Street musicians and the renewal of public spaces in Paris
While street musicians had almost vanished from large Western cities, they are now once more part of their urban landscape. Our core hypothesis is that this renewal of musical practices mirrors ongoing changes in the uses, regulatory modes and conceptions of public spaces, which also contribute to reinforcing the public aspect of the spaces where musical practices take place. Based on two studies conducted in Paris, this paper focusses first on the spatial logic of informal musical activities and on how street musicians take advantage of the heterogeneity of public spaces. It then shows how musicians take part in the actual restructuring of these spaces in an ephemeral way, by activating “spots”, but also in the long term, by contributing to the rise of entertainment micro-centralities that are perpetuated in time.