I would like to acknowledge the support of my institution in allowing me to carry out the research as part of its staff development programme.
- 1 The terms borders, boundaries, frontiers, borderscapes are used to identify the territorial limit a (...)
1The call for contributions to this ’Metropolitan Narratives in Transition’ edition of Articulo-Journal of Urban Research highlights the important role of narration, imagination and storytelling in understanding the complexity of the metropolis. Narrating through photography, this paper develops a reading of a place of transition – the intra-urban boundary. Such boundaries subdivide our metropolises, marking the moment of transition from one administrative area to another. Whilst structured around the situation in Paris, the approach can be applied elsewhere. Paris is a timely choice. The city is strongly associated with the arrondissement (local district), and it has become the first in France to adopt a Plan Local d’Urbanisme bioclimatique (PLUb) which places a strong emphasis on the local area (ville de proximité) as a spotlight for action, yet also projects a desire for Paris to be a major player (ville actrice) in the metropolitan area beyond its administrative boundary (Maire de Paris 2025).
2So, consider a circle with a radius of approximately five kilometres, sub divide it into twenty ‘arrondissements’ arranged in a spiral from the centre (like a snail) and you have the main elements of the administrative map of Paris in your head. That circle is the Boulevard Périphérique (ring road), built 1958–1973 on the site of the Enceinte Thiers (city walls) demolished in the 1920s. It is a physical and psychological divide between Paris, intra muros, and the banlieues (suburbs), extra muros. Urban planning inside the circle is the responsibility of the Mairie de Paris (town hall), a public body that oversees this activity for the arrondissements and their 2.1 million inhabitants.
3Boundaries define our nations, cities and towns legally, administratively, culturally, socially and in so many other ways. We transit them routinely (Rumford 2006). Some are very defined. The Périphérique ring road – the circle you have just thought of – firmly marks the administrative edge of Paris. Others are less defined. The ‘Latin’ district of the same city is more of a concept than a physical reality. The focus of this paper is the administrative boundary. To give these divisions a spatial manifestation they are marked on maps, and when drawn up by state agencies these lines signify authority.
4The boundary line as shown on official maps is not, though, the boundary, it only signifies the boundary – for a discussion of ‘signified’ and ‘signifier’ see Barthes (1957). As it appears on a map, the boundary line has no magnitude (Cameron 2011: 422). Yet, the internal administrative boundaries of Paris define the city to its inhabitants. Each arrondissement has its ‘mairie’ (town hall), its identity – projected through a unique postcode, local services and graphic presentational styling and marketing. The primary aim of the paper is to understand the intra-urban boundary. The (analytical) question that it asks is whether such thin lines, with no magnitude on the map, are in reality ‘places’ with their own presence, and (methodologically) can photography, as a hereto underused technique in urban analysis, help this understanding? ‘Presence’ here is defined as visibly manifesting criteria pertaining to a boundary, as derived from the academic literature and ‘place’ is defined as being the spatial expression of this ‘presence’ and thereby somewhere that we can photograph.
5As a new approach to reading the boundary this study reports on both the analytical and methodological aspects of the question. Future work can then benefit to develop them further.
6This study sits in an interpretivist theoretical space (see Gattone 2020 for a discussion of interpretivism). Epistemologically, it embraces the idea that knowledge is subjective. It allows for exploring a complex social phenomena in a narrative way. It is interdisciplinary and accepts the self as interpreter of place. Ontologically it sees reality as multiple and open to interpretations based on language, symbols and culture and emphasises the role of the researcher in shaping knowledge. As a sub-set of this interpretivist paradigm, the research leans towards encountering the boundary through a symbolic interactionist lens such as has been used by geographers, architects and urban planners to derive understandings of how phenomenon impact the built environment (del Casino and Thien 2019). Symbols in this context can include buildings, bounded places, monuments etc… (Nickerson 2025, Smith and Bugni 2006). For Stenner (2018) and myself, imagination and symbolism are brought together here in experiencing the liminal as a social flow. He emphasises ‘happenings’ (I call this ‘encounters’ with the boundary) and our subjectivity as part of the flow. Critiques of this framework suggest it might ignore the more strategic view and that it can over stress the subjective. In this study, to balance that, the macro view is introduced via the international based literature and the subjective is privileged as being the provoker of debate and as an alternative view. The reflexive nature of interpretivism helps to avoid a narrow approach in interpreting a complex world.
7The auto-ethnographic approach of the research encourages a narrative account of the boundary that embeds the literature within its telling, and although that account comes later in this paper, it is important to say something now about the conceptual framing that sees the border as a complex and multi-faceted, dynamic space, created and shaped by society acting upon it, with multiple potential readings. This aligns with Marc Schoonderbeek’s point that we ‘should work towards a much more complex understanding of the border…’ (2015: 96) in a multi-disciplinary way of considering the phenomenon.
