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Socio-spatial divisions between districts in the North and South have marked the port-city of Marseille since the post-World War II urban reconstruction period. This article analyses the decades spanning the 1940s to the 1960s Vieux Port area as well as the HLM (Habitation à Loyer Modéré, or rent controlled properties) building projects in the North of the city. This reveals a dual strategy deployed by urban planners as well as municipal and national government officials in response to an increasing immigrant workforce involving relocation into HLMs and (re-)designing public spaces. City planners, architects, and officials aimed to reconfigure the neighbourhoods in which people were to be housed and to strengthen the narrative of Marseille as a Mediterranean gateway, attracting investors and tourists, a process which also helped the city to gain a favourable reputation in Europe. The way in which urban planning, social housing initiatives, and public space designs unfolded in post-World War II Marseille has played a pivotal role in shaping the city's present-day social and geographical divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During World War II police officers in Marseille and Algiers relentlessly hunted Algerian black market operatives. Hundreds of reports from these two cities detail the actions taken to prevent individuals from selling contraband goods, exceeding fixed market prices, or ignoring rationing protocols. Long-standing colonial stereotypes had labeled Algerians as prone to theft and violence, but the economic restrictions of war created a new category of the imagined Algerian criminal: the black market trafficker. In police reports the figure of the Algerian profiteer is omnipresent, but internal communications acknowledged that Europeans profited from the black market, too. Why, then, the fixation on Algerians? This article argues that police developed a narrative of Algerians as "internal enemies" of France. Their underlying suspicion of Algerians endured throughout World War II even as governments rose and fell in France and loyalties of the entire nation shifted. In treating Algerians as threats to national security, the police justified a system of control that homogenized the Algerian community along racial lines. The racialized policing of "anti-French" Algerian traffickers built not just on visual codes of race but also on how police practice mapped ideas of race onto the space of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores spatial, social and cultural boundaries in the hammams of the city of Marseille (France) based on the study of practices and representations of cleanliness, in relation to the spatial configurations of bathhouses and their location in the city. By adopting a conception of the frontier as a 'space' - physical or symbolic - where circulations and separations take place, I will question the way in which the hammams translate within them the boundaries of the society in which they are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Exanthematic typhus was highly frequent in the early 19th century among military troops and prisoners and at hospitals. Methods: Based on old reports, we describe an outbreak in a village, in Southern France, in 1810. Results: Twenty-eight cases were identified, over a period of 10 days following the death of the index case, in a soldier. Symptoms included notably persistent constant fever, myalgia and headaches, gastro-intestinal symptoms, prostration and stupor. Three patients suffered delirium and nine died (31.0%). Overall, symptoms persisted for 13–14 days. A total of 16 cases were secondary to contacts with the index case, and 10 cases were in house-hold contacts of secondary cases. Five familial clusters were described. Conclusion: This data suggest that exanthematic typhus outbreaks among civilian populations also occurred outside the context of hospitals, in link with introduction of the disease by prisoners or soldiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we wish to examine the place of sustainability, urbanity and diversity in major French urban projects labeled operations of national interest (OIN). Thanks to a certain number of field studies and surveys carried out in Marseille and Nice, within the OIN Euroméditerranée and Écovallée Plaine du Var, we will question their reality and their different territorial impacts.

