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International audience; This paper proposes to come back on the process that led to the opening of a Grand Paris Pavilion during the Architecture and Landscape Biennial in Versailles (May-July 2019). The installation of this exhibition in an ancient post office temporarily available, in proximity to the Château de Versailles, has become one of the main points of this new event. The choice has been made to focus on utopias, specially those based on transport systems in the Paris area, and on the Grand Paris circle underground project, with the installation of 68 models of the new stations due to be realised during the 2020s. This configuration opens to various questions that are addressed by the paper: the differences of perceptions between car-based utopias and railway-based ones, the way history can be used by the actors of the contemporary project, the differences between the exhibition of authentic mobility systems and the choice, made in Versailles, to propose only reproductions of drawings and planning documents… Another interesting point lies in the interaction between historians, responsible for the choice of utopias and the elaboration of narratives, and architects and designers, who proposed the spatial organization of the exhibition, in a place with its own constraints.

International audience; Trolleybuses and the European cityscape : energy choices under environmental pressure (London, Paris, and Rome, 1930s) Arnaud Passalacqua (Paris Diderot University) During the interwar period, the European cities faced new mobility problems. The substitution of horse power by different kinds of motors, which began before the First World War, was only completed during the 1930s. Beside the intensification of car traffic, one of the most striking changes of that time is the dismantling of tram networks, which occurred in a few cities. At least London, Paris and Rome have chosen to totally or partially dismantle their tram networks and to develop different enhancements of mobility. A new system, the trolleybus, could easily find a place on the dismantled tram lines, for energy and cityscape reasons. This was the case in London, whereas Paris only used motor buses in place of trams. Rome followed an intermediate way by developing a mix of mobility, based on trams, trolleybuses and motor buses. Our paper will address the different elements behind the decisions made in the three cities on the question of trolleybus. The hybrid nature of this system, powered by electricity supplied by overhead wires but rolling on pneumatic tires, leads to special links between energy and cityscape. We will try to understand the role of these environmental factors in the debates of the 1930s. Our hypothesis is that these environmental considerations have been partially exploited in order to hide other kinds of reasons behind the choices made in the different contexts, such as industrial interests, social fears or political choices. And this game explains the adoption or the rejection of trolleybuses. As a result, despite transfers and rivalry between cities, the 1930s built original mobility supply in these three European capital cities.

International audience; The bus system is probably the oldest public transport system in the European cities. Directly linked to the processes of industrialization and urbanization, it has been operated during the 19 th century with horse-‐drawn vehicles, before getting motorized during the first decades of the 20 th century. By the way, the bus system has slightly become the slowest one, in comparison with the underground and the tramway, but also with the car. As a consequence, buses have built a peculiar relationship to speed, and more generally to time. This paper proposes to shed light on this relationship by addressing the problem of waiting for buses and the historical evolution of technical devices designed for this activity. Different generations of bus stops can be identified : small connexion stations with employees, bus poles, bus shelters of different scales, etc. These objects raise different questions. Who are the actors behind them and how are they conceived, designed and financed? What are the uses developed by people around them? How do they integrate the landscape of the city and become a constitutive element of the local identity?

International audience

International audience; As a member of the European Union, France has been constrained to deeply reform its railway system, after the adoption of the famous directive 91/440, in 1991. This text imposed to build an accounting border between the activity of transport and the management of the infrastructure and opened the way to various national solutions adopted by the members.The French reform was decided in 1997, after 2 years of social and political tensions. The historical national operator, the SNCF lost its monopoly in the field of railways with the creation of RFF, a public authority which became the owner of the rail track and was also given the colossal rail debt of about €2012 26 billions. By the way, France decided to go further than the requirement of the EU directive and adopted an odd structure for the sector of railways. However, despite the creation of a new agency, RFF, the border with the historical operator is not so tight. The main factor of porosity is inscribed in the law itself: the SNCF has been given a monopoly on the maintenance of the existing network, under the responsibility of RFF.This paper proposes to discuss the nature of the border that has been then implemented between SNCF and RFF and to understand the reasons behind the choices that were made in a very specific socio-political context. If on the European level, the long-term aim was to enable an open access to new railway operators in order to reduce costs and prices, this idea was not so clear in the national context, where the problem of the debt was much more important and the right-wing government did not want to get involved in a new strike after a very long conflict in December 1995.The border reflects these various factors. It is first a financial separation, between both structures but also between the world of railways and the budget of the French State, constrained, at that time, to rigorous criterion imposed by the Maastricht treaty.Of course it is also a physical border mainly between the infrastructure and the stations which have been kept by the SNCF. These physical aspects of the new border were not the easiest to define and were only solved about 10 years after the reform. The slowness of the process produced a new kind of no-man’s lands, a typical figure of border problems: unused rail lands had to wait for a clarification before they could be reused for other urban purposes.The border is also a cultural one. Since the reform, the SNCF has been engaged into a movement of deep change. The former values of technical leadership and public utility have been progressively combined with new values, such as commercial attitude and on-line modernity. For its part, RFF has tried to build a new culture besides the old culture of railway workers, based on the diversity of its increasing staff composed of civil servants, railway workers and private sector employees.Finally, this border has also a temporal dimension. One of the main points was to change lots of practices in the world of railway, particularly on the profitability of investments and the national management of local transport services.This paper is based on oral archives already collected and new investigations on the specific problem of the rail lands sharing between SNCF and RFF.

La comparaison et l'étude des échanges entre Paris et Londres, les deux principales agglomérations européennes, sont un thème récurrent de l'histoire urbaine. Depuis les années 1820, les deux villes entretiennent dans le domaine des transports publics un tissu de relations particulièrement dense. Cet article entend étudier le rôle qu'a joué l'exemple outre-Manche – celui de Paris à Londres et réciproquement – dans la conception et l'exploitation du réseau d'autobus dans chaque ville. Dans ce domaine, chacune a tenu alternativement le rôle d'exemple, par rapport auquel l'autre agglomération a dû se positionner, pour mieux la concurrencer ou, au contraire, s'en distinguer. Toutefois, alors que cette histoire s'est alimentée de nombreux voyages, documents et initiatives, d'experts, de journalistes ou de citadins, le statut que l'autobus occupe dans le contexte de chaque ville diffère d'une rive à l'autre de la Manche. Cet article tente d'éclairer la constitution historique de ces deux situations, en accordant un regard particulier à différents facteurs : rôle des autres modes de transport, choix techniques, poids des guerres mondiales...Comparing and studying exchanges between Paris and London, the major cities in Western Europe, are a common theme of urban history. Since the 1820s, both cities have developed strong relationships in the field of public transport. This paper addresses the role held by the example on the other side of the Channel – the Parisian one in London and reciprocally – in the conception and operation of the bus network in each city. In that field, each one alternatively has been the example in reference to which the other agglomeration has been constrained to define itself, whether to compete with or to differ from. However, whereas this story is based on various study trips, reports and initiatives, implying experts, journalists or city dwellers, the status of the bus in each city is really different on both sides of the Channel. This paper intends to shed light on the historical make-up of both situations, by specially considering various factors : influence of other means of transport, technical choices, importance of both World Wars...