8Whilst there has recently been a turn towards looking at urban borders (Iossifova and Kostenwein 2024) the overwhelming literature has been and still is developed with reference to the international border (Tateo & Marsico 2021: 711). Whilst that literature has traditionally concerned itself with boundaries as geo-political, legal constructs – see Kristof (1969) and Minghi (1963), in a spirit of post-modern reflection it has since developed to embrace far more abstract readings (Karaman & Islam 2012: 234) and an increasing recognition of cultural and humanist understandings (Kurki 2014: 1056) as well as applications in art and social sciences (Lamont & Molnár 2002) and good summaries are provided by Fauser (2024) and Johnson et al (2011).
9This borrowing of the international scale literature is appropriate and useful in this study because what is being sought is a theoretical framing of ideas to inform an encounter with the boundary. At any scale, what is clear is that the boundary represents a complexity of multi-disciplinary ideas at the heart of which lies the notion of separating one place from another. They demarcate space according to a particular reading of the place in question. The scale at which the literature addresses these concepts is not detrimental to an understanding of them. It is, though, important to understand that they are dynamic, spatial conditions that change their emphasis with events, political ideas, governments, cultural understandings etc.
10Spatially, three important concepts emerge from the boundary literature: the ‘border’ – in effect a relatively stable line that can be drawn on a plan, hence its use in the title of this paper; the ‘frontier’ – a dynamic zone that moves back and forth with events; and the ‘borderscape’ – a space that straddles the border and has depth, its inhabitants at ease anywhere within it. To each of these we can apply, to one extent or another, by informed observation the characteristics ascribed to them from the literature. The characteristics drive a creative narration and consequent photography.
11These focus on ideas of transition: moving and passing, or obstruction and control, between one administration and another and how this manifests itself spatially. This is what the literature refers to as ‘bordering’ (see Brambilla 2015). Mol and Law, ask ‘what, for instance, is it to cross a boundary?’ (2005: 637).
12Perhaps the most familiar manifestation is around ideas of physical presence, barriers, defence and control, seeing the boundary as a place of monitoring and controlling movement, persistently dynamic and with its associated infrastructure (Berend 1999). Barriers designed to include or exclude, watchtowers, surveillance apparatus, lighting and partition (Ehrman 2007) are the symbolic and material manifestation of this (Till 2013: 52). For Gonzalez Milea and Niglio (2022) this is about controlling space, and it transcends scale. Congestion charges and permit controls, and the city limit demarcated with security cameras, rules about entry (Athens car registration number access) and ring roads (often privately operated) perform a similar role to a medieval wall. Intangible and extinct borders can still act with agency, influencing perception of space. The past becomes part of the present, what José Nuno Beiraõ and Anastasia Koltsova (2015) might call territorial depth.
13A barrier for some has for others been the focus of opportunity and for places of exchange (Borzooie et al. 2019). This makes the border more of a frontier – outwardly looking and dynamic – a rich and diverse place and one in which cooperation is possible. There are times when the boundary can be porous to encourage this, or reinforced to discourage it. It can be a place where behaviours are culturally different. Such places can be unstable and marginal. The boundary here is pushing outwards, not pulled back by belonging to the hinterland. The ‘frontier’ can be peripheral – an edge or in between space. In such a conceptual framework, it has been seen as both included and excluded, as a place that needs to be controlled and as a buffer and ‘métissage’ (mixing) (Abdoumaliq 2007). Such framings of the boundary have provoked the imagination and artistic responses to provide new narratives. As Giudice & Giubilaro express it: ‘…realising alternative visions and experiences of the border, artists challenge the dominant narratives’ (2015: 80). And, many artists have seen it as a place of defiance and the telling of alternative narratives stimulating the emergence of specific ‘border art’ (Szary 2012) as part of a visual and aesthetic turn in border studies (Moze and Speigel 2022, Schimanski 2015).
14Crossing boundaries can be a semiotic experience. Cameron (2011) draws attention to marks and signage, Barthel (2020) to symbols of cultural identity, belonging and place marketing, whilst Rumford’s (2006) and Brambilla’s (2015) political and social contruct lends itself to visual capture and interpretation.
15Alongside the border and frontier ideas there emerges a third spatial concept – a borderscape (dell ’Agnese and Amilhat Szary 2015) – a landscape, distinct from the centre and dynamic. It is multi-cultural, and those living close by are equally at ease either side of the border. They often use services, work and live on both sides – whether internationally (within Schengen areas for example) or in the metropolitan area.
16Urban planning has not considered the border per se in such conceptual terms. Steele and colleagues, for example, notice that planning’s involvement has often been to separate ‘town’ from ‘country’, to carry out land use zoning and, more recently, to concern itself with urban growth boundaries. They suggest that: ’ a focus on planning across borders offers a way to actively engage with the issues of territory, community, space and place, which lie at the heart of contemporary urban planning agendas conceptually, methodologically and practically.’ (Steele et al. 2013: 101)
17Border-making is after all, as Barthell and Scott stress, central to place identity. However, as they note: ‘analysis of political and socio‐cultural borders has only begun to link place‐making and bordering processes in ways that resonate with urban planning studies.’ (Barthell and Scott 2024:1).
