Dans sa définition la plus étendue, la voirie désigne l’ensemble des voies de circulation des personnes et des fluides terrestres (routes et chemins de fer), fluviales, maritimes et même aériennes, sans oublier l’acception ancienne de lieu où étaient portées les ordures. La « voirie » et la « rue » sont des descripteurs toujours utilisés au singulier, ce qui masque la réalité des réseaux qu’elles constituent, des îlots qu’elles bordent. Le réseau viaire est un réseau de voies hiérarchisées qui croise et se superpose à d’autres réseaux de communication, d’alimentation ou d’évacuation, voire en constitue la matrice : réseaux d’alimentation (eau, gaz, électricité), d’évacuation (égouts) ou de service (téléphone, pneumatique et numérique). Sans prétendre à l’exhaustivité, ce numéro de la revue In Situ souhaite présenter un état de la recherche qui pourrait contribuer à sensibiliser praticiens et décideurs, élus comme aménageurs.

Scientific coordination

• Jean Davoigneau, researcher at the Mission for the General Inventory of the Cultural Heritage, Directorate of Heritage and Architecture, Ministry of Culture
• Arnaud Passalacqua, engineer and historian, professor in spatial management and town-planning at the Paris school of urbanism (UPEC), researcher at the Lab’Urba laboratory
• Miriam Simon, honorary heritage curator, formerly responsible for professional heritage mission at the City of Paris

Argument

The French expression patrimoine de voirie—the roadway heritage—is an administrative term used by municipal services in charge of the management and upkeep of roads and other types of urban thoroughfares. The same expression is also to be found in the software packages delivered to local authorities by specialist firms. As used by municipal services, the word patrimoine—heritage—signifies a capital investment to be maintained and exploited.1 But within these services, and from the nineteenth century on, there has also been an understanding of the word in terms of what we describe as heritage today, a legacy worth keeping, taking care of and passing on. It is a category of heritage, however, not readily recognised by cultural institutions, usually more interested in buildings than in open spaces.

This ambivalence in the usages of the word patrimoine has been useful as a point of departure in thinking about the contents of this planned issue of the In Situ online review. In our streets and thoroughfares, what are the features that might qualify as heritage for cultural institutions? How do technical services understand the category of heritage in the assets and services they are responsible for? Are ways of seeing this heritage converging, or do they remain distinct? There is clearly something of an emerging awareness of the heritage values of some urban thoroughfares, witness the promotion of the network of traboules in Lyon, the pedestrian passageways going through the city’s courtyards, the restoration of calades, the traditional paving of the irregular streets in Provencal villages, or the restoration street surfaces elsewhere. The issue has also been taken up on internet forums such as #saccageparis or (‘ransacking Paris’), which can be seen as a cultural expression of the official site, DansMaRue, created for everyday complaints about problems in the public space. What conclusions can be drawn from this phenomenon?

Editorial limits

In its broadest definition, the French word voirie encompasses all possible means of circulation for human beings and terrestrial fluids,2 roadways, railways, riverways, maritime liaisons and even aerial ones, and not forgetting an older usage of the word for a place where human waste was deposited. In this publication, however, we intend to remain on solid ground and leave out main roads, highways and motorways, and all that line them, outside towns and cities. The wealth of heritage associated with various thoroughfares and streets in urban centres is sufficient for us to concentrate on this area.3 Despite their spatial and temporal continuities, urban street networks and inter-city highways are different worlds from many points of view, both in terms of their design and their usage. The institutions in charge of them have always been associated with separate administrative structures and the actors involved in their design and maintenance have different professional backgrounds and training. True, on the ground, things are not quite so clear-cut and the passage from highway to urban street assures continuity in transport networks. But a clear rupture is present in the way the transition is experienced and in changes in infrastructure and materials which have a more or less brutal impact on the cityscape. The distinction between the two domains is even more clearly marked where the interconnection between motorways or other urban highways is concerned, feeding into the grid of city streets by means of tunnels, bridges, ramps or slip roads. This interconnection is a whole field of study in its own right and one that we shall leave aside.

