A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #353 - To develop a territory, you must first have created it! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Digressions based on reading "Confiscated Land: A Critique of 
Territorial Development" by Jean-Marc Ghitti, published by La Lenteur, 
2025, 155 pages, 15 euros: "Where the land has become ugly, where all 
poetry has vanished from the landscape, imaginations wither, minds are 
impoverished, routine and servility seize souls and predispose them to 
torpor and death." "----
Élysée Reclus, geographer and libertarian ---- Beyond the apparent 
obviousness of the title of this review, we will see the need to defuse 
a number of assumptions (the general interest, Progress, etc.) that 
activate and endorse the planning agenda of the technocracy: for under 
its sway, inhabited places disappear in favor of a homogeneous notion, 
the territory and without regard for its inhabitants, who are merely 
expected to adapt or relocate suitable to be managed, shaped, and developed.

Beyond the succession of political regimes since the Ancien Régime, via 
the Napoleonic states, a certain state administrative network takes 
shape and establishes its sovereignty, whether for fiscal, military, or 
economic-political reasons (support for industrial development)." From 
Vauban to Haussmann, the state's planning arm took possession of places 
to make them its territory: military fortifications or the leveling of 
working-class Parisian neighborhoods prone to uprisings... Later, the 
consensus of "Reconstruction" after 1945 expelled the mountain farmers 
of Tignes for the construction of a hydroelectric dam. The precedent of 
the desperate resistance of the farmers of Canjuers (in the Var 
highlands) in the late 1960s against a proposed military camp would 
later serve the farmers of the Larzac plateau in attracting the sympathy 
and solidarity that the post-1968 wave offered them on a silver platter.

Because, already in the 1960s, in the wake of the Gaullist creation of 
the DATAR (Delegation for Territorial Development and Regional Action), 
technocratic jargon and its profusion of acronyms proliferated, marking 
its growing influence: ZUP, priority development zone, which gave rise 
to the flagships of urban sprawl (Sarcelles in the Paris region, Les 
Minguettes in the Lyon region, among others); ZAC, coordinated 
development zone (between decision-making elites, but not with the 
population); ZAD, deferred development zone, through which the 
anticipation of long-term projects allows for the preemption of land in 
advance; and more recently, among others, SCOT, territorial coherence 
scheme. This shows how unilaterally planning aims to advance its vision 
of life in society and its relationship to nature. In contrast, the 
opposition to the airport project 25 km from Nantes reversed the acronym 
ZAD, transforming it into "zone to defend," especially since no land 
consolidation investments had been undertaken in anticipation of the 
project, and the remaining bocage landscape was a jewel of the 
combination of agricultural activity and biodiversity.

The main framework of this modernizing development was the expansion of 
the motorway network, fueled by the consensual ideology of the car. And 
to superficially challenge its hegemony, the existing railway lines were 
doubled by the creation of high-speed lines, all captured by the 
construction industry and its major players (Bouygues, Vinci, Eiffage, 
etc.). The industrial scale of the road construction sector was revealed 
to us in Nelo Magalhaes' book, "Accumulating Concrete, Drawing Roads."

The sleight of hand of planning rhetoric is to advance by pretending 
only to address existing dysfunctions (traffic jams, lack of housing, 
etc.), while its aim is to resolutely shape the future: increasing 
freight traffic on the road, or turning city centers, once emptied of 
their population, into museums populated with tourist residences, for 
example. Technocracy, with its rational boasting, acts as a merciless 
prosecutor against conspiracy theories, while it itself ceaselessly 
devises plans and schemes, unbeknownst to the public, to intensify the 
"value chain" (profitability), as it calls it...

To say that the concept of territory marks a pivotal shift in the 
hegemony of public power (behind which commercial and entrepreneurial 
interests operate) is to remember that public power has granted itself 
the right, in defiance of the ironclad law of private property, to 
expropriate!
The great strength of Jean-Marc Ghitti's book lies in its challenge to 
these planning assumptions by deciphering their historical 
underpinnings. Far from claiming to be a pioneer in this field, since he 
recalls and documents his writing based on analyses of previous incisive 
critiques (G. Debord, B. Charbonneau, the Frankfurt School) - but 
omitting, for example, H. Lefebvre, author of the monumental "Production 
of Space" - our current author usefully extends their critique of 
dehumanizing rationality by dismantling the all-too-common concept of 
"territory," a veritable Trojan horse, found in the mouths of both 
cunning decision-makers and their fiercest opponents.

The socialist C. Delga, president of the Occitanie Regional Council, 
recently boasted that "territories are at the heart of the country's 
rearmament." On the other side of the spectrum, the magazine "Socialter" 
titled its summer 2025 special issue "Territories in Resistance: From 
Struggle to Victory." The age-old controversy resurfaces: whether we are 
mistaken in using the same words as the opposing side, even though, in 
theory, we do not assign them the same meaning. The labor movement 
already, in a way, accepted the dominance of the economy by contesting 
only the calculation of value distribution and thus exploitation that 
is, the unpaid portion (surplus value) of the sale of labor power to the 
employer while the intrinsic alienation of being subordinated to a 
productive content, this metabolism decided by others (armament, mass 
production of automobiles, agribusiness, etc.), contributes to its 
deadly consequences. Through a shortcut of so-called critical 
efficiency, radical ecology, too, reduces the diversity of living 
spaces, along with their remaining autonomous vernacular practices, to 
the abstraction of territory, thereby disembodying them instead of 
uniting them. But it would be too simplistic to claim that the 
development project will destroy what we cherish, and political ecology, 
in this matter, is deeply divided, wanting to align itself with the 
progressive movement, which is by definition non-conservative.

Our author, Jean-Marc Ghitti, doesn't offer a detached, scholarly 
analysis of situations experienced by others; he himself is actively 
involved in the opposition to the widening of the RN 88 to a dual 
carriageway between Le Puy-en-Velay and Yssingeaux in the vulnerable 
area of St-Hostien and the Col du Pertuis pass. The author achieves the 
remarkable feat of wielding sharp barbs ("the fabrication of official 
public utility," p. 78, "territory is space minus inhabitants," p. 114), 
like so many concise and dynamic pronouncements, while also engaging in 
scholarly developments that offer enriching insights, including "the 
theologico-political genesis of public power," beginning on page 119.

At a time when numerous challenges to road projects have coalesced in 
"The Rout of Roads," J.-M. Ghitti's essay provides it with the tools of 
relevance and historical perspective.

Tristan Vebens, August 30, 2025

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4541
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