"Searching for the Grand Paris" "Are squats and slums in cities such as Madrid or Paris considered as risks?" -First, we can say that the public actors, who are supposed to take care of housing issues, social movements, cultural or social issues, are not always very clear about what squats and slums are with diverse actors, diverse forms, diverse mobilizations and diverse effects on the cities. They are starting a relationship with these kinds of actors, but they are not always very clear about the size, the volume, and the importance squats and slums are taking in these two metropolises. Behind this idea of a risk or uncertainty, there has always been squats and slums in European metropolises, and in every metropolis around the world. Usually, we are more focused on the major metropolises of the south, and on the places where the political and spatial organization of the cities is considered as completely chaotic, where public actors are unable to act anymore, apart with one-time police operations or urban planning interventions, sometimes, to sort this out. This is the kind of image we have. In Europe, we are less used to this kind of thought. In Europe, there is a history of the squat movement. When we say squat, it often refers to social movements that arose during the last quarter of the 20th century. These were often anarchist or autonomist-related movements. There is a long history, there is a geography for these locations, but regarding the risk and uncertainty issue, these actors do not always consider the same parameters. They do not always see all the aspects of these issues that can become public issues, in different ways in both cities, and they do not necessarily know what is actually going on. As for comparing Madrid and Paris in concrete terms, there are slums and a long history in both cities. In Spain, slums became a public issue during the 1960s and were dealt as a housing issue from the 1960s-1970s until today with an actual public policy which was institutionalized with important means and very selective rehousing policies for the inhabitants. But there are still slums since not everyone has been rehoused. Also, rehousing means evictions, so this phenomenon still exists today, but it is more and more known and thought about, we get more knowledge on these spaces. In France, the context was identical in the 1960s. State policies were implemented during the 1970s to rehouse people in large housings in the Paris suburbs. Thus, inhabitants who lived in slums were progressively rehoused. We started with the Spanish and the Portuguese who were not as strong an "issue" as the Algerians. Algerians were placed in "airlocks", called transit social housings, emergency social housings that lasted until the 1990s. Then, we considered that everyone had been rehoused at the end of the 1970s. So, this phenomenon has been shelved, we did not talk about it anymore until the 2000s-2010s when we realized that there were still slums. 20 000 persons live in slums, and at the end of the 1990s, they came back almost on the same former slum locations. The state still does not officially use the term "slum". It is used by some municipalities and some state services, but the slum-fact in France is denied. Thus, the risk notion becomes interesting. We do not name this fact anymore so that it does not exist. So, there is something performative. Most importantly, we do not create databases, knowledge on these spaces, we will talk about it later, to avoid bringing them in the political agenda. These spaces avoid the public regulation to say it approximately. At first glance, these are illegal occupations, or informal if we want to avoid a strict boundary. At first glance, they avoid urban, political, and social service regulations. These spaces are autonomous and at the margin of the city and far from the regulation abilities of the public actors in the broad sense. Simply put, these spaces... I also believe in this idea, we realize that these spaces are not that autonomous, not so much at the margin and not as isolated as we could believe by saying these spaces are isolated as I started earlier with the major cities from the south. We notice that these issues have been grasped, politicized. As I said for Madrid regarding the slums, an actual public policy has been institutionalized. In France, it is the squats that led to the institutionalization of a policy, since the Paris City Hall, for instance, decided to take charge of the squat issue through a cultural approach. The culture services of the Paris City Hall seized this object and transformed it into a public policy issue, a municipal cultural policy in Paris. This issue has been grasped. As for the two other cases, squats in Madrid or slums in Paris, those were denied, these spaces were rejected. But they are coming back through the backdoor, if I may say so, because there are mobilizations, conflicts, accidents. People die in these spaces, in the slums. Who is responsible? The state is accused of being responsible for letting the situation rot. These spaces, for instance the squats in Madrid, can be strongly politicized and used as strong criticisms against the public actor with very violent conflicts that sometimes become physical in the streets with the police. These actors in the Madrid squats, who belong to the Okupa movement, are considered as terrorists. They are under surveillance by the antiterrorist police. In France, there are also very politicized squats, in the eastern suburbs of Paris. They are also sometimes linked to what we call ZADs today, occupied zones that are opposed to major useless projects. These spaces are also considered as being threats, dangers, for the public order, for the state, even for security sometimes. As we saw it recently with the state of emergency, some people were house arrested in squats. So, it is considered as a threat. As you can see, for the same legal object, I got to notice it, the illegal occupation of an urban space, the construction of an issue, the way it is grasped, the way contentious or pacific relationships are set between different actors who have their own strategies and who defend their interests, we have slightly different answers. It alternates between threats and political assets. "What new means do authorities implement to handle these places?" How can one act on an issue on which one has no knowledge? It is the main part of the reflection for risk management by the state and public policies. It is not a scientific controversary issue as we are used to say when talking about risk management. There is an actual issue: creating statistics, acquiring knowledge. There can be some guidance for diverse public issues. Municipal and state actors are systematically asking for knowledge when a public action could be considered. When I say systematically, I think of the slums in Madrid. It is considered that a public action must be enlightened by knowledge. It is interesting because systematically, in every report, we get data, no maps, we will get back to that, many data. These data are supposed to be useful for a relevant and enlightened public action, especially to rehouse people. Simply put, when we compare this with the French case, we see that until 2012 at least, these slums were known. There has been a strategic will to avoid developing knowledge tools. Why so? Because when you create tables or maps for a fact to be known, it implies that an action must be implemented. If you highlight an issue, you must act. So, it is a kind of agenda denial, an issue denial. By avoiding the creation of knowledge on an issue, despite the fact that it is potentially possible, you remove the root of the problem. It is a political strategy. In the case of Madrid, despite what I am currently saying, a knowledge tool, a systematic inventory since the 1960s by actors in the field, statistics, data tables, I discovered that... This is the given political message. I discovered that these data are very little processed. Eventually, they are rather used as a political tool to legitimate an institution instead of an actual implementation tool. The institution says that it has all the reports. A high pile of reports that very few persons read that I searched for and that are used as a political tool. "We are the most legitimate institution in this country acting on this issue." It legitimates the institution. Then, of course, some data are extracted and used. But for instance, I was surprised to see that in Madrid, despite these data, no mapping had been done over the last 20 years. There is a game between knowledge production... But it must not be seen in a linear scheme, just like actors often say it, "First, we produce knowledge to know the issue before acting." Knowledge can also come afterwards to legitimate an ongoing public action, justify the end of a policy, or choose another path. This game on statistics production is quite interesting. According to me, it must not only be seen as the beginning of the implementation of a solution. Statistics are also the issue of an already ongoing policy. In the 1990s, 2000s, in France, the state avoided producing statistics, produced a form of ignorance around the slums, by not even naming them, and rather calling them illicit camps to avoid the creation of a public issue and putting it in the agenda.
