Abstract
Propelled and immersed in the debates surrounding the legislation of coastline retreat initiated by the government in 2018 at the same time as the start of our research project, we saw how this regulatory emulation represented a turning point in the way we apprehended future coastal development. Previously regarded as a mere directive, the "spatial recomposition" ordinance now legally enshrines the strategic relocation of populations and economic activities to the retro-coastal zone within urban planning tools. On the scale of the Occitanie region, this prescription in itself raises questions about the durability of the urban production model for the coastal area, as this paradigm shift actually shatters the foundations of a model which, sixty years ago, changed the face of this regional territory, and which today is just as structuring and influential when we look at its trajectory. Built on a logic of growth, the great interministerial project, the 1963 "Racine" mission, placed the Occitan coastal area within a regime of capitalist urban growth, which was able to maintain, renew and anchor itself in a context of neo-liberalization of urban policies. Stemming from a centralized system, the coastal development model has given rise to a process of accumulation characterized by a return system that has found a new field of expansion in decentralization. The many processes associated with this model (political, economic, social and spatial) overlap with the major contemporary urban dynamics of coastal areas: the extension of the "Racine" mission through the affirmation and revaluation of this political and economic heritage, the political desire to upgrade the real estate stock of the 1960s, a dynamic real estate market seized by property development, and a coastal area seized by landlord trends implemented by a group of private individuals. These phenomena reveal an urban market for the coastline, making it part of a form of marketization in the making of the city. This thesis therefore examines the place and role of political and economic regimes in the face of the desire for change suggested by legislation for the natural restoration of coastal areas. It implements measures, on the scale of root resorts and particularly that of Saint-Cyprien, by immersion as a project manager and researcher, and through a qualitative investigation based on a varied collection of field data, intense archival work, the construction and production of original cartographic databases with a spatialization of the making of the coastal city mobilizing the products of residential and real estate taxation, and an unprecedented geohistory ; which provide a portrait of the different political-economic regulatory regimes that have transformed and recomposed the Occitan coastal space and its trajectory. An approach at the crossroads of social, radical, and economic geographies provides an original interpretation grid for exploring this field. The rise of coastal urban policies on political agendas can be seen in the construction, structuring and maintenance of a pro-growth coastal urban regime, underpinned by policies of reterritorialization through the commodification of coastal space. Our four-year immersion in the political arenas involved in the production of public policy for the future development of the coastline enabled us to be at the heart of the forces of inertia and the ways of circumventing that operate in the face of the privatization of the "coastal space" resource.