Urban projects: From Negociations to Transactions
This article aims to investigate from a relational point of view the debates concerning the place of both concepts of negotiation and social transactions in the implementation of French urban policies. It deals with the example of tramway projects developed in two metropolitan areas (Strasbourg and Montpellier). Are those “major” urban projects negotiable, regarding project governance, between elected representatives and technicians, as well as participatory democracy, in relation to citizens individually and associations collectively? We take into account the formal vs. informal dimension of the problematic and the multiple rationalities linked with the recognition of the otherness in the relations between the different social actors, and propose to introduce a distinction between first and second rank transactions in order to reinforce this paradigm at a triple organizational, territorial and sequential level.