18The boundary being explored here is the XII arrondissement of Paris (Figure 1). Most visitors to Paris have taken a photograph of the XII arrondissement and its boundary, but they probably do not realise it. The column in the centre of the Place de la Bastille is the apex of its northern boundary. It has been chosen for this study because it sits centrally and because it stretches out south-eastwards from there to the Périphérique – normally considered the boundary of much of Paris – and exceptionally, beyond. The exception is a large public park, Bois de Vincennes, outside the Périphérique, laid out by Haussmann between 1855-66 on land no longer required (for obvious reasons) by the French royal family and brought within the XII arrondissement in 1929. Choosing the XII arrondissement for the study allows the impact of straddling the Périphérique to be considered. Along with this, we can add its reputation as a place that asserts its social identity, from the Revolution to the present. Antoine Levacher-Duplessis, a police préfet from 1817, calls the Faubourg St Antoine area (which became part of the XII at its creation in 1860) ‘a lawless workers’ republic’ and ‘for two centuries since it has been celebrated as proud defender of political liberty.’ (Stammers 2013: 52). Today it comprises a mainly residential interior, with associated urban services, and towards its southern extremity (but within) lies significant amounts of railway infrastructure before the River Seine at the limit. The arrondissement has seen recent redevelopment in public offices and open space. Like much of Paris, other large-scale infrastructure punctuates the urban form. The Bois de Vincennes to the south-east provides a distinct unbuilt area for leisure.
Figure 1 – Paris XII Arrondissement (diagrammatic, not to scale, dimensions approximate)
Credit Author.
19Consistent with an interpretivist framework, this research adopts an auto ethnographic approach to explore the boundary of the XII arrondissement of Paris through the medium of photography. It takes on board something of Walter Benjamin’s expert observer (Benjamin 1999, Schwartz 2001) and in choosing photography it seeks to move beyond the ‘linguistic imperialism’ of text and embrace visual methodologies (Cleland and McCleod 2021: 230). It favours auto ethnography as being a qualitative method that permits a narrative, and to an extent storytelling, interpretation of the boundary (Cooper & Lilyea 2022: 201–202). It allows for creative imagination to play its part in communicating a visually derived reading of the boundary. It allows the researcher’s experience to be central and unashamedly play its part in the outcomes (Mendez 2013). It can be criticised for lacking the objectivity of positivist research, but its value is in looking at place in a different way, so provoking discussion, questioning the position of the researcher, and in turn, iteratively pushing the discussion and knowledge further into the subject being investigated (Ellis 2000).
20I suggest a three-stage approach (photography – self elicitation – narrative analysis) which requires the researcher to have a deep understanding of the subject being observed but not necessarily any technical expertise in photography. It privileges and celebrates the subjective and thereby the researcher’s encounter with the border. In the words of Paül & Trillo-Santamaría, ‘Borderscapes can be read and understood differently depending on how particular actors experience the border’’ (Paül & Trillo-Santamaría 2015: 60).
21The use of visual methods, in particular photography, to gather qualitative ‘data’, process it and to generate knowledge has become well established across many academic disciplines. It has a spatial and cultural quality. In anthropology, for example, Jenny Chio (2021) powerfully brings together human perception and imagination in using photographs as an analytical tool and Gillian Rose’s urban photography (2022) is an excellent example of using the medium for spatial interpretation. Good summaries on the emergence and growth of such methods have been made by Wang and Dong (2013) and Hunt (2014) and have become the subject of numerous handbooks, eg: Spencer (2010), Margolis and Pauwels (2011), Banks and Zeitlyn (2015), Crowder and Marion (2023).
22Ever since Collier & Collier (1967) the academic literature shows that within the field of urban research there has emerged a good range of well-developed approaches to photography. They stretch from positivist data gathering (Fjellstad et al. 2022) to subjective photography by participants (Mayen and Heurta 2021) and capturing the perception of place (Nikšič et al. 2018). As Mia Hunt puts it: ‘in artistic and academic practice, contemporary urban photography has critically reworked street photography traditions.’ (Hunt 2014: 151). On the other hand, in urban planning practice, as opposed to artistic endeavour or academic research, whilst the visual, as expressed through maps, diagrams and drawings, has always had a prominent role (Shanken 2018), photography still plays a surprisingly secondary role in generating knowledge and ideas about place (da Silva Vieira and Antunes 2014). This is somewhat remarkable given the preponderance of site analyses comprising many images of places under consideration. But these images tend to be used to illustrate rather than contribute to developing and narrating more creative readings. There seems to be an institutional lack of confidence within the planning profession in using the photograph in anything but an objective manner. Whilst some (Elshater 2018) recognise and advocate for better recognition of photography’s potential in urban design and planning, they still tend to focus on the skill of image production, not on using photography to generate new understandings.
