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Chapter 4 looks at what happens when environmentalism --and urban sustainability in particular-- becomes part of a language of power (and logic for policy) in major global city such as Paris. I show how urban greening has been incorporated as strategy of inter-urban completion between global cities more broadly, and I shed light on the fact that sustainable urbanism is leading to the dislocation and gentrification of immigrant communities in and around Paris.

Chapter 1 examines how northeast Paris was historically produced as a distinct social, cultural, and even ecological zone in the city. As I show, even before becoming strongly identified as immigrant area, it was always a marginal zone associated with the “soiled fog” of railroad yards, the noxious domain of slaughterhouses, and even the charnel ground as it was the location of one of the largest municipal funeral homes. When the area become predominately North African and West African, the discourse of cultural belonging took on an ecological tinge.

Chapter 5 examines how group of various groups concerned citizens are increasingly adopting the surveillance and watching role traditionally used by state authorities. Such vigilance is a double-edged sword, as it can lead to disempowerment of fellow residents (especially immigrant origin youth) or itself be a way to maintain and inclusive space. Ultimately, gentrifying cities such as Paris reveal themselves to be spaces where middle-class resident’s “right to the city” rests on their willingness and capacity to keep watch of their neighbors. I argue this form of surveillance society, though decidedly low-tech is far more insidious than the more widely publicized imposition of surveillance camera’s and other technological forms of control.

The conclusion not only synthesizes the major points about, but argues that urban anthropology (and urban ethnography more broadly) has hitherto neglected the symbolic and practical importance of environmental issues. Not only will addressing urban ecology reconnect urban ethnographers with issues facing residents (and those being addressed by policy makers) but a focus on nature in the city offers a way to reconceptualize the meaning of both ideas, which are falsely imagined as opposites. Finally, on a somewhat different note, the book uses the example of the Jardins d’Éole to propose that the key to maintaining a socially, culturally, and politically vibrant urban space lays concept of a commons, which should remains somewhat unpredictable: not quite chaotic, but beyond any one group’s monopolistic control. The book demonstrates how spaces like the Jardins d’Éole show how promising—and ephemeral—such places can be.

Chapter 3 examines how ideas of about nature and the environment infuse the way that citizenship is talked about, lived, and contested in northeast Paris. I focus on urban parks, urban gardeners and youth activists to show how the “nature” of cultural belonging in France is one that is not only expressed but reinvented through the idiom nature and environmentalism.

Chapter 2 tells the story of group of activists who successfully fought to transform a brownfield into a 27 million dollar, 4 hectare city park that was Paris’ first sustainable green space. The chapter argues that movement didn’t simply demand a park, but used the language of French gardens and nature to articulate a wide variety of urban and social ills. It also examines how the fortunes of mobilization of Paris’ emerging Socialist Mayor become intertwined.

Chapter 6 rethinks the political important of public spaces in cities. Instead of past approaches, which see public space as important as stage for free speech by social movements, this chapter cites various types of evidence (the analysis of protests, interviews with park guards, and participant observation with neighborhood groups) to show, first, that “public” space does not always “free or just” and “private” does not equal enclosure or lack of democracy. I show that in urban politics, residents seeks to control the definition of private and public more than simply fight for more access to public space. Instead of public space as concept for urban politics, I develop the idea of the urban commons, as a space that seemingly belongs to no one and everyone, and therefore provides a sight for social, cultural, and political creativity. I show how the Jardins d’Éole has veered in and out of being an important commons since it was a vacant lot.