garden-City. The site of the White City includes 3,000 buildings designed by Jewish immigrants under the influence of Modern European architects such as Mendelssohn, Le Corbusier and Gropius. The Declaration of Independence of the state of Israel in 1948 brought about the establishment of national institutions and the need for the quick solutions of construction of public buildings and social housing, meant for thousands of refugees. The awareness and importance of the conservation of the White City brought about significant changes in the local approach towards the existing urban tissue, and its architecture (1977-2003). This research aims at identifying the factors susceptible to trigger the architectural mutations that took place during the years 1948 – 2003 up until the final inscription of the White City as world heritage site by UNESCO. We have analyzed the emergence of a number of types of adjustment to changes within the City, from the field of organic biology. The various mechanisms of adjustment are analyzed according to three different factors: Planning process, the political decision making, and the reception of the values and myths of the city by the Public. In order to understand the different representations of each of those 3 factors, we have checked the historical archives of the City Planning Department, including protocols, debates and official publications. We have then gone through the representation of the city as it materializes in children literature, movies and the media. For each time period, a recurrent pattern of behavior of changes was identified. This method allows pinpointing the various types of influence of each of the three coefficients of planning: architects, Decision Makers, and the Public. The reciprocal influence of those factors on each other can then at last conclusively be established.

This dissertation examines how institutions and individuals navigate the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism by focusing on architectural preservationists' explanations of what are referred to as white cities. Through dialogue between architectural history, international relations, and critical heritage studies, I map the making and remaking of the histories of white cities, or what were designed as "European" zones – in opposition to "Indigenous" zones – that brought together modernist architecture, white supremacy, early twentieth-century European settler colonialism, and architectural preservation. My focus on preservationists' narrations of these white cities extends interdisciplinary work charting their historical production from a group of scholars focusing on the relationship of architecture in the production of domination in European colonialism. My work extends this scholarship by shifting to preservationists' narrations of white cities through the question: how do preservationists remake the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism that underpinned the production of white cities? In this dissertation, I argue that preservationists remake the histories of racial difference and settler colonialism that produced white cities by relying on what I refer to as didactic narratives to legitimate preservation interventions. Preservationists use these didactic narratives to reframe white cities as part of national histories, the universalism of the World Heritage List, and the history of the modernist movement in architecture and planning. My argument advances by showing preservationists' appropriations of the didactic narratives in the World Heritage List inscription materials for White City of Tel Aviv (2003), Rabat, Modern Capital and Historic City: A Shared Heritage (2012), and Asmara: A Modernist African City (2017) and through ethnographic fieldwork with local preservationists in Casablanca and Tel Aviv. To frame these analyses, I map the institutional changes within the UNESCO World Heritage Committee that sought greater legitimacy by expanding the typological and geographical scope of the World Heritage List. To do so, the institution enlisted the International Committee for the Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites, and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement (DOCOMOMO-International) to recraft the criteria to include twentieth-century modernist architecture onto the List. However, DOCOMOMO promoted a particular way of interpreting white cities through the didactic narratives that led to the proliferation of white cities on the World Heritage List. By charting the different ways that preservationists appropriate the didactic narratives in the World Heritage List materials and in the text of semi-structured interviews and from participant observation, I show how the intersecting power structures of white supremacy and settler colonialism that were embedded in the production of white cities are adapted by preservationists in the co-constitution of international institutions, disciplinary knowledge, and individual subject positions. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation considers how the histories of race and colonialism are narrated by architectural preservationists. I do so by focusing on preservationists' narrations of white cities, "European" enclaves designed in opposition to "Indigenous" zones in early 20th century settler colonialism. By focusing on the preservation of what were designed as racialized spaces, I explore how these histories of racial difference and colonialism are mediated by forms of knowledge, institutions, and individuals. Yet it is the focus on preservationists that I detail how preservationists silence, downplay, or mobilize the histories of white cities through three different narrative tropes of national histories, the universalism of the World Heritage List, and modernist movement architecture and design. I show how these narrative tropes justify preservation interventions while making some histories more accessible and others less so. To analyze how preservationists remake the histories of white cities, I map the creation and transformations of the primary international preservation organization, the World Heritage List. These institutional changes led to the addition of white cities in Asmara, Rabat, and Tel Aviv based on preservationists' adaptations of the three narrative tropes. I then show how these same narrative tropes are appropriated by local preservationists to remake the histories of race and colonialism in white cities. By drawing attention to the ways that the histories of race and colonialism are remade through the intersections of individuals, institutions, and forms of knowledge, the project shows how knowledge on the modernist movement is implicated in the constitution of power in the World Heritage List and in consolidating privileged subject positions. Moreover, my analysis opens up questions on the co-constitution of institutions, forms of knowledge, and individual subject positions. Lastly, the analysis demonstrates that individuals have the potential to challenge – rather than to uphold – the constellations of power etched into white cities. I show one instance of architectural preservationists challenging these structures of power in the preservation effort of Les Abattoirs in Casablanca in 2009-2013.

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