La sociología urbana francesa y la evolución de las políticas urbanas de los años 1960 a los años 1980: ¿porosidades, impermeabilidades o afinidades electivas?

French urban sociology developed in conjunction with French urban policy since the 1960s. By the time these policies were approaching the urban as a whole, sociology was doing the same. In the late 1970s, when sociology was focusing on the local level, town planning was evolving in a similar manner. A heterogeneous set of actors contributed to this evolution: from the “second left wing” to Marxist sociologists, including urban social movements and the ideas they conveyed, such as the relatively new “participatory democracy”, or the older – “mixed residential areas” (as opposed to segregation) or “spatial determinism”. In doing so, a gradual de-politicization of the discipline occurred and, more broadly, of the urban and of the social issues. This indicates a shift in the social uses of urban sociology and in sociologists’ relation to power. While the ideas guiding urban policies and the attempt to apprehend and understand urban societies in reality remained the same, what varied was a matter of scale, as well as of political vision that ran out. La sociología urbana francesa se desarrolló conjuntamente a las políticas urbanas francesas desde los años 1960. Cuando estas políticas concebían el hecho urbano en su carácter global, la sociología hacía lo mismo. Cuando a finales de los años 1970 la sociología se orienta de nuevo sobre la escala local, el urbanismo hace otro tanto. Esta doble evolución se realiza por una amalgama de actores que va de la “segunda izquierda” a los sociólogos marxistas, pasando por los movimientos sociales urbanos y por las ideas que estos transportan, como la relativamente nueva de participación o las más antiguas del carácter mixto del alojamiento (versus la segregación) o del “espacialismo”. De este modo, asistimos a una despolitización progresiva de la disciplina y más ampliamente de la cuestión urbana y de la cuestión social, lo que denota un cambio en los usos sociales de la sociología urbana y en la relación de los sociólogos con el poder. Si las ideas que guían las políticas urbanas, la manera de ver y de entender las sociedades urbanas, permanecen iguales, sólo varía la cuestión de la escala y la visión política se diluye.French urban sociology developed in conjunction with French urban policy since the 1960s. By the time these policies were approaching the urban as a whole, sociology was doing the same. In the late 1970s, when sociology was focusing on the local level, town planning was evolving in a similar manner. A heterogeneous set of actors contributed to this evolution: from the “second left wing” to Marxist sociologists, including urban social movements and the ideas they conveyed, such as the relatively new “participatory democracy”, or the older – “mixed residential areas” (as opposed to segregation) or “spatial determinism”. In doing so, a gradual de-politicization of the discipline occurred and, more broadly, of the urban and of the social issues. This indicates a shift in the social uses of urban sociology and in sociologists’ relation to power. While the ideas guiding urban policies and the attempt to apprehend and understand urban societies in reality remained the same, what varied was a matter of scale, as well as of political vision that ran out