Most of the recent literature in migration and ethnic studies, and particularly the debate on the "local turn", mention multi-layered pressures that cities must address to develop their governance capacities, but few theorize an approach to better grasp these challenges. As cities move from state loyalty to empowerment, we enter the puzzle of urban resilience. This article argues that urban resilience is becoming a principle that regulates innovative political strategies to maintain cohesion and urban justice. After reviewing its application, and following an ideal-type Weberian methodology, this article presents initial findings from fieldwork in three different urban regimes, Barcelona, Marseille, and Tunisian cities. The main objective is to provide conceptual and empirical insights that can test the relevance of the use of urban resilience as a category of analysis and practice, and how this can help to articulate a future research program on urban migration governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Respiratory syncytial virus is among the most common causes of respiratory infections. Typically, this viral infection has a seasonality during the cold months but with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic this has been considerably modified. Here, we studied the epidemiology of this virus in university hospitals of Marseille, South of France, over the period 2020 to 2023. We tested in our laboratory from July 2020 to October 2021 16,516 nasopharyngeal swabs from 16,468 patients for RSV infection using different qPCR assays. We then analyzed data from previous and subsequent winters (from 2018 to 2023) and previous summers (from 2015 to 2021). A total of 676 patients were RSV-positive; their mean age was 3 years and 91 were under 5 years of age. We observed a delay of 4 months of the RSV epidemic's onset compared to other years with an epidemic that peaked in March 2021. We had significantly more RSV-positive cases during summer 2021 compared to previous summers, whereas the incidence of RSV infections was not significantly higher during winter 2022 versus previous winters. Moreover, 494 patients were diagnosed as RSV-positive in the emergency unit and 181 were subsequently hospitalized, and 34 patients were diagnosed RSV-positive while already in the intensive care unit. Over all the study periods, 38 patients diagnosed as RSV-positive died, the majority of whom (23/28) were over 65 years of age. These data show an atypical evolution of the incidence of RSV infections in our city and is another example of the unpredictability of infectious disease epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediterranean port cities share a number of trajectories that reveal their constitutive interconnectedness. Among the more recent is the process of urban regeneration that many of these cities have undergone over the last two decades. Several studies have analysed the implications of urban renewal from a socio-economic and urban planning perspective. However, the intersection between diverse urban restructuring processes and the emotions that crisscross these cities is still largely underexplored. This article aims to begin filling this gap by identifying possible emotional responses that mirror local concerns in three port cities located on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. More specifically, the article investigates Barcelona in light of the hope that emerges when a city is in crisis, Marseille and the nostalgia that is mobilised to reimagine the city's national consciousness and Genova with regard to an uncanny feeling when more-than-human balances are altered. Drawing from different disciplines, including ethnography, media, archival and literary analysis, this article argues that emotional trajectories are significant aspects to consider in the urban renewal processes of distinctive spaces like port cities because they allow us to comprehend some of the local reactions to urban transformations and gentrification that go beyond understanding economic and branding strategies in a post-industrial space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its long history, plague has not been an internationally significant disease since the mid-twentieth century, and it has attracted minimal modern critical attention. Strategies for treating plague are generally outdated and of limited effectiveness. However, plague remains endemic to a few developing nations, most prominently Madagascar. The outbreak of a major plague epidemic across several Madagascan urban areas in 2017 has sparked a wider discourse about the necessity of improving global preparedness for a potential future plague pandemic. Beyond updating treatment modalities, a key aspect of improving preparedness for such a pandemic involves a process of sophisticated review of historical public health responses to plague epidemics. As part of this process, this article outlines and compares public health responses to three separate epidemics from the early modern era onwards: Marseille in 1720–22, San Francisco in 1900–04 and Madagascar in 2017. Based on this process, it identifies three key themes common to successful responses: (1) clear, effective and minimally bureaucratic public health protocols; (2) an emphasis on combating plague denialism by gaining the trust and cooperation of the affected population; and (3) the long-term suppression of plague through the minimisation of contact between humans and infected small mammals.

In 1928, the French government created a bureau in Marseille to both control and help North African migrants, an organization eventually called the Bureau des Affaires Musulmanes Nord-Africaines (BAMNA). Throughout the BAMNA's many name changes and structural reorganizations over the years, Mohamed Ben Hadj remained constant as the bureau's only North African employee. This article traces Ben Hadj's career within the BAMNA, using his professional trajectory to explore the mechanisms and disfunction of colonial governance in the metropole. Ben Hadj created his own role as an urban, metropolitan intermediary, leveraging his personal connections to build a sphere of influence in Marseille's North African community. Ben Hadj's rise to power within the BAMNA reveals the importance of this type of intermediary for understanding imperial control in the metropole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marseille can be thought to constitute a singular urban complex – both marginal and transitional – within a broader French territorial imaginary and political discourse. Proposing successive readings of literary works