The media in the normalisation of airport-led development in the Paris city-region
This paper by J.-B. Frétigny, M. Magnan, J.Maulat, M. Pedro examines how the news media tend to naturalise the market-driven diversification of airport firms and their growing role and impact in shaping metropolitan peripheries.
Abstract
Airport management companies increasingly shape urban space through their role in non-aeronautical property developments (e.g. hotels, business parks, logistics zones, conference centres, etc.). These development strategies are instrumental to the diversification and financialisation of the companies’ activities. They raise key issues for the public debate on cities as they have important economic, social, environmental and political consequences for metropolitan growth and change, regarding land clearance, urban sprawl, and the socio-economic prioritisation of the areas under development.
This paper examines the way the press addresses these issues in public debate. Drawing upon a case study of Aéroports de Paris (ADP), the company owning and managing airports in Paris city-region, this article analyses media reports spanning the period from 1990 to 2024. It shows that ADP’s financialisation-driven property strategy and its increasing role in the development of the Paris region is rarely questioned by the press. Media coverage struggles to address the processes at stake, and thus limit their understanding by the readership and the questioning of the urban model to which they contribute. Our results suggest that the news media tend to naturalise the market-driven diversification of airport firms and their growing role and impact in shaping metropolitan peripheries.
Under the Dome, an international business district in the heart of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. cco Pexels / Mermoz Lionel
Jean-Baptiste Frétigny, Marion Magnan, Juliette Maulat, Mathilde Pedro. The quiet financialisation of urban infrastructure. Cities, 2025, 166, pp.106200. ff10.1016/j.cities.2025.106200ff. ffhal-05124397f
Juliette Maulat is an associate professor in urban planning at the University of Paris 1 and a member of the CRIA research team of the UMR Géographie-Cités. Her research focuses on the relationship between urban planning and transport, metropolitan mobility policies, and the railways. Her fieldwork concerns different metropolitan areas in France, Europe, and North America. Her current research focuses on the land and property development activities of transport operators in Paris and London.
Since Nov. 2020 Mathilde Pedro is a Ph.D. student in Geography and Planning at theUniversité Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, in partnership with RATP Group, “Conception, Planning and Management of Mobility Hubs in France, Britain, and the Netherlands”. Mathilde is a member of Géographie-cités’ laboratory.