23Photography allows for the instant recording of a response, it extracts a piece of the urban scene, privileging it (Mohammadmiri & Nabavi 2018); and, when it is framed and taken with an appreciation of the boundary condition it allows for an instant, first hand conversation with a phenomenon and a subsequent opportunity for a reflective triangulation of that conversation between place, argument and image. It can capture a phenomenological encounter with the subject. When deciding what to take, the photographer works in ‘a spirit of collaboration with the place’ (Hunt 2014: 152). This sort of qualitative research can exploit a rich seam of information about the subject being studied that is: ‘manifest through the photographer’s choices of scenes, subjects, styles, compositions and so on’ (Cleland & McCleod 2021: 233). In an auto-ethnographic context photography becomes a substitute for the more traditional writing of field notes in ethnographic work of the type described by Walford (2009). In this study the images are, therefore, deliberately simplistic ‘snapshots’ with a simple piece of equipment to avoid any tendency to dwell on aesthetic rather than field note qualities. They record an informed conversation between researcher and border.
24At their core, these issues are epistemological rather than technical. Photography inevitably involves a degree of subjectivity. What to photograph? How to frame the image? How to interpret an image? All allow for the results to be easily questioned. After all, photographs are ambiguous and constructed (Holm 2014: 5) they are ‘the has been’ (ça-a-été) moment and not reality for Barthes (Sarkonak 1982: 62) and are to be regarded with suspicion (Sontag 1979). But that is not to say they should be dismissed. On the plus side; the visual brings fieldwork ‘directly to the context of representation’ (Pink 2006: 16); and, as research and the search for truth has continued to broaden from the empirical to the subjective there is room for: ‘qualitative approaches [….] based on the assumption that close, often intimate connections to the lived experiences of a particular phenomenon […..] produce the clearest and most informed understanding of the topic’ (Stanczak, 2007: 4). Spencer makes the essential point that: ‘By virtue of one’s training or experience one simply looked at things in a different way and selected details and viewpoints which a professional photographer wouldn’t have chosen.’ (Spencer 2012). So, given that ‘the photographer always has a reason for taking the photograph’ (Holm 2014: 6) and that ‘all visual forms are socially embedded’ (Banks & Zeitlyn 2015: 9) the important step for anyone who hopes to rely on photography to extract (at least) one interpretation of reality is the need to be both transparent and robust in integrating expertise with the act of taking, interpreting and narrating the photographs.
25In terms of the methodology, Margolis & Pauwels (2011) and Rose (2022) through the Sage Visual Research Method Series have been a guide, highlighting the importance of knowing the subject, the viewer and the reason for the image being taken, as well as how to look at the image in hindsight. Chmielewska’s (2010) reflexive photographic series of Warsaw images demonstrates the conversational aspect of this method.
26The images used in this study have all been taken by me. There are three ways that images have been used to elicit a border narrative. First, those from my own extensive archive over many years of being interested in this border (2010 onwards). These focus on the XII and neighbouring arrondissements. When juxtapositioned against the literature, these have elicited a personal, nuanced and detailed understanding of the border. They have allowed me to search for the border phenomena, to question its role and have provoked new ways of thinking and seeing. Second, and informed by what I learnt from the first, are those images taken in a deliberate and methodical walk of the boundary. For this, a clear method was devised that allowed the bringing together of the researcher’s knowledge with a detailed encounter with the totality of the border of the XII arrondissement.
27To allow for the photographs to be taken and recorded in a retrievable way, the border of both south-east Paris and the XII Arrondissement have been overlaid with a 100 m × 100 m grid in a similar way to an archaeological dig. This allows for the line to be given depth and ‘finds’ recorded. The border is then walked in its entirety over several days (September 2024). The act and speed of walking allows for exploration, contemplation and interpretation in the field. The walker-researcher (in this case me) acts as an expert witness moving slowly through the territory (Wiley 2010) recording with the camera the boundary phenomena encountered. It brings the phenomenological and personal to the fore and has become an established method of data collection (Ingold 2010) (Pierce and Lawton 2015) (Springgay and Truman 2018). It translates the written literature into images.
28There is a natural on-going analysis during the taking of the photographs. This is inevitable. Sarah Pink (2007: 118) makes the point that in ethnographic research the distinction between the fieldwork (data gathering) and the analysis is not always necessarily clear cut. They inform each other as the project progresses. Photographs taken later in the fieldwork are informed by those taken earlier, in an ever-growing understanding of the research question. This ongoing analysis is ‘always shaped to some extent by the researcher’s standpoint, disciplinary knowledge and epistemology’ (Braun and Clarke 2013: 175).
29Third, once the border has been walked, the researcher changes from being the image producer to image reader (Nikšič et al. 2018: 31). The point being to allow the expertise that provoked the taking of the photograph in the first place to be re-applied back onto the image rather than lost in the 1/200th second it took to capture it. This stage is suited when the expert eye benefits from viewing phenomena prima facie at the moment of taking a picture – what might be termed a ‘demarche intellectuelle’ – but then needs to review it afterwards in a reflective way to elicit significance, relative weighting, and to analyse and curate the results. It is to some extent a bringing together of existing photo-elicitation, photo-survey and photo diary methods of visual research. The former of these is a well-established and well documented (Harper 2003) (Lapennta 2011) approach to using photographs to elicit more information than the image appears to show. The latter too (photo survey/diary) has also established itself in the genre of visual research methods (Chaplin 2011). In this study it helps to think about the stages of taking photographs – in my case, the division of the plan into a grid (survey) and the diary (personal response).
