The studio explores the future of edge conditions, from the urban to the peri-urban. Edges are not defined by their distance from the centre but rather by the meeting of conflicting urban conditions, that often repel or turn their backs on one another, creating zones that might be liminal or poorly defined. This is particularly the case where transport and industrial infrastructures disrupt the fabric of residential and public space. Edges also create non-urban pockets within the metropolitan area, where alternative modes of life and space flourish at the city’s boundaries, and around boundaries within the city.

Some previously peripheral infrastructures, such as the defunct industrial rail line the Petite ceinture – which was once (and in some places still is) home to many kinds of marginalised counterpublic life that find shelter in edges – have already been reconstituted as focal points of a more normative public life and integrated into the central urban imaginary. Now the Périphérique motorway and its surrounding zones are subject to a reconquête that will aim to pacify the infrastructure and integrate it into a new vision of the city as a network of green infrastructures. The Petite ceinture, however, must remain convertible back into a functioning rail line if needed, and the taming of the Périphérique depends on a reduction of travel represented by the highly contested concept of the 15 minute city.

The Triangle de Gonesse is both an urban edge and an agricultural one, a zone where these two spatial cultures overlap. Undeveloped agricultural lands sandwiched between motorways, rail lines, business and technological parks, and two airports, it crystallises tensions between conflicting visions of the future. An agrarian future of degrowth and urban self-sufficiency, a technological one of densification and limitless clean energy, or a dystopian one of unfettered expansion of consumption?

The studio consists of a process of speculative writing developed through two walks: one following edges within Paris, from the canal to the Périphérique; the other crossing the Triange de Gonesse and into the Charles-de-Gaulle airport. They trace a conceptual and temporal link from the Petite ceinture to the Périphérique and beyond into peri-urban edges whose futures are more distant and less clear. These futures will depend not only on changing social cultures and demands, but on technological and infrastructural shifts that could render infrastructures either obsolete or once again central. The possibilities for expanding into and building in edges raises questions of sensorial conflict – noise and air pollution – as well as conflicting value systems – the reconquête versus the upholding of marginalised practices and spaces.