(Re-)Building Marseille's Port and Parks: Socio-Spatial Differentiations, Public Policies, and Migration (1945-1973)

Ports are spaces of exchange: of people, of goods, of ideas, of water and land. How are port cities linked to the waters they are attached to and what effect does this have on people moving within this land-sea “porosity” (Hein, 2021:1)? By studying Marseille’s port area and the public urban green spaces surrounding it, connections between the green and the blue city (cf. Roe, and McCay, 2021) can be drawn. Applying theory from spatial and (trans-)urban history, as well as postcolonial studies this research analyzes how public urban green spaces in the port area of Marseille developed in the aftermath of WWII and the Algerian War (1954 – 1962) and how they provide insight into sociospatial differentiations and public policies.
Port cities are spaces of contact. Workers, traders, fishers, tourists, and migrants, to name but a few actors, dock and ship off at a fast pace (cf. Hein, 2021; Harteveld, 2021). What spaces this ethnic and socially diverse group has access to, is telling. What kind of spaces the city makes available to white Marseillais mothers with their children, to returning “Pieds-Noirs”, to second generation Italian migrants – or not – reveals what image the city wanted to convey, who it wanted to welcome, and who it wanted to exclude from public life.
Port cities are unique spaces of transit. They bring “opportunities, wealth, and innovation to their nations and their citizens” (Hinman, 2020). People coming to Marseille influenced
planning policies. Italian, Spanish and Maghrebi immigrants were accepted as workforce in the aluminum factory of Pechiney, but disregarded when planning leisure time facilities (Lambert, 2017). Blueprints reveal white upper class citizens as the ideal users, whilst immigrants were pushed to social housing devoid of running water and access to green spaces (Guédiguian and Leidet, 2016:22).
Consequently, this presentation shows how although urban Europe influenced the wider urban world, immigrants from the “wider urban world” in turn influenced urban Europe as well.