Public space and the metropolis. The changing governance of public spaces around the Grand Paris Express's new metro stations

International audienceMegaprojects and their public spaces have often been criticized as sites of commodification and privatization. Withoutquestioning these trends, a growing body of research affirms the contingent nature of projects, requiring in-depth empiricalstudies. This paper focuses on the implementation of Grand Paris Express, a transport mega-project, from a public-spaceperspective. We draw on the case of La Courneuve Six-Routes station to analyze the growing complexity of public spacegovernance in Greater Paris. In so doing, we offer an additional contribution to the literature. The main driver of change in publicspace policies is interterritorial governance between local, metropolitan and national levels, not private actors. Moreover, thedesign principles and implementation processes do not provide for iconic, commodified and sanitized public spaces. However,in their current configuration, the politics of these public spaces remains ambivalent, because of the importance of real estatedevelopment in the network's future implementation