30When carrying out this ‘self-elicitation’ I (re-) consider photographs often quickly taken in the field and reflect as to: why did I take this? How well does it relate to the literature? What is outside the frame? What does it show of the border-frontier? How strong are the criteria captured? How tangible or intangible is the phenomenon? How does it relate to other images taken? What thinking about the border does it provoke? The narrative then addresses these. A moment for self-elicitation ensures that embedded knowledge in a photograph is questioned and not just assumed. When the researcher is the photographer, this analytical going back and forward between text and image allows for the intent and meaning of a photograph to be confirmed. They can then confidently be presented as personal and subjective, but nevertheless informed.
31Although Pink (2007: 119–120) suggests that the visual record does not always have to be verbalised to be knowledge, I incline towards Holm’s view that ‘text and photograph are equally important’ (Holm 2014: 24). The images used are deliberately placed within the text but not strongly referenced. This invites the reader to mentally juxtaposition text and image and helps to avoid the impression that the narrative presented is non-negotiable. That way the images are not passive and decorative, but active and inquisitorial, allowing the reader to develop the narrative. There is a parallel here with the way an artist works. Taking something that everyone can see, considering it intellectually and then re-presenting it back to the viewer with a new interpretation, so stimulating further thought. It is this process that means the images presented are not merely illustrative but form an integral part in constructing a new view of a reality and encourage the viewer to do likewise.
32What becomes clear after approximately 1000 photographs (of which only a handful can appear in this paper) over a ten-year plus period is what Perec (1989) calls the ‘infra-ordinaire’ as opposed to the ‘extraordinaire’ becomes the key to understanding the border of the XII arrondissement. My photographic re-reading sees links and details that allow for an unashamedly personal interpretation.
33Looking at my images as a collection of spatially related ‘snapshots’ I am reminded that: ‘Architecture has historically been used by those who wield strategic power to territorialize place’ (McGaw 2018) and what starts to strike me is the subliminal interplay of state and arrondissement at a seeming innocuous internal boundary.
Photo 1a, b – The State on the Border
Credit Author.
34A signpost points to the foundation of French Republic; and although I originally photographed the victory column found there simply as a boundary marker, the words of the signpost encourage me to see it far more now as the metaphor of a fight for territorial rights played out at its base. There, hidden underneath, the invisible boundary lines of the IV, XI and XII arrondissements all meet, unmovably fixed down by the weight of the Republic above. This space, so central to the idea of a French Republic, also serves to remind me of division. The residents of the ‘Faubourg’ (XII Arrondissement) being long seen as ‘inescapably different from their Parisian neighbours’ (Stammers 2013: 53) with a reputation for barricades, social unrest and revolution. Here, exactly on the border of this ‘sovereign faubourg’ (cited by Balzac in Stammers 2013), the state has chosen to place its victory column (1840) and a national opera house (1989) where the Bastille once stood. This state presence is already becoming an expression of what will become a theme along this boundary – that of national symbolism punctuating the administrative line. Looking at the spatial distribution of my photographs and moving clockwise (see Figure 1), it noticeably re-occurs at the extreme corners of the arrondissement rather than inside. At Place de la Nation (the northern limit) the ‘unseen’ boundary of the XI and XII arrondissements runs between triumphant columns marking a previous gate into Paris; then into the Bois de Vincennes where the state built, first a castle (1369) and more recently the Fort Neuf army garrison (1844) – both still in use – and then an experimental university (1960s) only to dissolve it for being too disruptive. State (SNCF-TGV) infrastructure is a second line of ‘protection’ at the southern boundary. The ‘state’ theme continues at Porte Dorée (1931 to symbolise the colonial ambitions of the state) and more recently with the Ministry of Finance and Customs headquarters at Gare de Lyon (1989) and the Bastille Opera House (1989) a symbol of state cultural ‘authority’ (cp the dissolved university).
35Looking at the photographs in their totality, not in isolation, it becomes clear that there is a spatial pattern relative to the border. All of these are monumental, imposing, filled with symbolism and visually controlling the boundary (not the interior) of the arrondissement. All have been built over centuries, not as part of one overarching imposing scheme, yet ‘coincidently’ they now contrive in my mind to exert agency on the corners at the border of the XII arrondissement. The most recent, the strongly postmodern citadel-esque Finance Ministry (1989), described as a ‘Republican Palace’ (Guislain 2019) strongly extruding towards the Seine with its moat – a barbican controlling the border. It and the Opera might even be considered as visually defensive replacements on the western boundary for the Bastille Castle destroyed at the Revolution (1789). Minghi’s observation that boundaries are: ‘the areal expression of the limits of jurisdiction and power of the system to which they belong’ (1963: 407) resonates with the imagery.
