Perspectives on the Transnational City

On Tuesday, September 4, 2019, The American University of Paris, in conjunction with the University of London Institute in Paris, co-hosted a roundtable discussion as part of the ASMCF Conference 2019 on the transnational city. The Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France (ASMCF) this year celebrated its 40th anniversary with a three-day conference on the subject of cities that are influential beyond their national boundaries and, in particular, the effect such spaces have had on modern and contemporary French studies. As befits the international nature of the subject, the bilingual event oscillated between English and French.

The panel provided diverse perspectives on what it means for a city to be transnational. After an introduction from conference co-organizer Professor Russell Williams of AUP’s Department of Comparative Literature and English, Professor Anna-Louise Milne of the University of London Institute in Paris introduced the speakers in her role as moderator.

Professor Stephen Sawyer, Chair of AUP’s Department of International and Comparative Politics, opened the discussion by emphasizing the importance of different scales when attempting to define the transnational city. Taking the example of Paris, Sawyer outlined four such scales that have both helped frame the city historically and contributed to a clearer understanding of the present: the relationship between Paris and its suburbs; the importance of Paris’s links with France’s former colonies; the European scale, from the origins of the European Union in the 1950s to modern-day Brexit pressures; and the geopolitics of the Cold War and its accompanying demands on the city’s infrastructure.

Marin Schaffner then picked up the conversation. A trained ethnologist, Schaffner is interested in social ecology; his new book – Un Sol Commun: Lutter, Habiter, Penser – is a collection of interviews focusing on ecology in a francophone context. He argued that complex transnational cities can increasingly be understood as a series of ecosystems, thanks to the modern trend toward autonomous communities at the local level. Transnationalism, he argued, extended “beyond the human” to include how flows of people, resources and even animals impact nature in urban environments.

David-Georges Picard and Stéphanie Azria took the discussion to the local level with a practical explanation of their experiences working in a Parisian municipal institution: in this case, the Bibliothèque Václav Havel. They discussed the challenges of managing a diffuse, hierarchical system while considering the needs of the library’s diverse userbase, which includes refugees and homeless people.

Finally, Camille Aubry took the discussion out of a Paris-centric context to discuss her work with transnational art collectives as well as her own output as a French graphic designer living and working in the UK. She showed how transnationalism can express itself in subtle ways, be it through an examination of the unique architecture of the Calais Jungle – using the example of a project run by architecture collective Sans Plus Attendre – or her own graphic novel exploring the ins and outs of raising a Franco-British child.

The event concluded with audience questions on the ways in which gentrification could be an unintended side effect of transnational community projects and the importance of transdisciplinary approaches when researching transnational cities. Professor Milne provided a final note by considering the role of contradictions in transnational urban environments; though some forces move communities in one direction, others pull them back in the other. Following the discussion, participants were invited to an after-event cocktail in the Omid & Gisel Kordestani Rooftop Conference Center on the 8th floor of AUP’s Quai d’Orsay Learning Commons. The ASMCF Conference 2019 continued throughout the week with further events at the University of London Institute in Paris.