The French words voirie and rue are generally used in the singular, which of course disguises the multiple realities of the complex networks that constitute them and the urban plots they surround. A town’s road network is in fact a hierarchical pattern of communications which overlays other networks or serves as a route for them: water, gas and electricity supply, sewage systems, services such as telephone lines, compressed air or digital networks. Scattered along the street, the heritage also includes permanent structures, most of them fixed in place—what, for more than fifty years now,4 has been called ‘urban furniture’,5—or other features such as plantations, pavements and kerbs.

At one and the same time, then, the street is a planning phenomenon and a facility, a place of movement and transport for people and for goods. These last must be maintained, overseen, lit, cleaned and policed. It is a place too of different forms of mobility, of work and of leisure, potentially in conflict with each other or, alternatively, canalised. The spatial framework of the street, like that of the city as a whole, has been strongly influenced by means of transport. Think of the impact of the motor car on roadways or the attention given, more recently, to other forms of transport such as the bicycle.

The expression we have chosen to use here, ‘street heritage’, encompasses all the road infrastructures belonging to the public domain, the streets, avenues and boulevards for circulating in towns and cities and their appurtenances, the nature and structure of these thoroughfares as well as the regulations and plans concerning them. These generate typologies, vocabularies, signage and its nomenclature, codes, doctrines, regulations and particular forms of representation such as local street plans. Materials and the special equipment and techniques required by these materials are another topic, not forgetting the trades and professions concerned and how these are taught: the savoir-faire of engineers, road architects and street maintenance experts and specialists.6 This incorporates planning features that come under the headings of town-planning and urbanism which, of course, have their own doctrines and professions.

Lines of enquiry and problematics

This special issue of In Situ will make no attempt to cover the field in a comprehensive manner. Its ambition, rather, is to present an up-to-date survey of contemporary research in the field, intended to inform professionals and decision-makers, whether elected representatives or professional planners. This present call for contributions is addressed then to a broad range of potential authors, both in France and abroad:7 historians, archaeologists, archivists, curators and other heritage professionals and also ethnologists, sociologists and legal experts, contemporary road service professionals and planners, technicians, engineers, documentalists in building firms, urban street planners and architects, landscape designers, etc.

Plural approaches both towards tangible and intangible heritage will be welcome, for example in terms of the typology of a particular object, a profession or a town, or in terms of broader transversal themes: cityscapes, economic, technical or socio-technical issues, pedagogical questions, iconographical or aesthetic issues, legal or regulatory topics. These approaches will allow for numerous problematics to be addressed, and in particular the heritage issues raised by the transformations of public space8 under the pressure of different types of traffic. There can be questions to do with maintenance and innovation, with the construction and transmission of knowledge, with a historiography of doctrines, of regulations and of the place of design and hospitality in public space.9

This issue will be an opportunity to make a broader public better aware of the heritage issues involved, of understanding the contemporary enthusiasm for traces of an aesthetic or technical culture capable of being seen as points of reference for our society witnessing rapid changes. It will help bring attention to issues relating to climate change and to the growing demand for more nature in the city, to the ethical issues raised by interventions intended to encourage the social appropriation of the city. More generally, il will address issues of governance and maintenance, which are clearly questions of sustainability, of the ecological transition which require us to renew our interpretations of history.

Axis n° 1 – The impact of public facilities and planning of public space on the cityscape heritage

In large agglomerations, the notion of voirie, of roadways, encompasses the notion of ‘public spaces’. Their transformation is accompanied by that of evolving management techniques and regulations, town-planning regulations or highway regulations. The fields of research, sketched out above in our editorial limits, overlap each other in succeeding layers, to which today’s streets bear witness.10

What we hope for here are contributions which will analyse these facilities and put them into perspective. As streets grow older, they are damaged by the intensity of their usage and give rise to new policies of maintenance and research. And as places where usages and mobilities are undergoing transformation, they also require the revision of regulations and redesign.11 Other contributions might propose the analysis of new designs contributing to the recognition as heritage of certain street features, even contributing to their preservation, and the interactions between street heritage and the built heritage.12

