This thesis investigates the relationship between transport and urbanization in the cross-border metropolitan construction of the Great Geneva, exploring how planning practices can respond to the imperatives of the socio-ecological transition.
This research is the result of an encounter between an urban model, the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), and a territory, the cross-border metropolis of Greater Geneva, each serving as a lens through which to analyse the other critically.
Linking mass transit and compact growth, TOD has become an influential global model for reducing automobile dependency, guiding sustainable growth, and fostering metropolitan cohesion. Yet its application, rooted in normative assumptions, remains insufficiently questioned in relation to asymmetric territorial contexts and socio-spatial equity.
Cross-border territories are critical 'in-between' spaces, overlapping national, legal, cultural, political, and spatial systems. Greater Geneva, one of Europe's most functionally and institutionally integrated metropolitan regions, yet marked by asymmetries, disparities, and environmental pressures, presents a unique terrain for questioning the assumptions, rationalities, and potential of the TOD model.
Organized into three parts that address the past, present, and future of transport and urbanization coordination, the research employs a hybrid methodology that combines historical inquiry, statistical and cartographic analysis, qualitative interviews, photographic explorations, and research on-and by-design. The first part traces the longue durée rurbanization process of metropolitan construction revealing the mismatch between the urbanization processes and the envisioned transit system. It further examines how transport networks, legal framework, and planning have contributed to producing and structuring enduring territorial hierarchies. The second part identifies three structural paradoxes shaping cross-border TOD implementation: the specialization paradox, the growth paradox, and the radio-centric paradox, each revealing the economic, political, and social limitations of the current model. Collectively, these tensions reveal that TOD in Greater Geneva operates more as a vehicle of metropolization than as an instrument of territorial cohesion, perpetuating uneven development. Beyond critique, the research explores alternative imaginaries emerging from spatial design and prospective planning, highlighting the potential and limits for an inclusive and sustainable metropolitan vision.
This research concludes that the socio-ecological transition demands a paradigmatic shift, from technical infrastructure-led coordination toward a relational territorial project. (Re)territorializing transport and urbanization calls for reconciling connectivity and proximity in context-sensitive ways, moving beyond binary readings toward multi-scalar configurations where strong and weak networks coexist. Hybrid coordination envisions transpor
