Alessandra Marcon

The current transformations of the global production system are bringing about significant changes in the territory, which are bringing the theme of production back to the center of contemporary urban studies. As part of a process of re-territorialization of production, these transformations give rise to a variety of tensions, conflicts, and imaginaries that destabilize certain spatial paradigms and hierarchies, such as the urban-rural dualism on which Western society, and with it much of its urban culture, has been built. The hypothesis underlying the entire thesis is that the observation and situated description of contemporary productive territories reveal tensions, conflicts, and renewed imaginaries, from which it would be possible to deconstruct the urban-rural paradigm and formulate useful lessons for the renewal of urban culture. This thesis studies agro-industrial territories and small-scale industrial and agricultural areas in two different types of European inhabited territories: the Bocage Vendéen, which is scattered and hybrid between rural and urban, and the Val-de-Marne, which is compact and dense. It seeks to deconstruct three paradigms that describe these territories: the local development paradigm, the productivism paradigm, and the transition paradigm. Based on these lessons, the thesis proposes four scenarios for the future of the Bocage Vendéen.