Axis n° 2 – Developments and processes contributing to policies of preservation for the ‘ordinary’ heritage

In large towns and cities, the notion of voirie, of roadways, does not refer only to streets and the pavements that line them, but also to the ‘empty’ spaces which lie between the ‘full’ spaces, which are buildings. These make up what can be qualified as ‘ordinary’ cityscapes. Between destruction and upkeep, is this ordinariness synonymous with an absence of heritage values?13 It is worth recalling here that for many years now, the services of the General Inventory of the Cultural Heritage have enlarged their research and documentation remit to incorporate such ‘ordinary’ objects.14

Contributions may also be expected on objects and structures that may elicit policies of collection, preservation and interpretation, such as models of urban development projects or new street designs, whether these policies are professional, museum-based or associative, held in enclosed spaces or in the public space. It would also be useful to look anew at street furniture, from prototypes to questions of maintenance: developed today by private enterprises such as Decaux, whose long-term concessions and interventions now contribute to modelling the urban landscape.15

Axis n° 3 – A heritage under social and environmental pressure

Several contemporary phenomena are bringing new, or renewed pressure to bear on urban thoroughfares, putting their heritage at risk. We are thinking, for example, of the on-going research for greater fluidity in traffic movement, by cars or other forms of transport, or of the challenges posed by the management of open spaces which are newly recognised as valuable heritage. These can give rise to new logics of opening up more public space for pedestrians or creating shared areas, or new partitions of thoroughfares with bus lanes or bicycle paths.16 The presence of massive numbers of tourists attracted by the celebrated bult heritage can lead to an intensification of the uses of the street heritage, not as well recognised as the built monuments And, last of all, adapting urban spaces to the urgent requirements of environmental problems seems to be opening a whole new chapter for roadway management with new challenges for its heritage: permeabilization of ground surfaces, reduction of sunlight reflection, encouraging biodiversity… We will be delighted to publish contributions contributing to the analysis of these phenomena, placing them perhaps in a broader perspective of environmental history: street alignment, beautifying and greening initiatives, planted walkways and urban forests, overtourism and cultural attractivity.

Propositions for contributions

The articles proposed should contain a proportion, at least, of unpublished material, results of new research or experimentation, new hypotheses or old ones reconsidered. In Situ does not reproduce articles already published elsewhere. The article should be generously illustrated and may include sound or audiovisual illustrations. It may include a video interview or even take the form of an interview.

If you wish to make a contribution, please send a summary of it in a maximum of 1 500 characters (spaces included). The proposal, accompanied by a brief CV can be sent by e-mail or by post:

insitu.patrimoines@culture.gouv.fr

Ministère de la Culture – Direction générale de l’Architecture et des Patrimoines

Revue In Situà l’attention de Nathalie Meyer182, rue Saint-Honoré75001 Paris

before 15 December 2024.

Copies should also be sent to the three editors:

• Jean Davoigneau, jean.davoigneau@culture.gouv.fr
• Arnaud Passalacqua, arnaud.passalacqua@m4x.org
• Miriam Simon, miriamsimon10@yahoo.fr

The texts of the articles selected are expected for 20 May 2025. You may write in French or in any other language. In the case of a foreign language text, it will be published in the original language with a translation into French. The article should be between 15 000 and 35 000 characters long, including spaces and notes.

Recommendations to authors concerning the number of pages, the illustrations, copyright questions, the insertion of notes and hyperlinks, etc. may be consulted at the review’s site: https://journals.openedition.org/insitu/32424

Review policy

Review process: peer review

Average time between submission and publication: 40 weeks

Notes

1 ALLARD M., Note sur l’entretien des voies publiques de Paris, Paris, Imprimerie nouvelle, 1889 ; and, more recently, DENIS Jérôme & PONTILLE Denis, Le Soin des choses. Politiques de la maintenance, Paris, La Découverte, coll. « Terrains philosophiques », 2022.

