Résumé
Recent years have seen increasing concern over land-use issues, driven by factors such as the global ecological crisis, which necessitates a comprehensive rethinking of land-use planning, and the dependence of greenfield development on private interests. In the context of urban production, studies have highlighted the role of private actors—especially real estate investors and operators—in shaping land and property policies (Pollard 2023). However, the influence of landowners, who play a crucial role in the early stages of land transformation, remains underexplored (Casanova Enault, Bocquet, and Boulay 2023).This research seeks to fill this gap by investigating how land policies may depend on the strategies of public and private landowners, whose motivations often diverge from those of public regulatory authorities. Using a mixed-methods approach focused on the Functional Urban Area (FUA) of Marseille, France, this study demonstrates that, even in a country where urban planning is traditionally state-driven (Berisha et al. 2021), land policies often arise unintentionally and uncoordinated through the actions of landowners.The study adopts a two-stage approach. First, it examines how urban production is prepared operationally by analysing landowners' use and management of buildable land prior to and during its transformation. This involves identifying areas of land activity using an innovative method that draws on a comprehensive public database of land ownership ("fichiers fonciers"). Key criteria for identifying these areas include the frequency of land transactions, the monetary value of these transactions, the concentration of property, and the volume of housing produced.Second, the study refines its analysis through semi-structured interviews with landowners involved in a selected sample of these areas. These interviews reveal that landowners' decisions are not solely motivated by speculation, such as retaining land for financial gains, but also by symbolic factors, such as fulfilling social objectives or family aspirations. Consequently, this research provides a foundation for a more comprehensive understanding of the role of landowners in shaping unintentional land policies.