Multiple Marseilles

Why go to Marseille? We knew (some of) its history, we had personal connections to the city, professional entanglements, we had read and seen films about the city. We had an idea of its scale, its challenges, its ambitions – which extended far beyond the city’s boundaries. We had read texts that talked of the city as a laboratory, a place where a multitude of cultures had coexisted from ancient times to the present day. At the same time, however, Marseille was also seen as a case study of things to come, things that other cities in Europe and elsewhere might face in the not-too-distant future. There is no other place in Europe, some proclaimed, that comes close to bundling social and other challenges in such a similar way.

And so, triggered by contemporary conditions, coupled with an intense engagement with the city’s colonial history and the associated violent restructurings and interventions in built and lived urban space, many critical voices have risen in recent decades to act as catalysts for just change at the social and climate levels. These processes of transformation—towards an environmentally aware and responsible society—are manifested in Marseille in a variety of projects that, through their participatory and situated work, challenge the status of the city (e.g. as a cultural capital, tourist centre, etc.) sought by elite groups. While images of socially and ecologically ruthless investor urbanism characterise the city’s official marketing campaigns, numerous groups, associations, collectives, organisations and communities have formed to work for better and affordable housing, healthy and green urban spaces, networked and affordable mobility systems, social participation and solidarity.

We wanted to see all this for ourselves. And so: planning began.

The time? Early 2020.

Contacts were made, a rough schedule was set, funding had been applied for – in fact, we were just about to book our accommodation.

Then March came.

Covid struck and shut everything down.

For a few weeks we were naive enough to think that a trip in June might be possible, which is why we continued to plan, plan and plan some more. Things turned out differently, however, and soon a cancelled trip seemed to be the least of our worries. We took our agenda off the walls, wrote emails, sent letters, cancelled visits and put our research and plans in a box, where they remained for a good 2 years before they re-emerged. We began – not from scratch, but with lenses sharpened by the pandemic – by crossing references from literature and media, films and documentaries, newspaper articles, historical episodes, etc. around notions of inequity along the axes of colonialism and capitalism. The themes that emerged spoke of inhumane housing and gentrification, migration, discrimination and inclusion, de-industrialisation and touristification of the waterfront, periphery and urban food sovereignty, and the transformation of unused urban spaces into Third Places. Based on the reading grid resulting from these intersections, we set out to find actors who in the past and today contribute to making these issues visible and actively shape them. The search led to a programme of encounters, walks, shared meals and lively conversations with activists, urban planners, artists, students, more or less improvised guides, local politicians, farmers, strikers, volunteers, squatters.

Finally, in June 2022, we set out by train: from Braunschweig via Hanover, Mannheim and Paris to Marseille—with plenty of delays, missed connections, overcrowded trains, and lots of discussions on route. Anyone travelling by train knows of the beauty that comes with journeys that stay close to the ground—which is not just about the gradual changes of landscape but also about the easing in and out of conversations with fellow travellers. As we closed in on Marseille, we were struck by the numbers of commuters on the high-speed rail connections, who use those long-distance trains to and from France’s capital city for work. As this becomes doable—simply because connections are good and fast—rapid gentrification in the Hexagon follows—with all its consequences. Aix-en-Provence and Marseille are also examples of this change, which is not least noticeable in the sociological composition of the passengers, their grey suits and telephone conversations as the carriages travel at high speed towards the warm Mediterranean.

A few words before you dive into the many stories of our trip to Marseille. We see such trips, the work we do in the field, and the practice of immersing ourselves in the world (i.e. leaving the academic ivory tower) as a necessary element of our research and teaching endeavours. When our series of rooms at the TU Braunschweig serves as a base, an infrastructural node, a meeting point as well as a retreat, fieldwork (from site visits to walks, from our walking worms to workshops in a public square, from the temporary occupation of a vacant shop to conversations, from a day-long bike ride to a more complex and varied journey) becomes the moment in which we consciously expand this realm and extend our tentacles to find and stay with the trouble: The multitude of challenges we all become entangled in when we leave the abstract, clean and seemingly perfect space of planning and drawing, which is usually conceived and constructed on sheet after sheet of white paper, from a safe distance, with a controllable set of tools and limited interference by and through others.

In 2020 we set up IfoeA—the Institut für örtliche Angelegenheiten or Institute for Local Affairs in 2020—to frame this setting and to describe the academic, practical and theoretical environment of the seminars held at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture and the City (GTAS) at the Department of Architecture at the Technische Universität Braunschweig. The IfoeA remains a pseudonym or simulation of a possible organisation—standing for the idea of the radical necessity to address, process and develop local issues, situated challenges in an integrated way and in dialogue with the many, with a broad urban society (whether human or nonhuman) for the pluriverse. We still do not produce designs in the classical sense (of perfected and shiny objects devoid of any and every context), but methods, strategies, instruments and other apparatuses—both immaterial and material rooted in concepts of critical care, the common good and socio-spatial justice. Going out, travelling and engaging is part of this broader set of other ways of doing that we seek to trace in these little books that we produce, which offer glimpses into our ways of reading, encountering and working with Gaia.

We received help, support and a lot of advice, both during the planning and once in Marseille and would like to thank Cosimo Alterio, Marie-Noëlle Battaglia, Ouafa Bendjama, Maxence Bohn, Fathi Bouaroua, Susanne Bürner, Cabanon Vertical, Cantine du Midi, Collectif Safi, Coco Velten, Isabelle Dao, Estel Fonseca, Groupe Artistique Les Pas Perdus, Kamil Guémari, L’Après M, Les 8 Pillards, Lukas Hamilcaro, Margret Hoppe, Hôtel Azur, Fabrice Laggiard, Dorothée Luderich, Steve Manny, Nicolas Memain, Guillaume Morel, Gauthier Oddo, Didier Ostre, Luíza Pereira, Sonia TeHok, Pénelope Thoumine, Rémy van den Bussche, and Maryline van de Voorde.