Metropolising Marseille. Mission impossible? Challenges and Opportunities of Metropolisation Processes in the Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence

Abstract

Marseille is broadly considered a postindustrial city in crisis, which has failed to achieve a functional reconversion and a change of narrative in the age of globalization. Over the last two decades, however, processes of regionalized and integrated metropolisation have had an impact on the city’s urban renaissance prospects.
 This paper identifies three central projects, which symbolically represent and concretely articulate different axes of Marseille’s metropolisation processes: Euroméditerranée (1995-*); The European Capital of Culture Marseille-Provence 2013; and the institutional creation of the Métropole d'Aix-Marseille-Provence.
 This paper proposes to approach metropolisation as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Drawing on the three aforementioned cases, we analyze the different territorial-spatial scales affected, as well as the various geographic scales of governance stakeholders involved. Reflecting on their scopes of impact respectively, the aim of the study is to investigate the challenges and opportunities of multi-scalar metropolisation for Aix-Marseille-Provence, and to discuss to what extent this conflictual plurality might (not) be promising for a consensual metropolitan integration in the future.