Unexpected Wind Power ‘Potentials’: The Art of Planning with Inherited Socio-Geographical Configurations (France)

Abstract

International audienceThe deployment of wind power induces deep changes in landscapes and territories. The politicization of wind power generates new ad hoc collectives. In the French case, because of the institutional framing resulting from landscape and wind power policies (centralization, feed-in tariffs, private developers), collectives of emerging wind power landscapes are regularly set apart from wind power planning processes. This paper explores the extent to which these recompositions and new collectives could be part of emerging wind power potentials. The empirical evidence stemming from our case studies shows that wind power technology, like any other technology, is not endowed with a potential per se. Wind power potentials differ – ‘capitalistic’, ‘controversial’, ‘negotiated’, ‘conditional’ – depending on planning processes and inherited configurations. The notions of striated space and smooth space enable us to adopt a relational perspective on these emerging collectives and to account for the role of inherited socio-geographical configurations and planning processes

Landscape commons, following wind power fault lines. The case of Seine-et-Marne (France)

“…It also allows us to trace landscape issues without detaching them from local politics and its strategic delineation of the shifting public / private border, or from wind power policy and its associated state landscape, both of which offer a definition and practice of the General Interest (big "G", big "I"). Thus our analysis expands the strand of analytical works addressing landscape as a project and social assemblage (Briffaud 1995;Dewarrat et al, 2003;Nadaï 2007b;Nadaï and Labussière, 2010;Labussière and Nadaï, 2014).…”

Emerging Renewable Energy Landscapes in Southern European Countries

“…The limits of the notion of technological potential itself have recently been the subject of controversy and reopened for debate. Some analyses have highlighted the role of inherited socio-spatial confi gurations in the emergence and the construction of this potential (Nadaï 2012 ;Labussière and Nadaï 2014 ). Traditions of landscape management vary greatly from one country to the next.…”

“…The approach to spatial planning and its ability to take into account existing landscape practices, public participation and local potentials has also been important (Nadaï 2012 ;Labussière and Nadaï 2014 ;Toke et al 2008 ;Wolsink 2007 ). In several southern European countries, the absence of conventional energy sources, the signifi cant dependence on imports (e.g.…”

Smoothing, striating and territorializing: The assembling of ‘science in the making’

“…The Deleuzo-Guattarian conceptual imagery around smoothing, striating and territories has been mobilized in various contexts and across different disciplinary settings. This has, for instance, included research on virtual spaces (Aroles, 2018a;Nunes, 1999); digital learning spaces (Bayne, 2004); the investigation of space production (Munro and Jordan, 2013); the unfolding of mega sport events (McGillivray and Frew, 2015); the mobility of transnational students (Lysgard and Rye, 2017), as well as a broad range of studies within the field of geography (for instance, Bear, 2013;Bradshaw and Williams, 1999;Labussiere and Nadai, 2014). Deleuze and Guattari (1987) introduce the concepts of smooth and striated by comparing two board games: Chess and Go.…”