by Emmanuel Loi (Marseille amor , 2013), Sabrina Calvo (Sous la colline , 2015) and Maylis de Kerangal (Corniche Kennedy , 2008), this article examines how such works mobilize aspects of this singularity in the development of striking and occasionally ambivalent utopian problematics, reframing the city with respect to a set of vectors (both temporal and spatial) that expose the subject to the troubling horizons of both individual and collective agency. The article reflects on the specific parameters of a 'space of possibility' in the urban context under discussion. Moving from this localized problematic, it argues for a version of cognitive mapping that incorporates varieties of affective disposition key to the relations of reason and emotion in a utopian perspective: melancholy, curiosity and disobedience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tremendous majority of SARS-CoV-2 genomic data so far neglected intra-host genetic diversity. Here, we studied SARS-CoV-2 quasispecies based on data generated by next-generation sequencing (NGS) of complete genomes. SARS-CoV-2 raw NGS data had been generated for nasopharyngeal samples collected between March 2020 and February 2021 by the Illumina technology on a MiSeq instrument, without prior PCR amplification. To analyze viral quasispecies, we designed and implemented an in-house Excel file ("QuasiS") that can characterize intra-sample nucleotide diversity along the genomes using data of the mapping of NGS reads. We compared intra-sample genetic diversity and global genetic diversity available from Nextstrain. Hierarchical clustering of all samples based on the intra-sample genetic diversity was performed and visualized with the Morpheus web application. NGS mapping data from 110 SARS-CoV-2-positive respiratory samples characterized by a mean depth of 169 NGS reads/nucleotide position and for which consensus genomes that had been obtained were classified into 15 viral lineages were analyzed. Mean intra-sample nucleotide diversity was 0.21 ± 0.65%, and 5357 positions (17.9%) exhibited significant (>4%) diversity, in ≥2 genomes for 1730 (5.8%) of them. ORF10, spike, and N genes had the highest number of positions exhibiting diversity (0.56%, 0.34%, and 0.24%, respectively). Nine hot spots of intra-sample diversity were identified in the SARS-CoV-2 NSP6, NSP12, ORF8, and N genes. Hierarchical clustering delineated a set of six genomes of different lineages characterized by 920 positions exhibiting intra-sample diversity. In addition, 118 nucleotide positions (0.4%) exhibited diversity at both intra- and inter-patient levels. Overall, the present study illustrates that the SARS-CoV-2 consensus genome sequences are only an incomplete and imperfect representation of the entire viral population infecting a patient, and that quasispecies analysis may allow deciphering more accurately the viral evolutionary pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alsop's first business partner of two decades, John Lyall describes their formative years as students at the Architectural Association in London, the influence of various members of Archigram, and sharing a house in Southeast London's not‐so‐salubrious Ladywell district. He recounts a world of music gigs, designing events and parties, and the offices they worked for as young architects before forming their fledgling practice in the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kester Rattenbury convenes the long‐running Supercrit series at the University of Westminster, London. Here she describes proceedings at Supercrit #8, which presented Alsop's 'Le Grand Bleu' in Marseille, France, the competition‐winning building for the headquarters of the regional government of the Hôtel du Département des Bouches‐du‐Rhône. The event was conducted without its star performer, who had, alas, died six months prior. The invited panellists represented a range of design inputs from engineers to artists, each demonstrating their respect for Alsop and his creative verve while offering critical reflections on this ground‐breaking project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clare Hamman gives us a peek into the impressive collection of Alsop paintings held by the Marco Goldschmeid Foundation, and ruminates on the applications for which Alsop used his painterly instincts. Firstly, this was to clear his own mind of preconceived ideas, then, as a catalyst for creativity in his office and with collaborators, as well as a prompt for open‐minded discussion with clients. Hamman positions the role of painting in Alsop's design practice as both a life‐giving force and powerful means of popular communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Letting us into a side of Alsop seldom seen, Will's son Ollie Alsop relates small vignettes of domestic and close working life, including at the family's apparently ad hoc Norfolk house. The improvised homely home seems at odds perhaps with the chimera of a successful architects' residence where material and space are held in taught alignment. Paradoxically, Will's personal habits were concerned with the exactitude of repetitively laying out his drawing, drinking and smoking accoutrements on the kitchen table each morning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural engineer Neil Thomas describes some of the memorable encounters and collaborations with Alsop, particularly the Cardiff Bay Visitor Centre that Alsop maintained was inspired by his disposable cigarette lighter. A creative relationship maintained over a timeline that spanned nearly 30 years, Thomas conveys their way of working together that was fuelled by a deep desire to dare to dream met with breathtaking and credible design solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of Alsop & Lyall's first built works was a swimming pool at Sheringham in Norfolk, close to Alsop's family home, and was a long, extruded form. Paul Finch followed Alsop's entire career through the eyes of a journalist, making the connection between the use of the formal extrusion as design tactic and many of the buildings and schemes that came later. Coupled with Alsop's non‐belief in the old 'form follows function' idiom, this allowed him to create vivacious architectural designs, urban districts and whole cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the work of British architect Will Alsop (1947–2018). His architecture was aimed at allowing beautiful resolutions to emerge truthfully from the actual condition of our towns and cities and replacing a little misery in the world with a little joy and delight', and he did this with style and showmanship.