36Mark Ehrman, reflecting back on the obsolescence of the medieval city wall, once wrote: ‘If walls couldn’t stop armies, however, they could still stop people.’ (2007: 41–42). Walking clockwise down the rue de Faubourg St Antoine that divides the XI from XII arrondissements (Bastille to Nation) my photographs draw my attention to Ehrman’s idea, not at the moment of their being taken, but when I now apply ideas of penetrability and defensibility at a border to them.
37Haussmann’s remodelling of the road (1860) as part of the wider refashioning of the city’s urban tissue has produced an effective façade around significant parts of the arrondissement. And, as with city walls, businesses established themselves around the perimeter, ‘stuck’ to the wall and facing outwards. Here, cross-examining my own photographs, I notice the depth of the ‘wall’; the buildings I can’t pass through, the steel barriers, and I consider how entry into the XII arrondissement becomes restricted to a few controlled ‘gateways’ (crossroads at which businesses like restaurants congregate), and narrow ‘posterns’ – allowing citizens to come and go unnoticed. The façade of the rue de Faubourg St Antoine is, otherwise, at times imposing. The XII arrondissement and its industry, commerce and residents are hidden from outside view until glimpsed through the secreted openings.
Photo 2a, b – Postern and Wall
Credit Author.
38And, continuing this reference to Ehrman, helps me to see the cutting of the Périphérique (constructed 1950s) on the eastern border of the XII with St Mandé as a piece of major defensive infrastructure, after all: ‘A defended area was [once city walls had become obsolete] more likely to be dug in than walled off’ (Ehrman 2007: 42)
39The city wall is not confined to the past. There is a new flood defence wall at Bercy (southern boundary), with narrow, stepped access, sentry walk and bastions allowing me to watch over the zone ‘non aedificandi’ (no building) beyond and the approach to the arrondissement by river. The impact in making the boundary line impenetrable stays the same. The XII arrondissement is consistently difficult to access.
Photo 3a, b, c – Ditch and Rampart
Credit Author.
40A ‘conversation’ between the photography and the literature in which I act as mediator is starting to see the coincidence of the physical reality and the invisible administrative boundary line as being a reading of the border as a contested space. But the ‘physical’ is only one, essential, but also perhaps more obvious lens through which to view the boundary. ‘The border fence or wall becomes the thing, then, that separates us from them’ (Garrett & Storbeck, 2011: 531)
41Here I draw upon Garrett and Storbeck’s application of Baudrillard’s (1981) simulacrum and simulacra to the US-Mexico border fence as a parallel. For those intra muros the Périphérique protects the XII and all it stands for as a Parisien arrondissement. It might be seen by them as a ‘good’ border. Whereas for those extra muros unable to access the Paris of glamour and richness it might be seen as inaccessible and a ‘bad’ border. The Périphérique, though, might play at being a ‘good’ rather than actually being so in reality (a simulacrum) as it is porous and easily crossed. In fact, it is not another Berlin Wall, instead it has become a self-perpetuating hyper reality (a simulacra) (Garrett & Storbeck, 2011).
42When sitting in a café, I overheard someone express just how much she’d like to work in Paris. Now, I look out the window and take a photograph as a reminder of the moment. It is a signpost pointing to ‘Paris’ – the promised land. Yet, the boundary to the XII arrondissement of Paris, was only 185 metres away. The walk from the café involves flat land and a straight line and pedestrian crossing points. There are even buses and a metro station for anyone not wanting to walk. The border here has become hyper reality.
Photo 4 – The Dream of the other side.
Credit Author.
43Picking up on Stenner (2018) and as Tateo and Marisco remind us: ‘The border acts with temporality. The longer it takes to cross the more the crossing becomes a liminal experience’ (2021: 721) So whilst, on paper, the walk across the border to the XII arrondissement is no different than crossing any other main road, it is certainly different in perception. I’m reminded of Angus Cameron’s observation on UK border control in Stansted Airport and the sequence of moments in passing through security – what he calls ‘the dramaturgy of the whole thing: carefully choreographed progression across a series of lines visible and invisible, passive and active that together articulate the border’ (Cameron 2011: 417).
44I ask myself, at what moment did I leave St Mandé and arrive in the XII arrondissement. The answer is not so clear. I took photographs of St Mandé metro station (but is the underground platform in Paris, I wonder) and a street sign (clearly labelled XII), the Périphérique slip road (on IGN maps as XII arrondissement), before arriving at the Porte (Gate) of Vincennes junction over the Périphérique before even starting to cross the ring road itself, generally seen as the border of both the XII and Paris, then past modernist (as opposed to Haussmanian) social housing (HLM), a railway bridge before reaching the ‘Porte (Gate) de Vincennes’ tram stop. Looking at them now, the actual moment of crossing through the ‘porte’ would seem to be the centre line of the Périphérique (Photo 5) but it isn’t. The boundary line that is 1 mm wide on the plan is, from metro stop to tram stop to metro stop, (all bearing the name ‘Porte’) 700 metres deep. I had crossed the official border after just 185 metres. This is certainly a border of flows (Rumford 2006) but at the same time it has the sense of other almost mythical crossings such as Checkpoint Charlie (also with its UBahn station). It might best be described as a ‘borderscape’ (cp landscape) rather than a border – for a wider discussion on this term see dell’Agnese and Amilhat Szary (2015). It becomes contradictory and other worldly, what Foucault (1984) might describe as a heterotopia.
