From hybrid forums to aesthetisation : recent transformations and controversies concerning public spaces in France
Since the 1980s and 1990s, community challenges in France have been characterized by the growing importance of issues of expertise; this concern has, in turn, been translated into the hybrid forums theory and has led to the rapid spread of these ideas in the world of research and administration. A new perspective on the transformation of public spaces is currently taking shape based on conflicts, battles concerning landscapes, and urban experiments. These new ideas are being fueled by a many-sided rejection of expertise given that scientifc evidence removes all dimensions of sensitivity and the imaginary. Those involved in such challenges criticize “the NIMBY stigmatisation,” but refuse to justify themselves, to prove their point of view in general in order to conform to models of general interest. We believe that the rejection of expertise and conflicts concerning landscapes express a new strategy involving the aesthetisation of public spaces, which has drawn lessons from the preceding period (characterized by conflicts of expertise) and is based upon links of proximity and aesthetic judgements in an effort to transform public space, and thus the rules of public debate.