Whilst lamenting the passing of so many inspirational and creative voices, Peter Cook can still hear the echoes of a 30‐year period of iconoclasm that was the antecedent and antithesis of the circumspect introspection of architectural design today. Here he celebrates Alsop's achievements and records some shared traits. The power of Alsop's oeuvre is ever‐present for those who occupy and encounter his buildings, and his persona lingers in the air for those who knew him well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In coastal cities, the effects of climate change will cause an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme sea level (ESL). In this scenario, the application of the Coast-RiskBySea model is proposed to assess the economic impacts of ESL on the built environment in three Euro-Mediterranean coastal cities: Naples, Barcelona, and Marseille. The risk (land use-based) is assessed in the GIS environment as a function of the potential direct and tangible economic damages. The results highlight risk scenarios in all three cities with significant economic damages expected, requiring the implementation of climate mitigation and adaptation measures to reduce the current impacts and limit future ones. The simulations highlight the potential of both remote sensing data and GIS systems to carry out homogeneous environmental analyses over wide areas. The results that were obtained are compared with existing works to verify the reliability of the Coast-RiskBySea model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an analysis of the film adaptation by Christian Petzold loosely based on Anna Seghers’ novel Transit. The action of the original book takes place in the 1940s in occupied France, the plot of the adaptation is set in contemporary Marseille. The author examines the methods used to combine these two different times and also focuses on differences between the book and the adaptation. It is assumed that Chris- tian Petzold’s original idea is a kind of intertextual dialog with Seghers’ novel and his adaptation could be seen as a series of operations such as: selection, concretization, analogization and first of all actualization.

Respiratory syncytial virus is among the most common causes of respiratory infections. Typically, this viral infection has a seasonality during the cold months but with the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic this has been considerably modified. Here, we studied the epidemiology of this virus in university hospitals of Marseille, South of France, over the period 2020 to 2023. We tested in our laboratory from July 2020 to October 2021 16,516 nasopharyngeal swabs from 16,468 patients for RSV infection using different qPCR assays. We then analyzed data from previous and subsequent winters (from 2018 to 2023) and previous summers (from 2015 to 2021). A total of 676 patients were RSV-positive; their mean age was 3 years and 91 were under 5 years of age. We observed a delay of 4 months of the RSV epidemic’s onset compared to other years with an epidemic that peaked in March 2021. We had significantly more RSV-positive cases during summer 2021 compared to previous summers, whereas the incidence of RSV infections was not significantly higher during winter 2022 versus previous winters. Moreover, 494 patients were diagnosed as RSV-positive in the emergency unit and 181 were subsequently hospitalized, and 34 patients were diagnosed RSV-positive while already in the intensive care unit. Over all the study periods, 38 patients diagnosed as RSV-positive died, the majority of whom (23/28) were over 65 years of age. These data show an atypical evolution of the incidence of RSV infections in our city and is another example of the unpredictability of infectious disease epidemiology.

Industries sometimes leaves invisible yet dangerous chemical memories of their activities. Because these compounds are invisible, people rely on heuristics informed in part by people-place relations to make a risk judgment. The Marseille region of France provides an interesting case to analyse how local risks are judged in relation to people-place variables. The perceived risks of a depollution project where 'red mud' (an industrial residue) is used to neutralize lead-contaminated soil are analysed in relation to (1) place attachment and (2) trust in several types of organization. Results show that participants with stronger local attachment perceive their local environment as less polluted and consider the project as a greater threat. Furthermore, risks vs. benefits associated with the project are significantly explained by age (associated with perceived risk) and trust in societal organizations (associated with perceived benefits). Discussion considers how the diversity of local publics could lead to widely different reactions to the depollution project across the city's social tissue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]