Photo 5 – The border?
Credit Author.
45Still walking clockwise around the XII border is a heterotopia of a different sort, the Bois de Vincennes, covering around half the arrondissement’s surface and ten percent of the city’s surface. Conceived (1855) by Napoleon III to help the city breathe it is the largest of the Parisian parks; but, sitting ‘extra muros’ outside the graphically convenient circle of the Périphérique, it doesn’t even appear on most tourist maps. The 1 mm wide borderline of the XII arrondissement has run around the plan of its 15 kms perimeter since 1929. Scrutinising the imagery of the border amends my thinking. Instead of being a simple urban (built) to non-urban (park) threshold, when set out in front of me and triangulated with plan and border literature, the photographs expose a covert complexity.
46If I start with Schoonderbeek’s observation that: ‘the border as a spatial demarcation inflicts the finalisation of a territory’ (2015: 96) then the stark contrast between ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the XII arrondissement is hard to dispute. What, though, surprises me on a second reading of my photographs is that the finalisation seems consistently more defined by the neighbouring communes than by the XII arrondissement itself, or even by the Mairie de Paris acting on its behalf. Whilst an administrative border on plan, this is a public-private border in reality. But the public sector is not the only one demarcating boundaries. Individuals and companies do so too. The edge of the park is fully open to the public, not fenced and the border into the XII Arrondissement easily crossed. There is no need for ‘portes’ nor control, but there are rules of public behaviour clearly displayed. The drinking fountains running along the border, acting in their own way as subtle markers, only add to this sense of publicness, and invite entry. This completely inverts the position I found in the XII arrondissement ‘intra muros’. There the border acted as a positive space (a tangible physical presence) but here in the XII arrondissement ‘extra muros’ it is as though I draw the border as a negative (intangible void) space.
Photo 6a, b – Private – Public.
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47On the outside (from the point of view of the XII arrondissement) of this boundary, fenced, impenetrable, and deliberately obscured (even to outside eyes) runs long stretches of private ‘villas’ for kilometre after kilometre. The residents of the adjoining communes of Vincennes, Fontenay sous Bois and Nogent sur Marne ‘barricading’ themselves in like wagons around the campfire and have starkly drawn their own borderline. After all, ‘Place-making and design can be and has been as much about keeping others out as inviting others in.’ (Kramer 2017: 1). This Lefebvre-esque socially constructed public-private boundary between the XII arrondissement and communes beyond is not only domestic. Siting on the border, with heavily gated security, is the HQ of Ubisoft, the makers of Assassin’s Creed, other video games, and now strongly associated with the Paris Olympic opening Ceremony but actually situated 50 metres outside the administrative ‘map’ line of Paris. Employees pass daily through visible ‘border’ security as they cross the border from the XII arrondissement into St Mandé (Ubisoft). Commercial security and protection have created territorial borders within nation states, stronger now than many of the international borders that surround them.
48There are, of course, many themes my border walk could dwell upon to produce a personal reading of the XII arrondissement boundary (topography, border art and aesthetic etc..) but, agreeing with Tateo and Marsico that people read their world through the ‘mediation of signs’ and that such signs can be ‘material or immaterial, concrete or imaginary’ makes it particularly appropriate to mention the semiotic of the border before concluding. (Tateo & Marsico 2021: 710–711).
49Throughout my journey around the ‘official’ border of the XII arrondissement I am confronted by ‘official’ signage – street signs, place signs and government logos claiming territory one side or another. I photograph them. They present the boundary as ‘functional but essentially straightforward’ (Cameron 2011: 418), simplifying its intricacies. But questioning the photographs, the complexity materialises and makes me question identity and territorial ambition. The motif street signs in neighbouring St Mandé contain imagery of places (Bois de Vincennes) inside the XII arrondissement (Mairie de St Mandé 2024). But away from these hard and static border identifiers the photographs reveal hints of what Vukov and Sheller refer to as: ‘sophisticated, flexible, and mobile devices of tracking, filtration, and exclusion’ (Vukov and Sheller 2013: 225). Notices alerting the pedestrian to ‘video protection’ and ‘video surveillance’ abound along the line. The former perhaps a more user friendly and benign version of the latter.
Photo 7a, b – Protection and Surveillance.
Credit Author.
50Colours, textures, fonts, graphics all claim ‘territory’ by their unashamed presence on the border. Signage demarcates and exudes an air of unquestioning precision, but then, in the same breadth, adds ambiguity. Parts of the boundary seem to be in two places at once, a no-man’s land.