2 Lexical portal of the Centre national de ressources textuelles et lexicales.

3 DESPORTES Marc, Paysages en mouvement. Transports et perception de l’espace, xviii^e-xx^e siècles, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Bibliothèque illustrée des histoires », 2005.

4 CARMONA Michel, Le Mobilier urbain, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Que sais-je ? », 1985.

5 Here we can refer to the categories identified in the Atlas du mobilier urbain parisien, an atlas of Parisian street furniture published in June 2022 by the Atelier parisien d’urbanisme. This atlas distinguishes between comfort features, elements associated with urban area plantation, elements associated with cleanliness, with protection from motorised transport, with mobility services, furniture for information and signage, technical features, commercial elements and elements associated with sports activities.

6 A few references from a long bibliography : DUPAIN S., Notice historique sur le Pavé de Paris depuis Philippe Auguste jusqu’à nos jours, Paris, Charles de Mourgues Frères Imprimeur, 1881. LANDAU Bernard, « La fabrication des rues de Paris au xix^e siècle », Les Annales de la recherche urbaine, n^os 57-58 (« Espaces publics en ville »), 1992, p. 24-45. And more recently, BALDASSERONI Louis, Pavages, garages, dallages. La rue vue de Lyon, xix^e-xx^e siècles, Paris, Éditions de la Sorbonne, coll. « Mobilités et sociétés », 2023.

7 LOIR Christophe, « Dossier Voir la rue autrement », Bruxelles patrimoines, n^o 32, décembre 2019, p. 11-27, disponible en ligne, https://patrimoine.brussels/liens/publications-numeriques/versions-pdf/articles-de-la-revue-bruxelles-patrimoines/numero-32/article-32-1 [lien valide en septembre 2024] ; In English: MORRISON, Kathryn A. and MINNIS, John, Carscapes, The Motor Car, Architecture and Landscape in England, London, Yale University Press and English Heritage, 2012

8 PAQUOT Thierry, L’Espace public, Paris, La Découverte, coll. « Repères (Maspero) », 2009.

9 DECKMYN Chantal, Lire la ville. Manuel pour une hospitalité de l’espace public, Paris, La Découverte, 2020.

10 CARON François, DERENS Jean, PASSION Luc & CESBRON DE L’ISLE Philippe (dir.), Paris et ses réseaux, naissance d’un mode de vie urbain, Paris, Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP), 1990, in particular André Guillerme, « Le pavé de Paris », p. 59-83.

11 Paris projet, n^os 30-31 (« Espaces publics »), 1993. In particular, François Greter, « La transformation des rues de Paris », p. 12-23 ; Olivier Nicoulaud, « L’espace public de voirie », p. 44-49 ; François Ozanne, « De la voie publique à l’espace public », p. 161-166.

12 For example, the pedestrianisation of areas around monuments and the establishment of buffer zones for UNESCO sites.

13 LE GAL Yan, CHARLEROUX Ludovic , MAUGNIOT François-Régis , LAROCHE Christian et al. , La Voirie urbaine, un patrimoine à réhabiliter ? Enseignements de Nantes. Final report, Novembre 2002, published on 1 January 2002, research programme on transport innovation, Paris, ministère de la Transition écologique, Yan Le Gal Consultants. Pressigny, disponible en ligne, https://side.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/PDLO/doc/SYRACUSE/347730/la-voirie-urbaine-un-patrimoine-a-rehabiliter-enseignements-de-nantes-rapport-definitif-novembre-200 [valid September 2024].

14 HEINICH Nathalie, La Fabrique du patrimoine. « De la cathédrale à la petite cuillère », Paris, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, coll. « Ethnologie de la France », 2009

15 LEVITTE Agnès, Regard sur le design urbain. Intrigues de piétons ordinaires, Paris, Éditions du Félin, coll. « Les Marches du temps », 2013.

16 PASSALACQUA Arnaud, La Bataille de la route, Paris, Descartes et Compagnie, coll. « Culture mobile », 2010 ; FLONNEAU Mathieu, En tous sens. Circuler, partager, sécuriser : une histoire des équipements de la route, Villemur-sur-Tarn, Loubatières, 2022.