Photo 8a-f – Certainty and uncertainty.
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51Place-branding by market savvy municipalities has become a feature of the border. Sohn (2022) puts forward two concepts when looking at the border as a semiotic in place-branding. First, the border as an asset in marketing, and second (the opposite) the border as something to be made invisible. It therefore becomes what he terms a ‘semiotic resource’ (Sohn 2022: 82). The logo of the XII arrondissement, a frequent find on the border, symbolises, we are told: ‘a good place to live, an inclusive place and a place proud of its heritage’ (my translation) (Paris Mairie XII 2024). With its stylised contemporary graphic it speaks to a different audience (to its residents) to that on the other side of the border in St Mandé. But on the southern edge of the XII, the administrative border is somewhat subsumed and dominated by the more branded commercial Bercy Village (regenerated wine warehousing). This all makes me wonder, to whom does the border belong? The street art and graffiti in the no man’s land at the edge of the XII arrondissement suggest occupation by groups who would not see themselves affiliated to either side. ‘There is no denying it: the border stages a drama’ (Alvarez 2008: 279).
Photo 9 – Who’s border?
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52This study set out to do two things. First, to attempt an exploration of the intra urban boundary using the international scale literature; and second, to use the potential of photography to assist in doing this. The study has been deliberately subjective but follows a long tradition of expert but personal readings of place by cultural geographers, artists, writers, urban commentators and the like. This research has presented an interpretive response to the found and the experienced.
53The XII arrondissement proved to be a good case study. Its boundary adjoins other arrondissements, the administrative boundary of Paris itself and communes beyond. On a day-to-day level it is a benign boundary but typical of so many others in metropolitan areas. Yet, what has become clear is that the boundary of the XII arrondissement of Paris, can be read as a ‘place’ with more ‘presence’ than its depiction as a line on a map suggests. What makes it such is the action of society on that line. Actors at state, local and personal level have all played their part, adding form, texture, colour, text, materiality and adapting urban form to negotiate the act and fact of being between two territories. What makes the boundary different from the hinterland behind it is the concentration and specificity of such activity, deliberate or otherwise, in one place. In some cases that agency is expressed overtly and explicitly, in others far more subtly and covertly. In places it is clear and demarcated, in others more fluid. It can be read creatively, the boundary has agency – controlling, channelling movement, advertising arrival and departure, signifying ownership and acting defensively. As with Stenner (2018), I became intimately interwoven with the flow of the border (by walking and photography) as a liminal experience – and the imagination that brought about contributed to the narration.
54The photo-elicitation method proved essential in developing that narration. It negotiates that moment between taking a picture and creating a reading. It links the literature to both. It draws out patterns and spatial distributions – the placing of state buildings and monuments, the transition and procession through the ‘porte’ (gateway), the spatial concentration of municipal colour and symbols etc…When set out (like a deck of cards) in front of me and interrogated as a totality what were individual moments of taking become collective moments of meaning. It permitted a personal reading that speaks back to the theoretical concept of a boundary. That reading is unique, and challengeable, but discussion is provoked. In this way, the reality of the boundary as a dynamic spatial condition, more evident on the ground than on plan, develops. It might be critiqued for being anecdotal but expert understanding of the phenomenon is essential to substantiate the narrative story. The academic reading that precedes and underpins the subsequent creative reading is critical. It introduces concepts which, when considered alone might offer little in the way of a spatial implication, but when applied to an expert walking of the border and associated with the wider corpus of literature begins to form into a narrative. It ensures avoidance of the trivial and anecdotal when making observations.
55Borders, frontiers, boundaries and borderscapes are all around us. As Iossifova and Kostenwein (2024) stress, they are: ‘the instruments of planners and designers seeking to device functional or otherwise defined zones in the city and the possible relations that such zones may establish or maintain with each other and through their inhabitants’ (2024: 2). Paris has recently adopted a new local plan (PLUb) that emphasises local identity. To be successful this will require citizens to have a sense of ‘belonging’ to their arrondissement.
56Giudice and Giubilaro, reporting on the work of Balibar (2004), stress his emphasis on ‘the great need to work on imagination’ and that ‘his proposal consists in imagining being on the border, being neither citizen nor expatriate, neither inside nor outside, but on that in-between space which is the border’ (Giudice & Giubilaro 2015: 80). Such creative imaginings are easily dismissed by their critiques as non-scientific, non-empirical and non-rational. Perhaps this is why we see little of them in applied urban planning and design activity. But, in fact, properly constructed, well-conceived creative readings of place help shed new light on what might otherwise go unread. The camera helps here. It has (in the hands of the researcher) acted as an informed visual notebook in the field, and the photographs as an archive to elicit understanding from them. It is a reflexive process and one that reaps more as understanding of the boundary grows. Taking this forward, future work could include further testing this both conceptually and methodologically (perhaps separately) in both Paris and elsewhere, and in particular developing the photo – storytelling nature of the narrative as a means of bridging the divide between academia and practice in urbanism.